At Ontario Health, we are committed to developing a strong organizational culture that connects and inspires all team members across the province. Our vision is that together, we will be a leader in health and wellness for all. Our mission is to connect the health system to drive improved and equitable health outcomes, experiences and value. How we work together is reflected through our five values: integrity, inspiration, tenacity, humility and care.

What Ontario Health offers:  

Achieving your career goals is a priority to us. Benefits of working at Ontario Health may include the following based on employment type: 

Fully paid medical, dental and vision coverage from your first day
Health care spending account
Premium defined benefit pension plan
3 personal days and 2 float days annually
Individual contributors start at 3 weeks’ vacation, and 4 weeks at 2 yrs.
Career development opportunities
A collaborative values-based team culture
Wellness programs
A hybrid working model
Participation in Communities of Inclusion

Want to make a difference in your career?  Consider this opportunity.  

The Lead Network Architect contributes to the development, execution and maturing of Ontario Health’s enterprise architecture program. A strong collaborative working relationship with the leadership team across Digital Excellence in Health (DxH) as well across Ontario Health is essential. As a Lead Network Architect, you will play a leading role in ensuring that Ontario Health and partner solutions support the needs of the business. The Lead Network Architect looks at enterprise-wide solutions and is responsible for leading change initiatives for the organization. The Lead Network Architect will also be responsible for mentoring Architects and Senior Architects by elevating their scope of knowledge and breadth of aspects of solution architecture.

The Lead Network Architect will coordinate, direct, and design activities and provides guidance to project architect(s) throughout the project lifecycle. The Lead Network Architect develops, advocates, and champions Ontario Health’s Enterprise Architecture vision by providing architecture and solution design expertise and guidance internally, to local and province-wide health care organizations, and delivery partners to facilitate information sharing across the health sector in support of provincial mandates, organizational and health system goals. The Lead Network Architect leads large complex initiatives ensuring alignment between strategies, operational initiatives. The Lead Network Architect contributes, advocates for, and ensures alignment of complex, multi-organization stakeholder initiatives to Ontario Health’s enterprise architecture vision. The Lead Network Architect collaborates with program leadership to define goals and objectives for the program.

The Lead Network Architect is responsible for designing, implementing, and managing data communication networks that meet the organization’s needs. This role involves planning and designing network solutions, presenting network plans to management, overseeing the implementation process, and ensuring the security and compliance of the network infrastructure.

Here is what you will be doing:  

