Senior Consultant, AI Strategy & Program Execution

Location: Waterloo, Ontario

You are as unique as your background, experience and point of view. Here, you’ll be encouraged, empowered and challenged to be your best self. You'll work with dynamic colleagues - experts in their fields - who are eager to share their knowledge with you. Your leaders will inspire and help you reach your potential and soar to new heights. Every day, you'll have new and exciting opportunities to make life brighter for our Clients - who are at the heart of everything we do.

At Sun Life, we're driven by our Purpose: helping our Clients achieve lifetime financial security and live healthier lives. Our values shape how we work: caring, authentic, bold, inspiring, and impactful.

When you join Sun Life, you'll work with passionate colleagues and empowering leaders who support your growth and celebrate your contributions, so you can make a meaningful difference in our Clients' lives.

Discover how you can make a difference in the lives of individuals, families and communities around the world.

Role Summary

The AI Enablement & Acceleration team is seeking a Senior Consultant, AI Strategy & Program Execution to support in shaping, driving, and delivering AI initiatives across Sun Life.

This role combines strategy, structured problem solving, and hands-on program execution. The successful candidate will work across a portfolio of AI initiatives to take ambiguous problems, structure the analysis, develop recommendations, and drive work from concept through execution. In addition, they will serve as the primary program manager for an assigned AI workstream within the portfolio, coordinating stakeholders and ensuring priorities translate into measurable outcomes.

Working within a highly collaborative and matrixed environment, the Senior Consultant will coordinate activities across business, technology, architecture, security, governance, and operational teams to ensure initiatives remain aligned, well-managed, and positioned for successful delivery.

This is not a traditional program-management role. The ideal candidate is a strong problem solver and operator who is comfortable moving between executive-level strategy and detailed execution, can independently drive work forward with limited direction, and thrives in an environment where problems are complex and the path forward is not always defined.

Key Responsibilities

• Strategy and Portfolio Support
• Lead structured analysis of AI priorities and emerging challenges, translating ambiguous problems into clear options, recommendations, and actions.
• Develop strategies, frameworks, business cases, and roadmaps to advance AI adoption, reuse, convergence, and scaling.
• Identify opportunities, gaps, overlaps, and dependencies across the AI portfolio and recommend actions to address them.
• Support cross-workstream priorities and rapidly structure and advance new initiatives as they emerge.
• Synthesize analysis and stakeholder input into clear points of view and executive-ready recommendations.

Workstream Leadership & Execution

• Lead an assigned AI workstream, translating strategic direction into clear deliverables, milestones, timelines, and actions.
• Drive workstream activities in collaboration with technical solution leads to identify and advance opportunities to reuse, consolidate, and standardize AI capabilities and components.
• Develop and maintain workplans, proactively drive activities forward, and coordinate stakeholders to deliver against priorities.
• Manage timelines, risks, issues, dependencies, decisions, and escalations, ensuring appropriate follow-up and resolution.
• Lead cross-functional working sessions to solve problems, make decisions, and advance deliverables.
• Monitor progress and outcomes, adapting plans as priorities, requirements, or constraints evolve.

Stakeholder Engagement & Executive Communications

• Build strong relationships across business, technology, architecture, security, governance, and other stakeholders.
• Facilitate workshops and working sessions that drive alignment, decisions, and tangible outputs.
• Develop executive presentations, decision materials, strategic updates, and recommendations for senior leadership.
• Translate complex technical and strategic topics into clear business language.
• Maintain transparency into priorities, progress, key decisions, risks, and outcomes.

Required Qualifications

• 3+ years of experience in management consulting, corporate strategy, technology strategy/transformation, product strategy, program leadership, or a similar role combining strategy and execution.
• Demonstrated program management experience, including managing workplans, timelines, risks, issues, dependencies, and cross-functional delivery.
• Demonstrated ability to structure ambiguous problems, conduct analysis, develop recommendations, and translate recommendations into action.
• Experience developing strategies, business cases, operating models, roadmaps, executive presentations, or similar strategic deliverables.
• Ability to operate at both the strategic and execution levels, shifting between defining what should be done and ensuring it gets done.
• Demonstrated bias toward action and ability to independently move work forward in ambiguous, fast-changing environments.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience supporting AI, automation, analytics, data, or digital transformation initiatives.
• Background in management consulting, internal consulting, corporate strategy, transformation, or a strategy & operations function.
• Familiarity with enterprise architecture, software delivery, data, cloud, cybersecurity, and technology-governance concepts.
• Familiarity with software or technology product lifecycle including adoption, governance, and implementation activities.
• Experience preparing executive presentations, dashboards, and status reporting.
• Experience facilitating Agile ceremonies and coordinating work across Agile teams; Agile, Scrum, SAFe, PMP, or related certifications are an asset but not required.

What’s in it for you

We’re honoured to be recognized as a 2026 Best Workplaces in Canada by Great Place to Work® Canada.

We are thrilled to be recognized by Excellence Canada with their top-level certification, the Canada Order of Excellence for Mental Health at Work®, for prioritizing employee well-being, fostering a positive work culture, and achieving excellence in mental health.

Wellness programs that support the three pillars of your health – mental, physical, and financial

The opportunity to move along a variety of career paths with amazing networking potential.

As a hybrid organization, you and your leader use business and Client needs to choose where you work, at home or in the office

The Base Pay range is for the primary location for which the job is posted. It may vary depending on the work location of the successful candidate or other factors. In addition to Base Pay, eligible Sun Life employees participate in various incentive plans, payment under which is discretionary and subject to individual and company performance. Certain sales focused roles have sales incentive plans based on individual or group sales results.

Diversity and inclusion have always been at the core of our values at Sun Life. A diverse workforce with wide perspectives and creative ideas benefits our Clients, the communities where we operate and all of us as colleagues. We welcome applications from qualified individuals from all backgrounds.

Persons with disabilities who need accommodation in the application process, or those needing job postings in an alternative format, may e-mail a request to [email protected].

We are proud to be a hybrid organization that offers our employees the choice and flexibility to work from both the office and virtually based on the needs of the business, our Clients and you.

We may use artificial intelligence to support candidate sourcing, screening, interview scheduling.

We thank all applicants for showing an interest in this position. Only those selected for an interview will be contacted.

Salary Range

100,000/100 000 - 143,000/143 000

Job Category

Project Management - Systems

Posting End Date

02/11/2026

Additional Locations: Toronto, Ontario