Director, Application Portfolio & Strategy at BDO Dunwoody · Toronto

Director, Application Portfolio & Strategy Location: Toronto - Wellington St Putting people first, every day BDO is a firm built on a foundation of positive relationships with our people and our clients. Each day, our professionals provide exceptional service, helping clients with advice and insight they can trust. In turn, we offer an award-winning environment that fosters a people-first culture with a high priority on your personal and professional growth. Your Opportunity The Director, Enterprise Application Portfolio & Strategy is a senior technology leadership role responsible for defining, governing, and evolving the firm’s application portfolio in support of business strategy and enterprise transformation. We're looking for you to be a strategic partner and an execution leader, translating business priorities into an actionable technology roadmap while also shaping the strategy through insight, influence, and strong market awareness. This role is responsible for application and product roadmaps, portfolio intake and prioritization, investment planning, modernization strategy, delivery governance, and value realization across the portfolio. The Director will be a trusted technology advisor to senior business stakeholders, sought out to help plan the firm’s technology direction, assess new opportunities, and guide decisions on enterprise platforms, transformation initiatives, and emerging capabilities, including AI. The successful candidate brings strong executive presence, deep enterprise technology knowledge, and proven experience leading teams and complex portfolios in a matrixed environment. This individual combines strategic thinking with execution discipline and can confidently lead conversations spanning business priorities, architecture direction, delivery risk, modernization, and long-term value creation. Key Responsibilities: Strategic Portfolio Leadership Own the application portfolio strategy and multi-year roadmap, aligning investments to business priorities, enterprise strategy, architecture direction, and delivery capacity. Partner with business leaders and peer technology leaders to identify, assess, prioritize, and sequence initiatives that drive measurable business value. Guide decisions on where to invest, modernize, simplify, rationalize, or retire application capabilities across the portfolio. Maintain an informed view of market trends, emerging technologies, and industry-leading practices to help shape the firm’s future technology direction. Business Partnership and Technology Advisory Serve as a trusted technology advisor to business leaders and senior stakeholders, helping shape technology priorities and long-term direction for the firm. Build strong relationships across the business and technology organization to ensure priorities, investments, and execution plans remain aligned. Translate business strategy into practical roadmaps, investment recommendations, and executable plans. Provide direction and recommendations on new technologies, enterprise platforms, and transformation initiatives to ensure the highest-value solutions are selected. Portfolio Governance and Prioritization Lead a clear, transparent intake and governance model for new initiatives, products, and enhancements. Align business demand, funding, capacity, and sequencing decisions to maximize value and support strategic outcomes. Maintain an integrated view of cross-portfolio dependencies across applications, data, platforms, vendors, and delivery teams. Drive disciplined prioritization and trade-off decisions based on value, risk, complexity, and enterprise impact. Technology Leadership and Delivery Oversight Provide leadership and accountability across the application portfolio from concept and business case through design, delivery, implementation, and adoption. Partner with architecture, engineering, security, data, operations, and delivery leaders to ensure solutions are scalable, secure, supportable, and aligned to enterprise standards. Bring sufficient technical depth to assess options, challenge assumptions, guide solution direction, and support strong delivery outcomes. Ensure effective release readiness, transition planning, and operational acceptance for solutions entering production. Modernization, Innovation, and AI Enablement Lead portfolio modernization strategies that improve platform health, reduce technical debt, and enable greater agility and business value. Identify and recommend practical uses of AI and automation to improve solution delivery speed, quality, insight, and user experience. Advise business stakeholders on emerging AI capabilities and other technologies, connecting innovation opportunities to real business outcomes, governance requirements, and risk considerations. Promote responsible adoption of AI-enabled tools and practices across the portfolio and delivery lifecycle. Own and evolve application and product roadmaps to support growth, simplification, modernization, and long-term platform health. Leadership and Influence Lead, coach, and develop a high-performing solution delivery team. Foster a culture of accountability, collaboration, continuous improvement, and partnership. Influence across a complex, matrixed environment through credibility, strong judgement, and relationship leadership. Provide clarity and momentum in ambiguous or changing environments, balancing strategic vision with practical execution. Value Realization and Performance Management Establish and monitor meaningful portfolio measures across value delivery, execution performance, application health, technical debt, risk, and