Responsible for creating architectures, roadmaps, and plans for the interconnection of multiple OH products and services in the context of Provincial system integrations and overall Provincial strategic objects.
Assists the managers set team direction and goals.
Contributes to provincial vision and overall architecture blueprints.
As a lead, coaches and mentors staff working on product and service architecture (e.g., OLIS, CDR, OneID).
Develops, maintains, and evolves relationships with external organizations and communities of practice toward the betterment of Ontario Health, Ontario, and Canada wide health system IT architecture practice.
Guides and influences portfolios and partners to align solutions to Ontario Health’s digital vision considering provincial, national, and international mandates.
Design and implement data communication networks, including LANs, WANs, and intranets.
Design network flow models to support target architectures.
Ensure the security of enterprise infrastructure and compliance with applicable security standards (PCI, PII, HIPPA).
Identify, design, and document network and security initiatives in support of Enterprise Network, Wi-Fi, Unified Communications, and Data Centre & Cloud solutions.
Manage information and network security, including the implementation of upgrades to hardware and software as needed.
Perform maintenance and repairs to network equipment.
Keep documentation of networks, including drawings, descriptions, and configurations.
Research network technologies and stay up to date on advancements in the field.
Evaluate costs and labour for networking and security appliance hardware.
Work with business units, application owners, operational teams, and executives to provide technical and business expertise.
Develop a strong zone interface security (FW/IDS/IPS, perimeter/edge defense) architecture and centralize firewall/ZIP management strategy.
Establish an information security strategy including packet/log/metadata analytics and event correlation.
Collaborates with, guides, and mentors senior, junior and peer architects by evaluating their breadth and scope of knowledge of solution architecture, the Healthcare domain, architecture patterns and best practices, supporting the practice of architecture and the development of solution architecture models and documentation.
Understands and translates tactical and operational business requirements into effective architectures and designs.
Take network operational challenges or network design deficiencies and update architecture models
Ability to look at network requirements and look for network solutions that integrates holistically,
Resolves business rules, information and application conflicts involving shared services, applications, and resources.
Develops architecture processes, procedures, templates, etc. and provides assistance to others.
Directs, trains, mentors and coaches transformation, customer value and product/service team members and functional experts to grow capabilities and key skills.
Promotes a culture of engagement that develops and motivates teams by fostering an inclusive work environment, collaboration, communicating architecture vision, and strategies.
Works with product/portfolio management, support roadmaps and architectural alignment to ensure delivery of project, product, portfolio objectives.
Maintains architecture service quality at the Product and Service Level within the specialty domain. (e.g., EHR, Identity Management, Infrastructure, Data).
Collaborates with, guides and mentors senior, junior and peer architects by elevating their breadth and scope of knowledge of solution architecture, the Healthcare domain, architecture patterns and best practices, supporting the practice of architecture and supporting the development of solution architecture models and documentation.
Leads project work in a domain and communicating and guiding consumers and project from assets business and technical aspects.
Develops visionary solutions, as well as the tactical approaches to deliver them, for complex provincial and regional initiatives that meet customer needs and timelines, while adhering to overall enterprise architecture vision and organizational business plans.
Reduces current and future costs across local, provincial and national initiatives by identifying misalignments, duplication of efforts, and other opportunities for improvement in the architecture and escalates, proposes and drives to delivery, practical, efficient and reusable solutions.
Consults on, advises, and influences provincial project planning by identifying architecturally significant cross-project and system dependencies to ensure target delivery dates are realistic and meet Ontarian’s expectations.
Reduces duplication of effort, cost overruns and impacts on timeline by identifying, championing, and influencing strategic and tactical business and IT opportunities; leads business and IT transformation initiatives to their realization; maximizes outcomes by balancing cost, quality and time to production.
Assesses and identifies cross-product gaps and opportunities for reuse and/or alignment, and advocates for solutions to address gaps with product owners maximizing reuse and alignment.
Builds sustainable, trusted relationships with stakeholders, partners, colleagues and superiors.
Acts as subject matter expert to internal stakeholders in specialized areas such as laboratories, digital identity, data, etc.
Acts as single point of contact for OH partners to support understanding the use and architecture of specific OH products and services.
Works with internal and external (regional, provincial) stakeholders to understand business needs across OH and their impact on specific products/portfolios.
Assists clients in defining non-functional requirements such as application and solution management, sharing and re-use.
Identifies and escalates issues and works with clients to ensure adherence to application management and quality standards.
Provides thought leadership across the OH business areas and the province.
Guides and influence project/product/portfolio teams to align and build with an eye to OH’s architectural vision and principles. Contributes to roadmaps and product vision. Provides alternative solutions and options for business and technical challenges. Identifies gaps, risks and dependencies in project/product/portfolio deliverables and roadmaps provide guidance for planning and delivery to address gaps and risks.
Works on provincial systems with many stakeholders and varied interests(interests (e.g., physicians, specialty care, community care, etc.).
Frequently engages with Ministry of Health peers and colleagues outside of OH.
Leads change within their domain/product/portfolio.
Directs and influences business and technical decisions and processes using knowledge of future vision and influencing and guiding solutions to align to enterprise vision and roadmaps.
Solves complex problems that span multiple assets and promotes architecture patterns and principles to ensure reusability, and maintainability.
Makes decisions where results have critical impact across the organization requiring sophisticated solutions and long-term correction.
Some additional work in late hours may be required to meet deadlines.

Here is what you will need to be successful:  

Education and Experience: 

Bachelor’s or master’s degree, or equivalent working experience in Information Technology is required.
Relevant certifications such as CCIE, CCNP, ITIL, AWS, CCDP, NSX, F5.
Extensive knowledge of network technologies and services, including security applications and cloud computing systems.
7 – 10 years in an IT environment as an Architect on a broad range of products/services/technology/health care domains.
Experience with data center architectures and network technologies.
Experience in recommending specific network models and use-cases.
Create roadmaps for each of the technologies with emphasis on lifecycle management.
Experience as a subject matter expert involved in day-to-day technical and business work, representing asset(s) in discussions for broader solutions, and guiding integration with/use of system/ domain.
Experience in network design, implementation, and automation.

