Senior Java Tech Lead Jobs in Kitchener, ON (NOW HIRING)

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.

Job Description:

The e-Business team in Application Operations Support (AOS) provides operations and support services to ensure reliability of IT applications to deliver seamless Digital experiences for our clients. Through innovation, continuous improvement, and collaboration, we strive to find new and better ways to bring value to Sun Life.

We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer who thrives in high-impact environments and brings 7+ years of Java application support, analysis, and development experience. In this role, you will play a key part in keeping critical systems reliable, scalable, secure, and resilient-especially when incidents arise. The ideal candidate is a calm, confident problem solver who can take ownership during production incidents, drive resolution, and collaborate effectively across Delivery, Infrastructure, and IT Operations.

What you will do?

Reliability Engineering

• Support highly available, fault-tolerant, and scalable systems.
• Define and track Service Level Indicators (SLIs), Service Level Objectives (SLOs), and error budgets to balance reliability and delivery speed.

Monitoring & Observability

• Implement end-to-end monitoring, logging, and alerting for applications and infrastructure.
• Proactively identify performance degradation, capacity risks, and reliability gaps.

Incident Management & Response

• Participate in on-call rotations and lead high-impact incident response for production issues.
• Participate in post-incident reviews and drive corrective and preventive actions.

Automation & Tooling

• Reduce operational work through automation of scaling, incident recovery, and routine tasks.
• Build internal tools and platforms to improve operational efficiency.
• Build telemetry to detect issues and implement self-healing to keep MTTR down

Release, Change & Capacity Management

• Partner with development teams on safe releases, rollbacks, and change validation.
• Perform capacity planning and performance tuning to support growth.

Collaboration & Enablement

• Work cross-functionally with product, engineering, security, and operations teams.
• Document systems, standards, and operational practices to promote shared ownership

What do you need to succeed:

• Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or equivalent discipline
• 3+ years with Incident Management Processes in IT operations
• 7+ years experience in:
  • Java, JavaScript & web development languages like HTML, XML, CSS
  • Java Enterprise Edition (J2EE)technologies such asServlet,JDBC andJSP
  • Spring framework
• 1+ years experience in:
  • ReactJS/ React.js -> Angular
  • Container technologies - Kubernetes, Docker
  • Web Security Knowledge (OWASP top 10)

Learn on the job:

• Web services and frameworks such as SOAP, REST API, Java APIs, JSON, Spring Boot
• Database technologies like SQL, Oracle, POSTGRES
• DevOps tools - Jenkins, Artifactory, Bitbucket/Git, Gradle, Maven, CDD, Ansible
• Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
• Exposure to Agile framework (Kanban, Scrum)
• Experience working with cloud hosted applications / servers on AWS.
• Exposure to team collaboration tools like Confluence, JIRA, Service Now, MS Teams
• Experience with Kafka and light car proxy
• Use of AI based tools to bring efficiency
• Knowledge of Middleware technologies such as WebSphere/WebLogic

Preferred Skills:

• Collaboration and teamwork
• Continuous learning mindset
• Familiar with AI Ops capabilities, experience developing / implementing AI based tools is an added advantage
• Ability to work in a dynamic environment with changing priorities
• Be able to lead/drive investigations involving a cross-functional team
• Strong analysis, debugging and problem-solving skills
• Ability to produce succinct reports on incident impact, root cause and follow-ups
• Solid written and verbal communication skills

Notes/Unique requirements:

• The role includes on-call and after-hours support on a team rotation basis.
• This role requires Canadian Enhanced Reliability Security clearance [a minimum of 5 years of consecutive residency in Canada].

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

This role requires Reliability Security Clearance. In addition to a law enforcement inquiry and a credit check, as part of your application, the Government of Canada will ask if you lived or travelled outside of Canada for 6-consecutive months during the last 5 years, and you must account for all activities during this time.

Must be able to satisfactorily complete applicable background checks prior to the start date and during employment, in accordance with Sun Life's policies and practices.

#LI-Hybrid #LI-remote

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 thebrightside@sunlife.com.

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.

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