Who we are 

At Heart & Stroke our mission is to promote health, save lives and enhance recovery. We are committed to a culture that exemplifies our core values: champion health, practice humility, embrace change, drive impact, learn and grow and be heartfelt as we work together to beat heart disease and stroke. 

We believe in equity, diversity and inclusion ― it’s embedded in our values and core mission work to support all people in Canada to lead healthier lives. We are committed to applying this principle to cultivate a welcoming environment that embraces diversity among our employees. Candidates from diverse backgrounds, including but not limited to, Indigenous peoples, racialized communities, 2SLGBTQIA+ communities, women, and people living with disabilities are encouraged to apply. 

To learn more about our mission, values, commitment to EDI, and the difference Heart & Stroke makes in the lives of people in Canada at every age, please visit our website. 

The opportunity 

Please note Heart & Stroke offers a hybrid work option. Candidates must be able to work from the Toronto office when requested.  

The Director, Data & Pipelines Technology will be a foundational hire as Heart & Stroke enters the next phase of its data modernization journey. The mandate is clear: establish direction, build on our foundations, and accelerate execution across the enterprise data ecosystem in direct support of the organization’s mission and business priorities. 

The Director will lead the design, delivery, and operation of Heart & Stroke’s enterprise data platform capabilities, enabling trusted, constituent- and mission-centric insight at scale. This will include ownership of data ingestion, batch and streaming pipelines, the enterprise data warehouse, Customer Data Platform (CDP) capability, and end-to-end data lifecycle management. Through strong leadership of data architecture and data engineering, the Director will ensure architectural integrity, delivery excellence, and the disciplined evolution of data technology capabilities spanning ingestion, storage, transformation, identity resolution, and applied predictive models. The Director will collaborate closely with their VP and the broader technology leadership team, with active support from the role’s leadership upline to enable alignment, prioritization, and execution.  

This role will also carry accountability for advancing the organization’s data governance foundations. While privacy governance is well established today, data quality, metadata, and lineage practices exist informally and will need to be codified and embedded to support scale, reliability, and confidence in enterprise data products. 

Operating as the primary technology-side partner to Analytics and the Privacy and Legal teams, the Director will translate business, analytics, and regulatory requirements into executable, production-grade data technology solutions. While Analytics will define the questions and insights required, this role will own how data is collected, integrated, governed, and delivered to enable insight consistently and responsibly across the organization. In close partnership with Analytics, the Director will enable deeper understanding of mission data, constituent behavior, donor journeys, and giving patterns—providing the evidence and intelligence required to inform Heart & Stroke’s go-forward strategy and long-term impact. 

This role is expected to bring proven patterns and practices from more mature data environments to accelerate Heart & Stroke’s evolution without over-engineering. 

How you will make an impact every day 

Data Technology Strategy and Enterprise Roadmap Support  

• Support the IT senior leadership team in the development of the enterprise-wide data technology strategy  

• Support the VP, APDE in development of the 24-36 enterprise data technology roadmap creation. 

• Provide thought leadership to the VP, APDE and their peers based on industry hardened domain knowledge. 

Data Analytics Partnership and Needs Analysis 

• Maintain and nurture a technology-side partnership with Heart & Stroke’s analytics organizations, managing data and analytics demand intake, prioritization, and delivery alignment in close collaboration with the senior technology leadership team. 

• Align data platform and pipeline capabilities to analytics needs, ensuring data required for insight, reporting, and decision-making is available, trusted, and accessible. 

• Partner with digital product, marketing, and application engineering teams to identify and integrate data at the source and ensure accuracy and consistency across systems. 

Data Science & Automation Enablement 

• Serve as the data science technology advisor to senior technology leadership. 

• Work with Analytics to elevate and furnish an enterprise-grade applied data science engineering capability.  

• Co-design segmentation, propensity, attribution and other models to ensure they are architected for scalability, reliability, and governance from inception. 

• Lead new production model engineering including operationalization concerns, lifecycle management, while Analytics retains business ownership of requirements/hypotheses, segmentation strategy, insight generation and business data quality and performance monitoring. 

• Own the technology platforms for model lifecycle management, including data pipelines, deployment, monitoring, and retraining enablement. 

• Ensure applied data science and automation solutions comply with governance, privacy, and ethical AI standards and requirements, with appropriate documentation and lineage. 

• Evaluate and selectively implement intelligent process and robotic process automation (IPA/RPA) for data-intensive processes, prioritizing efficiency, accuracy, and organizational readiness. 

Data Technology Roadmap Execution Management 

This role will significantly shape and inform (in close collaboration with senior leadership), and execute the enterprise data technology roadmap. 

• Drive the execution of a 24–36-month enterprise data technology roadmap spanning: 

• Enterprise data warehouse capabilities 

• Batch and streaming data pipelines 

• Analytics enablement platforms 

• Data Science technology platforms 

• CDP and identity resolution capabilities 

• Be the responsible party for technology roadmap outcomes. 

Secure and Reliable Data Technology Delivery and Operations 

• Drive the successful design, build, and operation of: 

• Enterprise data warehouse platforms 

• Batch and streaming data pipelines 

• Data integration and transformation capabilities 

• Data science technologies 

• Provide hands on technical product delivery leadership, ensuring architecture and delivery decisions support frictionless analytics enablement, reliable and high-quality constituent and mission insights, security and long-term sustainability. 

