Sr. Specialist, SRE – Compute Platforms – Canadian Tire – Toronto, ON

Canadian Tire Corporation is one of Canada’s most admired and trusted companies — and their enterprise technology team is growing. Based in Toronto, Ontario (or Calgary, Alberta), this Sr. Specialist, SRE – Compute Platforms role is a senior technical leadership position at the heart of CTC’s critical infrastructure. If you have deep expertise in enterprise compute platforms, Site Reliability Engineering, and vendor governance, this is a high-impact opportunity that puts you in the driver’s seat for platform accountability across a national enterprise.

This isn’t a hands-on administration role — it’s a strategic governance and technical ownership position. You’ll serve as the enterprise authority over CTC’s IBM Mainframe (z/OS), AIX, IBM iSeries, IBM NOI, and New Relic platforms, while managing relationships with managed service providers like HCL/Harmony and driving observability maturity, lifecycle strategy, and operational excellence across the compute environment.

About the Role: Sr. Specialist, SRE – Compute Platforms

As the enterprise technical owner for compute platforms, your mandate spans mainframe lifecycle governance, observability strategy, managed service oversight, and continuous improvement. You’ll define platform roadmaps, lead vendor performance reviews, govern disaster recovery readiness, and act as the internal authority for reliability outcomes across business-critical services. Operational execution is handled by managed service providers — your role is to provide strategic direction, governance, and accountability to ensure those services meet enterprise standards and business requirements.

Collaboration is central to this position. You’ll work across engineering, risk, vendor, and business stakeholder groups — translating technical risk into clear operational and business impact, leading escalations during major incidents, and championing SRE principles, automation, and platform sustainability. The role also carries audit and compliance responsibilities, including support for backup and recovery controls, DR governance, and infrastructure lifecycle management.

Benefits and Salary

Canadian Tire offers a broadband salary range of $64,000 – $106,000, with a typical hiring range between $64,000 and $85,000. Final compensation is influenced by experience, internal equity, and market conditions. In addition to competitive pay, the company provides comprehensive benefits and retirement programs, performance incentives, continuing education programs, career growth opportunities, and product discounts, along with other perks to support your well-being. This is a hybrid role, requiring four days per week in-office in Toronto or Calgary.

Responsibilities

This role spans four core areas: mainframe platform ownership, observability governance, managed service oversight, and continuous improvement. Day-to-day, you’ll be providing governance direction, leading vendor reviews, overseeing recovery readiness, and ensuring platform documentation and controls meet enterprise standards — all while influencing the long-term technical strategy of CTC’s compute environment.

• Govern HCL/Harmony-delivered Mainframe services, including z/OS lifecycle planning, platform currency, LPAR governance, and capacity strategy
• Assess platform, OS, middleware, and application versions to identify lifecycle, security, and compliance risks and develop renewal and modernization strategies
• Lead platform lifecycle activities such as hardware refresh planning, OS upgrade strategy, and maintenance governance
• Define and govern monitoring and observability requirements for Mainframe infrastructure and business-critical services
• Drive continuous improvement of observability maturity, alert quality, event correlation, and service health dashboards
• Validate vendor-delivered services against contractual obligations, SOW commitments, SLA expectations, and operational controls
• Lead vendor performance reviews, operational scorecards, and incident follow-up activities
• Oversee disaster recovery readiness, resiliency planning, recovery testing, and recovery capability validation delivered by managed service providers
• Support audit, compliance, and control activities related to backup, recovery, DR, monitoring controls, and infrastructure lifecycle management
• Serve as the primary technical escalation and governance authority for Mainframe-related risks, service concerns, and vendor performance matters

Requirements / Skills

The ideal candidate brings a strong mix of enterprise platform governance experience and SRE principles, with the communication skills to hold vendors accountable and influence technical direction across complex stakeholder groups. Canadian Tire values individuals who can translate technical risk into business impact and drive accountability without direct operational authority.

• 10+ years of experience in platform ownership, infrastructure governance, SRE, service management, or enterprise technology leadership
• Strong mainframe background, including z/OS environments, lifecycle planning, capacity management, and vendor-managed support models
• Experience governing enterprise monitoring and observability practices across large-scale technology environments
• Knowledge of AIX, IBM iSeries, enterprise middleware, and application hosting environments supporting business-critical workloads
• Experience with MSP-governed or vendor-managed service environments, including SOW governance and SLA management
• Strong incident, problem, and change management process understanding with demonstrated ability to lead technical escalations
• Excellent communication skills with proven ability to influence technical direction and drive accountability across diverse stakeholder groups

How to Apply

To apply for this Sr. Specialist, SRE – Compute Platforms position at Canadian Tire, use the official application link below. Make sure your resume is up to date and reflects your governance and platform ownership experience before submitting.

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