Technical Architect

Join us in enabling trade through Canada's largest port

The Vancouver Fraser Port Authority is an arm's-length federal agency responsible for the shared stewardship of the lands and waters that make up the Port of Vancouver, Canada's largest port. Our mandate, as outlined in the Canada Marine Act, is to enable Canada's trade objectives on behalf of all Canadians, ensuring the safe movement of goods through the Port of Vancouver while protecting the environment and considering local communities.

As an organization with a significant impact on communities and businesses across Canada, the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority is dedicated to diversity, inclusion, and sustainability. We strive to create a workplace that mirrors the richness of our community, empowering all employees to achieve their full potential.

The Technical Architect works closely with IS teams and stakeholders to define and govern information technology architecture standards and decisions for applications, integrations, and digital platforms. This position works closely with Manager, IT Platform Engineering to drive the definition and maintenance of architecture designs, integration patterns, and technical standards, translating project and platform requirements into clear, implementable technical direction. As a key technical resource, the Technical Architect owns architecture decisions across platforms and the integration lifecycle, including defining technical requirements, producing architecture decision records and specifications, and providing implementation oversight and ongoing stewardship.

Conduct research and analysis to evaluate technologies, platforms and integration approaches against IS architecture standards and project requirements.

• Explore and recommend frameworks, platforms and technical stacks; assess fit against technical architecture standards and IS platform portfolio
• Act as a primary owner in the Information Services team for technology planning and participate in the internal projects planning process
• Identify and implement improvements to address technical debt, enhance integrations, and improve platform reliability through effective leadership and collaboration
• Lead the identification and validation of business and technical needs with internal and external stakeholders, and own the creation of technology specifications and requirements
• Translate business and project requirements into implementable technical specification, converting objectives into concrete architecture designs and specifications for delivery teams
• Ensure platform coherence across IS‑governed environments by designing solutions that are connected, reusable, and integrated into the broader VFPA technology ecosystem, avoiding isolated point solutions
• Provide architecture oversight across the full scope of IS‑governed technology work: enterprise application implementations, IT infrastructure and field technology projects (IoT, cameras, gate control, OT/IT systems), data integration initiatives, platform version upgrades (e.g. major platform releases and service changes), and custom development projects
• Produce and maintain architecture decision records (ADRs), solution design documents, and integration diagrams that serve as the authoritative technical reference for IS platforms and projects; use these artifacts to drive alignment sessions across IS teams
• Provide technical leadership as it relates to developing strategy, scalability, performance, architecture and overall high‑level design to ensure solution quality
• Technology solution owner during the implementation phase
• Champion the adoption of reusable architecture assets to improve efficiency
• Own the roadmap for AI infrastructure, tools, and platforms (in coordination with other IS teams for AI productivity and governance); define technical standards for safe and consistent AI adoption across IS
• Architect and coordinate implementation of purpose‑built AI products, integrations, and complex agent‑based solutions
• Own agent orchestration, runtime environments, deployment pipelines, CI/CD for agents, and API patterns
• Enforce runtime safety controls: sandboxing, rate limiting, human‑in‑loop…