• Enhance and enforce architectural standards and patterns governing our data technology solutions. 

• Working with the Privacy and Legal Group, drive the enhancement and operation of data classification and quality controls, including standards enforcement, monitoring, and remediation mechanisms across data platforms and pipelines. 

• Working with the Analytics groups, drive the implementation and operation of metadata and data lineage capabilities, ensuring data assets are discoverable, traceable, and impact of change can be assessed. 

• Manage data technology delivery and operations using a mix of insourced and outsourced resources, maintaining architectural integrity, governance standards, and service reliability. 

• Surface trade-offs related to latency, cost, complexity, data quality, and risk to the executive team. 

Enterprise & Team Leadership 

• Build, grow and develop a high-performance team. 

• Work with stakeholders across the enterprise to understand and help clarify business goals. 

• Provide clear direction on business goals and priorities; ensure optimal deployment of resources to achieve business goals. 

• Develop and steward cohesive lateral relationships cross functionally 

• Build individual performance plans and objectives; provide coaching and feedback to direct reports 

• Evaluate the performance of direct and indirect reports on a regular basis to ensure goals are on track 

• Develop and maintain solid succession planning and leadership development plans 

• Recruit skilled talent and scale resources as required, in support of current and future Foundation needs 

• Demonstrate the values of the Foundation through behaviours 

• Operate effectively within a flat organizational structure, leveraging direct access to senior leadership to drive rapid alignment, decision-making, and execution. 

Who we need 

 Education 

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related discipline, or an equivalent combination of education and progressive professional experience. 

• Nice to Have:  

• Postgraduate education in an applicable domain 

• Azure or other data platform certifications 

Experience 

• 10+ years in data, analytics, and platform engineering, delivering and operating enterprise-scale data platforms and pipelines. 

• 5+ years in senior leadership roles, accountable for data platform delivery, operations, and team performance. 

• Proven ownership of production-grade data platforms (data warehouse/lakehouse, pipelines, real-time CDP), with responsibility for reliability, security, performance, cost, and observability. 

• Significant hands-on experience with Azure or comparable cloud data technologies (e.g., Azure Data Factory, MS Fabric, Databricks, Synapse, Azure SQL) and modern ETL (extract, translate, load) and ELT patterns. 

• Significant hands-on experience with distributed processing frameworks (e.g. Databricks, Synapse, MS Fabric). 

• Experience designing and operating modern data architectures, including lakehouse patterns, domain-oriented data products, and semantic layers. 

• Experience building or supporting Customer / Constituent Data Platforms, including identity resolution, unified profiles, consent management, and activation. 

• Experience enabling applied data science use cases in production, in partnership with analytics teams.Position profile: Director, Data Platforms and Pipelines Technology – Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada 7 

• Demonstrated ability to translate technical decisions into business and mission impact for senior stakeholders. 

• Experience building, leading, and scaling data engineering and operations teams, including talent development and succession planning. 

Skills  

• Strong data engineering and execution mindset, balancing architectural rigor with pragmatic delivery. 

• Expertise in cloud-based data platform architecture and engineering (Azure or similar). 

• Design, implementation, and troubleshooting of batch and real-time data pipelines. 

• Deep working knowledge of data warehouse and lakehouse engineering. 

• Practical implementation of data governance technologies and controls, including data quality, metadata, lineage, and privacy. 

• Ability to operationalize applied data science and analytics solutions. 

• Proven capability managing production data platforms, with focus on reliability, performance, and cost. 

• Strong technical judgment and trade-off analysis across latency, cost, complexity, and risk. 

• Ability to translate analytics and business needs into scalable, production-grade data solutions. 

• Clear, effective communication with technical and non-technical stakeholders. 

• Hands-on people leadership and technical coaching. 

• Experience managing vendors and mixed delivery models. 

• Strong learning orientation and ability to deliver within organizational, regulatory, and resource constraints. 

• Working knowledge of cloud financial management (FinOps) and cost optimization. 

• Deep data engineering experience is prioritized; formal data governance methodologies may be learned on the job for candidates from regulated, privacy-aware environments. 

What we offer 

At Heart & Stroke, we make it a priority to foster a culture of caring by implementing practices and programs that foster respect, compassion, trust and attentiveness to our own and others’ health and well-being. 

This role offers a hiring range of $125,000 to $170,000, aligned with our compensation framework and your professional background. We believe that time off is integral to the personal health and wellness of our employees. We offer a generous paid time-off package including vacation days, personal days, wellness days, and paid company-wide closure between December 25 and January 1. We also provide competitive health, medical, dental and vision benefits, life insurance, disability benefits, an employee assistance program (EAP) and a defined contribution pension plan with employer matching. Our employees also enjoy a flexible hybrid working model and reimbursement for mobile phones and home office setup, as well as opportunities for professional development.  

Apply now 

If you want to join the fight to beat heart disease and stroke, please apply by sending your resume by March 14, 2026. Applicants must be currently residing in Canada and legally entitled to work in Canada. 

Only those candidates that qualify will be selected for an interview. At this time, all interviews are being conducted via phone and/or video call ― we look forward to “virtually” meeting you!  

Accommodation 

We are committed to fostering an inclusive, barrier-free and accessible environment. If you have been contacted for an interview and require accommodation to participate in the recruitment and selection process, please let us know and we will do our best to address your needs.