Knowledge and Skills:

Ability to do cost analysis and prepare proposals with budgetary figures on network replacements.
Astute understanding of Ontario Health business, goals and mandate and how it applies to the provincial health care system.
Expert knowledge of Ontario Health, and the broader Ontario health care sector IT systems to ensure product dependencies are identified and managed.
Broad knowledge on a variety of architectural disciplines (such as Business, Application, Information, Infrastructure, Privacy and Security).
Broad knowledge of service management, control, and architecture frameworks such as ITIL, PMBOK, COBIT, Zachman, TOGAF, Rational, and/or Agile.
Broad knowledge of Legislative boundaries and privacy regulations unique to Ontario and Canada.
Broad knowledge of Complex geographical, multi-lingual and multi-equity considerations specific to Ontario.
Broad knowledge of patient safety considerations.
Broad knowledge of Public Sector procurement legislation, policies, and practices.
Knowledge of routing, switching, and security technologies.
Ability to manage and document network infrastructure components such as servers, routers, and switches.
Familiarity with network assessment and design tools.
Strong problem solving and analytical skills to identify gaps and opportunities within domains, sectors and/or solutions, and drive improvement and efficiency; create strategies to mitigate various types of business, privacy, security, and financial risks; define and drive alternative solutions to meet business and technical problems across teams, portfolios and products; influence provincial project planning by identifying architecturally significant cross-project and system dependencies.
Strong communications skills, both orally and writing, to engage with internal and external stakeholders to understand business needs: facilitate, negotiate, and communicate in support of internal and external partner engagement at the local, provincial level and delivering presentation material, designing documents and/or training material for both technical and non-technical audiences and drive to consensus between internal stakeholders with conflicting goals and priorities; communicate to internal and external executives, business domain stakeholders and technical staff.
Ability to understand disparate health IT systems’ place in the Health System and compare solutions and patterns to recommend/propose efficient and effective architectures and solutions.
Ability to work at a high level of autonomy in setting objectives based on minimal direction from management.
Ability to collaborate with internal peers and local programs to ensure alignment of architecture practices, patterns, and solutions.
Ability to stay current on business strategy and assess new trends with respect to Ontario Health’s business needs, and identify opportunities, impacts and transformations required to realize their value and assess their implications on the future state of specific products or portfolios.
Ability to stay abreast of provincial, national, and international business, technology, architecture and solution design trends.
Ability to work with internal and external (regional, provincial, national, international) stakeholders to understand business needs across OH and trends in IT across the broader health system as they relate to specific products or portfolios.
Ability to collaborate with external organizations both public and private (e.g., Government Organizations (e.g., Ministry of Health, Canada Health Infoway), Health Care Organizations (e.g., Health Care Providers, Hospitals Administrators etc.), Software Vendors (e.g., EMR Vendors, HIS vendors), Independent Health Facilities (Laboratories, Imaging Centres etc.) to ensure alignment of architecture practices, patterns and solutions.
Business focused and technically savvy with the ability to communicate to internal and external executives, business domain stakeholders and technical staff alike to build consensus and resolve both business and technical conflicts.
Ability to understand and translate strategic, tactical and operational business requirements into effective architectures and designs.
Ability to interpret and apply IT privacy and security standards, principles, and regulations applicable to the health care sector (such as FIPPA, PHIPA) in development of architecture solutions.
Ability to interpret and apply health information management principles to digital health care systems, and to leverage health care interoperability standards such as HL7 V2, or FHIR in development of architecture solutions.
Ability to work on, prioritize and deliver multiple projects/initiatives according to agreed-upon timelines amidst constantly changing priorities.
Ability to define requirements for, execute and participate in public sector fair procurement processes.
Ability to make decisions where results have a critical impact across the organization.
Emotional intelligence is required within and across portfolios.

Employment Type:   Permanent Full-time

Salary Band:   7

Location: Ontario (currently hybrid; subject to change)

All applicants must be a resident of Ontario to be considered for roles at Ontario Health.

Internal Application Deadline Date:   September 4, 2024

External Application Deadline Date: September 18, 2024

Ontario Health encourages applications from candidates who are First Nations, Métis, Inuit, and urban Indigenous; Francophone; Black and racialized; members of 2SLGBTQIA+ communities; trans and nonbinary; and disabled.  

We encourage applicants with accessibility needs to notify us if they have any accommodation needs in the application and/or interview process.  

Lead, Architect (Network) Permanent

Ontario Health

Job Overview