Lead Data Solution Architect, GWAM Asia

At Manulife, we're on a mission to transform technology into a strategic asset that accelerates value.

We are seeking an experienced Lead Data Solution Architect to lead the architecture and strategic design of data solutions for Global Wealth & Asset Management (GWAM) Asia. This is a hands-on, player-coach individual contributor role: you will own the development of the end-to-end data architecture roadmap across ingestion, curation, common data models, data products, and consumption, while personally designing solutions, building reference implementations, and reviewing code.

 

You will shape a multi-market target-state data platform across Asia, design governed data sharing between country, regional, and global layers, and help bring GenAI into production. You will guide cross-functional delivery teams in Manila and Chengdu and collaborate with business and technology stakeholders across Asia and North America to deliver data, reporting, analytics, and GenAI solutions.

 

The platform is built on a Databricks Lakehouse and Microsoft Azure, including Azure Data Factory, Azure Databricks, Azure Data Lake Storage, Databricks SQL Warehouse, and Microsoft Fabric/Power BI. Excellent written and spoken English is required; spoken Mandarin is desirable.

Position Responsibilities:

• Own the development and maintenance of the GWAM Asia data architecture roadmap, aligned with GWAM Asia priorities and enterprise technology strategy

• Architect scalable end-to-end solutions across integration, ingestion, curation, storage, common data models, semantic layers, reporting, analytics, GenAI, and business-facing data products.

• Translate business objectives into target-state architectures, solution options, data requirements, integration patterns, and phased roadmaps.

• Lead design reviews, provide technical sign-off, and guide cross-functional delivery teams in Manila and Chengdu.

• Define standards for data pipelines, lakehouse design, APIs, DevSecOps, observability, security, resilience, and operational support.

• Ensure enterprise and canonical data models designed with the Data Modeller fit the target architecture, and design Unity Catalog and role-based access control (RBAC) models that enforce least-privilege access.

• Ensure compliance with enterprise architecture, data governance, cybersecurity, risk, audit, and application performance standards.
• Maintain architecture artefacts and decision records, drive continuous improvement, and conduct focused proofs of concept for emerging technologies.

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, Data Management, or a related discipline.

• 10+ years of experience in data architecture, solution architecture, data engineering, or enterprise data platforms, including designing enterprise data lakes, lakehouse platforms, and scalable cloud data solutions with accountability for complex design decisions.

• Strong hands-on experience with Azure Databricks (including Unity Catalog), Spark/PySpark, Python, SQL, Azure Data Factory, and Azure Data Lake Storage.

• Experience with batch and streaming pipelines, ETL/ELT, APIs and cloud integration, reporting, analytics, and data products.

• Experience designing multi-country data platforms under data residency and privacy constraints, including RBAC models and least-privilege access across data products.

• Experience with DevSecOps, CI/CD, cloud security, data protection, monitoring, and operational resilience.

• Proven ability to lead design discussions, resolve complex issues, and influence senior business and technology stakeholders, with strong communication and prioritisation skills in a fast-changing environment.
  

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in financial services, wealth management, insurance, or asset management across Asia markets.

• Practical experience with Azure OpenAI and GenAI patterns, including prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), vectorisation, and similarity search.

• Experience with Databricks SQL Warehouse, Microsoft Fabric/Power BI, and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).

• Knowledge of data governance, metadata, master and reference data, data quality, lineage, data contracts, and control frameworks.

• Experience with data products, MLOps, event-driven patterns, Change Data Capture, or containerised architectures.

• Relevant Azure, Databricks, data architecture, GenAI, or Azure AI certifications.
  

When you join our team:

• We’ll empower you to learn and grow the career you want.
• We’ll recognize and support you in a flexible environment where well-being and inclusion are more than just words.
• As part of our global team, we’ll support you in shaping the future you want to see.

About Manulife and John Hancock

Manulife Financial Corporation is a leading international financial services provider, helping people make their decisions easier and lives better. To learn more about us, visit https://www.manulife.com/en/about/our-story.html.

Manulife is an Equal Opportunity Employer

At Manulife/John Hancock, we embrace our diversity. We strive to attract, develop and retain a workforce that is as diverse as the customers we serve and to foster an inclusive work environment that embraces the strength of cultures and individuals. We are committed to fair recruitment, retention, advancement and compensation, and we administer all of our practices and programs without discrimination on the basis of race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, religion or religious beliefs, creed, sex (including pregnancy and pregnancy-related conditions), sexual orientation, genetic characteristics, veteran status, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, family status, disability, or any other ground protected by applicable law.

It is our priority to remove barriers to provide equal access to employment. A Human Resources representative will work with applicants who request a reasonable accommodation during the application process. All information shared during the accommodation request process will be stored and used in a manner that is consistent with applicable laws and Manulife/John Hancock policies. To request a reasonable accommodation in the application process, contact [email protected].

Hybrid