Connor, Clark & Lunn Financial Group – Director, Artificial Intelligence

Toronto, ON / Montreal, QC / Vancouver, BC (Hybrid)

We are pleased to be supporting Connor, Clark & Lunn Financial Group (“CC&L; Financial Group”) in the search for a Director, Artificial Intelligence (the “Director”). This is a newly created leadership role that will be instrumental in defining the strategy for AI across the organization and its investment affiliates, working closely with teams across the group to bring solutions and products into production and deliver measurable business value.

This is a rare blank-canvas mandate: build CC&L; Financial Group’s enterprise AI function from the ground up, with scope across a partner-owned platform of investment affiliates. The Director will play an integral role in shaping the strategy, the operating model, and the team, working closely with teams across the group, and will drive the delivery of AI products into production and the business value they create. Few roles in Canadian asset management offer this combination of enterprise-wide influence, greenfield prospect, and the backing of an established, entrepreneurial firm.

About Connor, Clark & Lunn Financial Group

Connor, Clark & Lunn Financial Group is Canada’s largest and fastest growing privately owned asset management firm, providing a broad range of traditional and alternative investment products and services through a network of 15 affiliates and subsidiaries. With already more than $225 billion in assets under management, the organization combines the entrepreneurial strengths of its investment affiliates with the scale, operational expertise, and shared resources of a diversified enterprise.

As CC&L; Financial Group continues to advance its AI capabilities across the organization and its investment affiliates, the firm is seeking a senior leader to take a leading role in defining and executing the strategic direction, lead delivery, and set the technical standards and measured outcomes of AI adoption. This role will lead how artificial intelligence transforms investment operations, client service, and business functions, accountable for the solutions put into production and the benefits they deliver, while establishing a scalable foundation for long-term innovation and value creation.

The Opportunity

Reporting to the Managing Director, Investment Operations, the Director will serve as the firm's most senior AI leader and architect, partnering with Managing Directors, business leaders, and investment affiliates to identify, prioritize, and deliver transformative AI initiatives. The Director will establish the architectural and solutioning standards for AI delivery, continuously uplift enterprise AI governance, and build the function through hiring, team development, and operating model design.





This is a unique opportunity to lead – and be accountable for – enterprise-wide transformation at a leading asset management organization while driving the practical application of AI across investment, operations, compliance, and distribution functions.

Key Responsibilities

- Develop and own the strategic roadmap for AI across CC&L; Financial Group and its affiliates, identifying and committing to high-impact opportunities, driving executive alignment, and holding accountability for priorities, delivery, and measured outcomes.
- Partner with Director and Managing Director-level stakeholders to turn AI into committed, measurable value across investment, operations, compliance, and distribution – generating both a top-down push and a bottom-up pull of use cases across the group and its affiliates.
- Serve as a hands-on leader of the firm’s applied AI initiatives, personally driving delivery alongside the team and shaping the organization’s approach to AI adoption, engineering, and innovation.
- Develop the target architectures for AI solutions, approve solution designs, and enforce architectural and solutioning standards across areas including retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), agentic systems, evaluation frameworks, observability, safety, and cost management – and ensure they are implemented and hold in production.
- Own AI security and data protection – accountable for defending AI systems, data, and endpoints against AI-specific threats (prompt injection, adversarial inputs, data leakage, and model theft or poisoning), and for preventing exposure of confidential or client data through AI tools.
- Own AI risk, safety, and responsible-AI controls across the lifecycle – model-risk management and monitoring (drift, degradation, misuse), human oversight, incident response and fallback for high-stakes decisions, and bias, explainability, privacy, and regulatory compliance.
- Own AI use-case intake, triage, and prioritization, operating a Red/Amber/Green governance model that classifies use cases by risk and readiness, making the final call on scope and sequencing, and setting the right pace at the group level and within each affiliate.
- Own the AI delivery operating model end-to-end – capacity planning, quality controls, demand visibility, and accountability from intake through production release and measured benefit realization.
- Make the hub-and-spoke operating model work in practice – setting standards, cadence,



and expectations at the group level while driving the right behaviors, adoption, and pace within each affiliate.
- Own the results: success in this role is measured by the AI solutions and products put into production and the independently measured business benefits they deliver – not by activity alone.
- Lead recruitment efforts for the AI function, including Solution Engineers, Solution Architects, and MLOps professionals, while shaping a culture focused on rigor, curiosity, and business impact.
- Drive ongoing research and development initiatives by evaluating emerging models and frameworks, conducting targeted experimentation, and translating findings into shipped capabilities and measurable production improvements.

Skills and Qualifications

- Demonstrated experience defining and executing AI or technology transformation strategy at the enterprise level – and hands-on accountability for the delivered outcomes, not only the strategy.
- Proven track record engaging C-suite, Managing Director, or Director-level stakeholders on technology-enabled business transformation as a strategic peer and hands-on delivery partner.
- Experience building and leading AI or advanced analytics functions, including hiring, scaling teams, governance development, and organizational integration.
- Ability to translate sophisticated AI concepts into clear business language, investment theses, and risk frameworks for senior leadership audiences.
- Deep working knowledge of production large language model (LLM) systems, including RAG architectures, agentic frameworks, evaluation pipelines, and enterprise deployment models.
- Familiarity with enterprise AI platforms, including Azure OpenAI, Google Vertex AI, and Anthropic API, as well as the associated security, cost, and performance considerations.
- Strong understanding of prompt engineering, retrieval strategies, vector databases, and MLOps practices, with the ability to direct architecture decisions and provide credible technical leadership to senior engineering teams.
- Strong engineering foundation with the ability to evaluate solution architectures , direct technical decisions, and lead senior engineering teams.
- Financial services or other regulated industry experience required, with demonstrated accountability for AI security, data protection, model risk, controls, auditability, and regulatory compliance.
- Asset management, investment operations, or capital markets experience strongly preferred.
- Experience operating within multi-affiliate, federated, or holding-company business models is considered a significant asset.
- Demonstrated leadership presence, strong judgment, and a bias for delivery – able to lead and be accountable in complex organizations through strategic thinking, technical credibility, business acumen, and ownership of outcomes.

📌 Director, Artificial Intelligence (Toronto)
🏢 GlassRatner
📍 Toronto