Associate Director, Pension Data Operations & Governance

Job description

OUR COMPANY BACKGROUND & CULTURE UPP is the first pension plan of its kind in Ontario’s university sector, proudly serving over 46,000 members across six universities and nineteen sector organizations. Our purpose is to bring greater retirement peace of mind to the university sector by investing with integrity and serving members with care. As a sector-wide plan designed for growth, our doors are open to all Ontario universities. We’re a team of progressive thinkers and agile doers operating within a fast-paced culture of collaboration and respect. We believe in bringing smart and capable people together to create, solve, and grow with a clear shared vision and values of integrity, inclusivity, ingenuity, and impact. We’ve built and nurtured a culture that is intentionally welcoming and purposefully rooted in equity, diversity, inclusion, and reconciliation (EDI&R). We believe diverse teams, perspectives, and lived experiences contribute to better decisions and a better workplace. As UPP celebrates its fifth anniversary, we’re proud to be recognized for our efforts: • 2026 Greater Toronto’s Top 100 Employers • 2026 Canadian HR Award for Excellence in Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging Join us in building a bright future for our members, our organization, and each other. THE ROLE This is an exciting opportunity for an exceptional individual to join a team of high performing professionals and make a significant impact. As UPP builds its engagement model and implements a new Pension Administration Solution, the Associate Director, Pension Operations will play a dedicated role in engaging with the project team to build the go forward member and employer service experience and build out training strategy and artifacts. Once the project is complete, they will then transition to lead the teams accountable for service delivery. Reporting to the Managing Director, Service Experience will build strong trusted relationships and communicate effectively with UPP’s members and employers in the support and development of UPP’s Pension services. This role will lead three lines of business: Member Transactions, pension payroll and Data, Reporting and Analytics. The role will provide leadership for pension data operations and governance, ensuring pension data is treated as a strategic asset with clear ownership, defined quality standards, effective controls, and transparent reporting across member, employer, payroll, actuarial, finance, technology, and regulatory processes. In support of the Managing Director, Service Experience, this position will have a role in helping UPP meet our own strategic imperative to deliver world-class services to our members and employers. This role is based in downtown Toronto under a hybrid work policy, allowing employees the flexibility to work remotely and in-office (approximately two days per week in-office). This job is for an existing vacancy. SPECIFIC ACCOUNTABILITIES Pension Data Governance Leadership • Establish and operationalize a pension data governance framework with clear accountabilities, data standards, data definitions, business rules, lineage, and critical data elements required to support accurate member records, contributions, service, earnings, calculations, payroll, reporting, and regulatory obligations. • Lead pension data quality management across key dimensions including accuracy, completeness, consistency, timeliness, reliability, relevance, access, coherence, and interpretability, with measurable thresholds, monitoring routines, issue management, and escalation protocols. • Build and oversee data controls for inbound employer data, member events, pension calculations, payroll interfaces, system conversions, reconciliations, reporting extracts, and downstream data uses. • Lead root-cause analysis and remediation of pension data issues, ensuring defects are prioritized based on member impact, financial risk, regulatory exposure, operational risk, and employer experience. • Develop governance routines, dashboards, and reporting that provide senior leadership and Board-level visibility into data quality, data risks, remediation progress, unresolved exceptions, and emerging trends. • Partner with Pension Operations, Employer Experience, Member Experience, Technology, Finance, Actuarial, Legal, Privacy, and Risk teams to ensure data governance practices support plan administration, member outcomes, compliance, and service excellence. • Champion a culture of data accountability by creating practical guidance, training, issue resolution routines, and continuous improvement practices that strengthen trust in pension data across the organization. • Act as a subject-matter expert of UPP plan provisions and calculation rules • Instill a service mindset in team members • Develop an expert internal team to build UPP’s member service offering and intellectual capital base • Exhibit an ability to listen, negotiate and communicate goals; share knowledge, experience, and responsibility with the team to achieve the highest standards of professionalism • Contribute to UPP’s reputation as a respectful employer, partner, and participant in the financial sector • Other projects and activities, as required QUALIFICATIONS & EXPERIENCE • Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration or other related disciplines • Possessing an MBA, C EBS, PPAC or any other relevant professional designation would be an asset • 10+ years of progressive experience in pensions • Build strong cross-functional relationships • Demonstrated success working in a hands-on multi-faceted stakeholder environment • Ability to aspire confidence in a broad range of constituencies through a proactive, respectful, and accessible communication style • Demonstrated experience designing or operating data governance, data quality, data stewardship, or data management practices in a pension, financial services, insurance, benefits administration, or similarly regulated environment. • Strong understanding of how pension data supports contribution processing, service and earnings records, benefit calculations, payroll, actuarial valuations, financial controls, member communications, employer reporting, and regulatory filings. • Experience establishing data quality metrics, controls, reconciliations, issue logs, remediation plans, service-level expectations, and governance reporting for operational data sets. • Ability to translate complex data issues into clear business impacts, risk assessments, decision points, and executive-ready recommendations. ATTRIBUTES • High degree of self-motivation and professionalism • Ability to prioritize and manage multiple client streams in a time sensitive manner • Excellent relationship building and conflict resolution skills • Demonstrated leadership abilities • Excellent interpersonal and verbal communication skills • A collaborative approach to understand and respond to organizational needs and partner with various organizational teams • High degree of professional ethics and integrity • Strong commercial and strategic judgment EXPECTED COMPENSATION The expected compensation for this role is a combination of base salary and variable incentive. You may also be eligible for a variable incentive depending on organizational, divisional and personal performance. The final total compensation offered will vary depending on your skills, experience and other factors. LIFE AT UPP Do work that matters. We are duty-bound to serve our members’ interests, and it’s a responsibility we don’t take lightly. That’s why we’ve ingrained sustainability in our work from day one—to ensure our members have a resilient future to retire into, both today and for generations to come. Stronger together. Collaboration is how UPP was born, and it’s how we work with each other and our partners day in, day out. No one at UPP is just a number (even if they are excellent at math) and every win is a shared win. Grow every day. You’ll have the opportunity to work on unique, once-in-a-career projects that maximize your skill set and probably teach you some new ones—at any stage in your career. Prioritize wellness. At UPP, wellness takes many forms. Ultimately, it’s about ensuring our people are cared for in the ways that matter to them. Check out some highlights of our inclusive employee-focused benefits program including: • Defined benefit pension plan • Flexible hybrid work model • Paid time off – vacations, personal days and wellness days • Work remotely up to eight weeks/year • Comprehensive group benefits including medical, dental, vision, etc. • Extended paramedical and mental health service coverage • Health care and lifestyle spending accounts • Fertility treatments, paid parental leave, and gender affirmation coverage • Education Assistance program This posting will remain open for a minimum of seven (7) days and will remain open until a sufficient number of qualified applications are received or finalist candidates have been identified. Artificial intelligence (AI) tools may be used to support certain stages of the recruitment process, including sourcing, screening, and assessment. All hiring decisions involve human review and intervention by UPP employees. UPP enthusiastically welcomes applications from all qualified applicants and especially invites people with lived experience as an Indigenous person, a person with a disability or as a member of another Human Rights Code protected group that faces barriers to employment to apply. Our goal is to create a barrier-free experience for every candidate throughout the recruitment process. UPP respects your privacy. For information on how UPP handles the personal information you provide during the application process, please see our Job Applicant Privacy Statement.