Programming Director Jobs in Vancouver, BC (NOW HIRING)

IFS is a billion-dollar revenue company with 7000+ employees on all continents. Our leading AI technology is the backbone of our award-winning enterprise software solutions, enabling our customers to be their best when it really matters–at the Moment of Service™. Our commitment to internal AI adoption has allowed us to stay at the forefront of technological advancements, ensuring our colleagues can unlock their creativity and productivity, and our solutions are always cutting-edge.

At IFS, we’re flexible, we’re innovative, and we’re focused not only on how we can engage with our customers but on how we can make a real change and have a worldwide impact. We help solve some of society’s greatest challenges, fostering a better future through our agility, collaboration, and trust.

We celebrate diversity and understand our responsibility to reflect the diverse world we work in. We are committed to promoting an inclusive workforce that fully represents the many different cultures, backgrounds, and viewpoints of our customers, our partners, and our communities. As a truly international company serving people from around the globe, we realize that our success is tantamount to the respect we have for those different points of view.

By joining our team, you will have the opportunity to be part of a global, diverse environment; you will be joining a winning team with a commitment to sustainability; and a company where we get things done so that you can make a positive impact on the world.

We’re looking for innovative and original thinkers to work in an environment where you can #MakeYourMoment so that we can help others make theirs. With the power of our AI-driven solutions, we empower our team to change the status quo and make a real difference.

If you want to change the status quo, we’ll help you make your moment. Join Team Purple. Join IFS.

About the role

The Agentic Platform is the foundation layer of Copperleaf R&D. Everything the other two pillars ship, core product capability and AI-powered applications, runs on infrastructure, data, and services this team owns. As Director you will lead the pillar: five cells spanning cloud infrastructure, data platform, AI platform, extensions and integrations, and shared services.

This is one of the most strategic technical leadership positions in the company. The platform carries our Azure transition, our next-generation AI infrastructure, and the modernization of a product surface trusted by critical-infrastructure customers worldwide. You will report directly to the VP of R&D, and your decisions will set the ceiling on how fast the entire R&D organization can move.

What you'll do

• Lead the Engineering pillar. Own delivery, quality, and operations across the five cells. Hire, grow, and retain the managers and senior engineers who run them, and build the succession depth so no part of the platform depends on one person.
• Own the platform layers of the future architecture. In the target-state architecture the pillar owns the Platform Control Plane, the Platform Service Layer, and Deployment and Tenancy Options: shared capabilities certified once and consumed by every product, domain service, and agent, with tenancy models spanning dedicated and regulated, shared multi-tenant, and sovereign cloud.
• Finish the cloud transition. Complete the move to Azure, including the analytics platform on Microsoft Fabric, and retire legacy Windows-era infrastructure on a committed timeline.
• Industrialize our AI infrastructure. Take our new AI Agentic Platform from early adopter to production grade: multi-tenancy, compliance-ready pipelines, and the cloud-native foundation for the next generation of AI applications built across R&D.
• Automate the operation. Eliminate R&D-owned manual bottlenecks in provisioning, upgrades, and environment management. Get production support to a state where SLAs are met by design, and Tier 1 ownership can hand off cleanly to Unified Support.
• Scale extension migration. Drive the AI-powered migration of hundreds of customer extensions onto the modern platform, expanding the automated pipeline and closing the gaps it cannot yet handle.
• Run the platform as a product. Your customers are engineers, partners, and Tech Sales. Self-serve environments, a partner-facing API layer, and an emerging MCP surface are the roadmap. Treat internal adoption as the metric that matters.
• Shape the technical roadmap. Partner with the VP of R&D and our Senior Principal Architect on the 2027-2029 technology roadmap, and turn it into a sequenced plan the pillar delivers.

How you think about platform

We are looking for a leader whose operating instincts line up with how we build:

• Build it once at the platform. Identity, observability, security, compliance, CI/CD: certified once, consumed by every service.
• Incremental over big-bang. Every platform shift runs in production from week one. Evolution over revolution, with dates we commit to and hold.
• Automation over heroics. If the operation depends on someone's weekend, the platform isn't done. Manual toil is a backlog item, not a culture.
• Self-serve over ticket queues. A platform that requires your team in the loop for every request is a bottleneck with good intentions.
• AI-native by default. Our operating language is augmentation to delegation. Engineers work with agents, the platform provides the rails that make that fast and safe. Quality discipline survives AI-generated code: specs precede implementation, contracts precede integration.
• Decisions are explicit. Make the trade-offs visible: cost, risk, time-to-value, what we're giving up. Then commit.

What we're looking for

• Depth. 12+ years building and operating production software, with 5+ years leading platform, infrastructure, or cloud engineering organizations.
• Cloud at enterprise grade. You have run Azure and/or AWS platforms carrying enterprise SLAs, and you have owned the operational readiness story, not just the build.
• Data and AI credibility. Fluent in modern data platforms (Fabric, lakehouse architectures, embedded BI) and in running LLM-based systems in production: pipelines, evaluation, cost, and compliance.
• Delivery leadership. A track record of shipping committed scope on real dates across multiple teams, and of saying clearly what will not make the date.
• Talent magnet. Senior engineers choose to work for you, and leaders grow under you. You build teams that survive your own departure.
• Communication. You are equally credible walking an executive through a risk position and walking an engineer through a design review.

Nice to have

• Regulated industries. Enterprise software serving critical infrastructure, utilities, or similarly regulated customers.
• Legacy-to-cloud migrations. You have moved an installed enterprise product to cloud-native without breaking the customers running on it.
• Platform-as-product experience. You have run an internal platform with real adoption metrics, and you know the difference between mandated use and earned use.

How you'll work with us

You will partner with the VP of R&D on strategy, with the Senior Directors of the other two pillars on delivery, with our Senior Principal Architect on the technical roadmap, and with Product leadership on what the platform enables next. R&D operates on an AI-native model with clear proficiency expectations; you will be expected to lead it from the front.

Interested?

I'm particularly interested in hearing about a platform your engineers chose to build on, and what you did the day it became the bottleneck.

What We’re Offering

• Salary Range: $160,000 to $220,000 CAD annually + variable bonus
• Flexible paid time off, including sick and holiday
•  Medical, dental, & vision insurance
•  RRSP matching
•  Life insurance and disability benefits
•  Tuition assistance
•  Community involvement and volunteering events

Use of Artificial Intelligence in Recruitment
As part of our recruitment process, we may use automated tools, including artificial intelligence, to help screen and assess applications based on job‑related criteria such as skills, experience, and qualifications.
These tools do not make hiring decisions. All employment decisions are reviewed and made by members of our hiring team.

We embrace flexibility and hybrid work opportunities to support diverse needs and lifestyles, while also valuing inclusive workplace experiences. By fostering a sense of community, we drive innovation, strengthen connections, and nurture belonging. Our commitment ensures you can work in a way that suits you best, while also engaging with colleagues to share ideas and build meaningful relationships.