Royal Bank of Canada

Senior Director, Head, SRE and Production Operations

Royal Bank of Canada Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Financial Services · 10,001+ employees

14 h ago
sre Principal (10+ yrs) Full-time Canada
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About the role

The Senior Director will lead the vision, design, and implementation of SRE solutions to ensure operational excellence and reliability across enterprise applications. This role involves driving automated observability, managing production support, and leading high-performing teams to meet business KPIs.

What they look for

Site Reliability Engineering Production Operations Observability Incident Management Cloud Platforms Containerization Automation Reliability Engineering Vendor Management Artificial Intelligence Leadership Strategic Planning Problem Management System Compliance Technical Transformation

Requirements

Candidates must have 8–12 years of experience leading SRE or infrastructure engineering teams at scale with deep technical expertise in observability and cloud platforms. A proven track record in vendor management, cross-functional leadership, and implementing industry best practices is required.

Benefits

Bonuses Flexible benefits Competitive compensation Stock options Coaching and development opportunities

Full description

Job Description

What is the Opportunity?

As Head of SRE and Production Operations, you will lead the vision, design, development, implementation, and support of Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) solutions for all applications supported by Commercial & Payments Technology (CPT) within Technology & Operations (T&O). This strategic role is instrumental in establishing world-class operational excellence, enabling automated end-to-end observability, and driving continuous reliability improvements across critical enterprise applications.

You will work collaboratively with teams across multiple lines of business and organizational partners to establish SRE as a key enabler of business success. As a strategic leader with deep technical expertise, you will drive execution excellence while building and developing high-performing teams capable of managing complex reliability and production support challenges at enterprise scale.

What Will You Do?

Technical Leadership

  • Set the vision for SRE product offerings including monitoring, alerting, machine learning anomaly detection, self-healing capabilities, and reliability testing
  • Drive best-in-class technical solutions by tracking industry-leading practices and applying them to the RBC environment
  • Lead thought leadership and out-of-the-box thinking to ensure SRE tools and processes align with strategic objectives
  • Run engineering practice forums to facilitate the review of SRE solutions and maintain alignment with team and enterprise vision
  • Enable automated end-to-end observability across all critical applications within Commercial & Payments Technology (CPT)
  • Leverage unit, department, and enterprise-wide teams to develop better solutions and achieve a cross-enterprise mindset

Production Support

  • Perform production support role, including off-hours support responsibilities
  • Assist in incident management and problem management for applications in scope
  • Continuously evaluate what went well, what went wrong, and what can be done to improve and prevent issues in the future
  • Maintain technology currency through server patching, certificate renewal, and other maintenance activities with a keen eye on automating opportunities
  • Ensure availability and uptime of applications in scope according to defined service level objectives
  • Ensure compliance of all systems and applications in scope, including maintaining segregation of duties
  • Leverage AI and other key technologies to drive efficiencies and meet Commercial & Payments Technology (CPT), Technology & Operations (T&O) and respective business goals and KPIs

Strategy

  • Drive the overall SRE strategy within Innovation, Intelligent Operations, and partner groups, owning roadmap development
  • Lead the team through execution of the SRE roadmap for Innovation and partner groups
  • Drive participation in strategic steering groups
  • Lead the adoption of new technologies within SRE
  • Enable teams to meet objectives by implementing changes to processes, tools, and methods that result in increased agility and effective cost management
  • Develop governance of the unit in collaboration with executive leadership to provide structure and definition for effectively managing the Innovation SRE Organization
  • Drive industry best standards and practices for the most effective and efficient SRE and production support services

People Leadership

  • Provide expertise, direction, coaching, and development to build team capability and succession planning
  • Select and build a high-performing, diverse team that leverages individual capabilities and strengths
  • Promote a mindset for sustained success, growth, diversity, and an overall engineering mindset
  • Ensure that employees understand RBC’s vision and support and reinforce targeted behaviours that contribute to RBC goals
  • Provide focus and clarity in establishing individual goals, driving performance enablement, supporting career development, and rewarding strong performance
  • Attract, hire, and retain top talent
  • Manage key vendor relationships, contractors, and respective performance management to enable successful execution of SRE and production support services

What do you need to succeed?

Must-have

  • Minimum 8–12 years of experience leading SRE, production operations, or infrastructure engineering teams at scale
  • Deep technical expertise in observability, monitoring, and incident management platforms
  • Demonstrated experience with cloud platforms, containerization, and automation technologies
  • Strong understanding of reliability engineering principles, SLOs, SLIs, and error budgets
  • Proven track record managing vendor relationships and complex third-party technology partnerships
  • Experience leading cross-functional teams and working across multiple business units
  • Strong communication and relationship management abilities
  • Demonstrated success implementing industry best practices and driving technical transformation
  • Experience with AI and emerging technologies in operations and reliability engineering

Nice to Have:

  • Payments industry experience

What’s in it for you?

We thrive on the challenge to be our best, progressive thinking to keep growing, and working together to deliver trusted advice to help our clients thrive and communities prosper. We care about each other, reaching our potential, making a difference to our communities, and achieving success that is mutual.

  • A comprehensive Total Rewards Program including bonuses and flexible benefits, competitive compensation, commissions, and stock where applicable
  • Leaders who support your development through coaching and managing opportunities
  • Ability to make a difference and lasting impact
  • Work in a dynamic, collaborative, progressive, and high-performing team
  • A world-class training program in financial services
  • Opportunities to do challenging work
  • Opportunities to take on progressively greater accountabilities
  • Opportunities to build close relationships with clients and stakeholders

#LI-POST

#TECHPJ

Job Skills

Application Development, Application Maintenance, Applications Architecture, Commercial Acumen, Enterprise Application Delivery, Information Technology Management, Information Technology Trends, Programming Languages, System Applications

Additional Job Details

Address:

RBC WATERPARK PLACE, 88 QUEENS QUAY W:TORONTOCity:

TorontoCountry:

CanadaWork hours/week:

37.5Employment Type:

Full timePlatform:

TECHNOLOGY AND OPERATIONSJob Type:

RegularPay Type:

SalariedPosted Date:

2026-08-11Application Deadline:

2026-09-14Note: Applications will be accepted until 11:59 PM on the day prior to the application deadline date above

Our Employment Opportunities

At RBC, we are guided by living shared values of Client First, Integrity, Collaboration, Respect and Excellence and winning together as One RBC. We believe an inclusive workplace that has diverse perspectives is core to our continued growth as one of the largest and most successful banks in the world. Maintaining a workplace where our employees feel supported to perform at their best, effectively collaborate, drive innovation, and grow professionally helps to bring our Purpose to life and create value for our clients and communities. RBC strives to deliver this through policies and programs intended to foster a workplace based on respect, belonging and opportunity for all.

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RBC is presently inviting candidates to apply for this existing vacancy. Applying to this posting allows you to express your interest in this current career opportunity at RBC. Qualified applicants may be contacted to review their resume in more detail.

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