capacity. Ensure initiatives have clear success measures and that benefits are tracked in partnership with business stakeholders after implementation. Use data and outcomes to improve prioritization, governance, investment decisions, and overall portfolio performance. How do we define success for your role? You demonstrate BDO's core values through all aspects of your work: Integrity, Respect and Collaboration You understand your client’s industry, challenges, and opportunities; clients describe you as positive, professional, and delivering high quality work You identify, recommend, and are focused on effective service delivery to your clients You share in an inclusive and engaging work environment that develops, retains and attracts talent You actively participate in the adoption of digital tools and strategies to drive an innovative workplace You grow your expertise through learning and professional development Your experience and education 10+ years of progressive leadership experience in technology, application delivery, portfolio management, digital transformation, or enterprise systems leadership roles. Demonstrated experience leading complex, cross-functional teams and delivering enterprise technology solutions in a matrixed environment. Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, Business Technology, or a related field; equivalent experience will be considered. Preferred Experience in professional services or similarly complex, relationship-driven environments. Experience with enterprise transformation, application modernization, and portfolio governance maturity. Experience with vendor and partner oversight. Familiarity with Agile, hybrid delivery models, DevSecOps, and modern governance practices. Relevant certifications such as PMP, SAFe, TOGAF, ITIL, Prosci, cloud, or product leadership certifications are considered an asset. Strong ability to influence strategy while also driving execution and measurable outcomes. Deep understanding of application portfolio management, modernization, lifecycle management, governance, integration, and enterprise delivery practices. Strong knowledge of modern technologies, including SaaS platforms, cloud-enabled solutions, APIs/integration, automation, data dependencies, and emerging AI capabilities. Experience influencing senior stakeholders and aligning cross-functional teams in a matrixed organization. Excellent communication, executive presence, and decision-making skills. Why BDO? Our people-first approach to talent has earned us a spot among Canada’s Top 100 Employers for 2026. This recognition is a milestone we’re thrilled to add to our collection of awards for both experienced and student talent experiences. Our firm is committed to providing an environment where you can be successful in the following ways: We enable you to engage with how we change and evolve, being a key contributor to the success and growth of BDO in Canada. We help you become a better professional within our services, industries, and markets with extensive opportunities for learning and development. We support your achievement of personal goals outside of the office and making an impact on your community. Giving back adds up: Where company meets community. BDO is actively involved in our communities by supporting local charity initiatives. We support staff with local and national events where you will be given the opportunity to contribute to your community. Total rewards that matter: We pay for performance with competitive total cash compensation that recognizes and rewards your contribution. We provide flexible benefits from day one, and a market leading personal time off policy. We are committed to supporting your overall wellness beyond working hours and provide reimbursement for wellness initiatives that fit your lifestyle. Everyone counts: We believe every employee should have the opportunity to participate and succeed. Through leadership by our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Leader, we are committed to a workplace culture of respect, inclusion, and diversity. We recognize and celebrate the valuable differences among each of us, including race, religious beliefs, physical or mental disabilities, age, place of origin, marital status, family status, gender or gender identity and sexual orientation. If you require accommodation to complete the application process, please contact us. Flexibility: All BDO personnel are expected to spend some of their time working in the office, at the client site, and virtually unless accommodations or alternative work arrangements are in place. Our model is a blended approach designed to support the flexible needs of our people, the firm and our clients. It’s about creating work experiences that meet everyone’s needs and providing flexibility to adjust when, where and how we work to meet the expectations of our role. Code of Conduct: Our Code of Conduct sets clear standards for how we conduct business. It reflects our shared values and commitments and includes guiding principles to help us make ethical decisions and maintain trust with each other, our clients, and the public. BDO may use artificial intelligence enabled tools to support certain aspects of the recruitment process. While these tools assist our teams, our use of AI does not replace human decision making, and all employment-related outcomes are made by BDO personnel. More information on BDO Canada’s Privacy Policy can be found here: Privacy Policy | BDO Canada Ready to make your mark at BDO? Click “Apply now” to send your up-to-date resume to one of our Talent Acquisition Specialists. To explore other opportunities at BDO, check out ourcareers page.