Salary: The minimum salary is $200,000 and will be adjusted based on the candidate's experience, skills, and qualifications to ensure fair and competitive compensation.

The Vital real-time health data for Trials, Artificial Intelligence and a Learning Health System (VITAL) platform is a federally funded, secure, high-performance computing environment being developed in Ontario, Quebec and Alberta that will allow hospital data to be collected every 24 hours, linked, deidentified, and accessed by researchers through a unified portal. VITAL expands upon the GEMINI platform at Unity Health Toronto, which is a collaborative data and analytics platform that allows 35+ Ontario hospitals to accelerate research and quality improvement, leading to excellent hospital care. VITAL is accelerating the vision of bringing together near real-time health data for 20 million Canadians in one place for research and innovation to improve the healthcare system and advance the Canadian economy.

The VITAL team is seeking an experienced data platform Architect, with a dual focus on data and platform architecture, for a 2-year contract with a possibility of extension or conversion to permanent. This specialist will oversee the design and initial deployment of the VITAL architecture within and across participating provinces of Ontario, Alberta and Quebec. The main responsibilities of the Architect include: leading the technical requirements gathering, identification and assessment of software and hardware solutions, development of detailed architecture plans, procurement and vendor management, development of an implementation roadmap, stakeholder engagement, and initial project implementation.

The Architect will play an integral expert role, working with VITAL and GEMINI Directors and directly advising the Platform Co-Leads, Dr. Amol Verma and Dr. Fahad Razak. This will include liaising with various departments at Unity Health Toronto – which houses VITAL – and across VITAL’s collaborating institutions and hospitals, driving operational excellence. This will be a challenging, rewarding, and fast-paced environment with interaction across disciplines including data and IT professionals in the public and private sector, hospital leaders, policymakers, clinicians, and researchers. The ideal candidate will possess exceptional understanding of health data systems and computing technologies, and excellent communication skills, inter-institutional stakeholder management, initiative and resourcefulness, and honed project management skills. The position will offer schedule flexibility, a hybrid virtual and in-person work environment, and opportunities for professional development.

Duties And Responsibilities Development of VITAL’s Technical Roadmap

• Oversee technical requirements gathering to enable VITAL’s vision and objectives in line with industry-leading practices and data governance policies;
• Collaborate with data engineers, modelers, scientists and end users to understand business or industry requirements;
• Lead assessment of existing data architecture and recommend strategies to align new technologies;
• Perform in-depth research to understand technical solutions to meet these requirements, making recommendations on viable options to pursue (including third-party or in-house development) for sustainable operations;
• Document, communicate, and disseminate architecture artifacts throughout development to diverse audiences to achieve engagement and buy-in;
• Design and propose enterprise architecture for VITAL’s provincial and central data platforms, ensuring that interoperability, data lifecycle, technological risks and organizational readiness are addressed in the technical architecture plans; prepare detailed implementation plan, inclusive of timelines and required resources;
• Lead the drafting of RFP and technical specification documentation; oversee engagement, negotiation and management of technical vendors.

Initial Implementation of VITAL Infrastructure

• In collaboration with VITAL and GEMINI leadership, advise on the makeup of a technical team to build the VITAL platform.
• In collaboration with GEMINI’s Director of Data Science & Innovation, oversee and coordinate the initial deployment of near real-time data collection, exchange, and integration pipelines across Ontario into a central analytic environment.
• Coordinate with similar implementations in other provinces, beginning with Alberta and Quebec, ensuring interoperability.
• Oversee the implementation of enterprise architecture to connect VITAL’s provincial and central data platforms.
• Contribute to the design and architecture of VITAL’s computing centres, in collaboration with IT leads at data centre host sites.

Administration, Planning, and Communications

• Provide technical knowledge transfer and mentorship to other colleagues;
• Act as the key representative for VITAL on committees and other project related initiatives;
• Lead external/internal quality assurance audits and planning, in collaboration with VITAL and GEMINI collaborators;
• Prepare budgets, reports and lead presentations on proposals;
• Lead the preparation of procurement requirements for infrastructure acquisitions and oversee procurement evaluation.

Issue Resolution and Risk Mitigation

• Working with VITAL team to identify project bottlenecks and implement necessary optimizations;
• Lead the development of UAT protocols; oversee testing and incorporation into project plans;
• Ensure alignment with relevant cybersecurity and privacy standards, and coordinate third-party audits of infrastructure and advise on the remediation of vulnerabilities.
• Perform in depth analysis, development and implementation of various disaster recovery methodologies and high availability techniques;
• Work with Unity Health Toronto and GEMINI’s IT leaders in the development of database utilization policies, procedures, security, backup, and recovery;
• Forecast growth for advanced digital infrastructure and plan for scalability;
• Evaluate software and hardware requirements and recommend upgrades as needed;
• Participate fully in the identification and selection of appropriate project staff to meet deliverables.

Qualifications

• Master’s degree in computer engineering, computer science, bioinformatics, or equivalent experience; PhD an asset;
• Minimum 7 years of health data experience, including strong experience with data management, data governance, data integration, data analytics, data science, data engineering, IT systems as well as clinical and operational workflows;
• Advanced technical skills to provide expert oversight of specific functional area(s) and related systems, including experience in a data and/or system architect role; experience with large scale database implementation and operations preferred;
• Advanced knowledge with high performance computing environments, complex technical operations and software development principles in an open source framework;
• Experience with cloud services, such as Google Cloud Platform, AWS, Azure;
• Demonstrated experience working with technical vendors during implementation of complex systems (enterprise warehouse systems, hospital information systems, etc.);
• Experience with ETL tools and integrating source systems into data warehouses;
• Broad understanding and experience of data science, including data modeling and data management, analytical tools, languages, or libraries (e.g. R, python); working knowledge of federated data systems an asset;
• Demonstrated experience in eliciting and documenting complex business and system requirements across diverse stakeholders;
• Demonstrated experience in facilitation, collaboration and negotiation with multiple stakeholders/service providers;
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills with the ability to communicate information/ideas, in a manner that is easily understood by others;
• Excellent customer service, interpersonal and listening skills with the ability to effectively interact with staff all levels;
• Excellent problem recognition and problem solving skills;
• Excellent organizational and time management skills with the ability to deal with situations where information is difficult to obtain, complex or ambiguous.

Unity Health Toronto is committed to creating an accessible and inclusive organization. We strive to provide a recruitment process that is barrier-free and in compliance with the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) and the Ontario Human Rights Code. We understand that you may require an accommodation at any stage of the recruitment process. When you are contacted, please inform the Talent Acquisition Specialist and we will work with you to meet your accommodation needs. We want to emphasize that all accommodation requests are handled with the utmost confidentiality, respecting your privacy and dignity.