Who is Paul Dally (And What The Heck is a Distinguished Architect)?

Who is Paul Dally?

I’m a bit of a geek (ok, maybe a lot of a geek), and I’m ok with that. In my personal time, my interests include technology, brewing and winemaking, cooking, apiculture and mountain biking (although it has been too long since I’ve been out on the trails… sigh). I live with my family in Canada.

I work in IT for a financial services company (Sun Life) as leader of our IT Foundational Platforms Architecture team, which covers areas like application hosting platforms, cloud, server, network, security, contact center, document processing and content management, quality engineering and event and performance management, employee experience and collaboration and IT service management.

Overall, I love my job! I work with many great people, but we can always benefit from more great people. Sun Life is often hiring, in a number of different countries around the world. If what I write is interesting to you, then you just may be exactly the kind of person that Sun Life is looking for. I invite you to explore the opportunities available.

I should stress, however, that the opinions expressed in all of my Medium articles are my own, and not necessarily those of my employer.

I’ll also note that at least at present I am not a member of the Medium Partner Program. Nothing wrong with it, but I already have a job. Since I write about topics that intersect with my job, to accept payment from another source seems like a conflict of interest. There are no referral links. No sponsorships or side deals with product vendors. I am not trying to make profit from anything that is written here — the only reason that I post anything is because that I believe that it will help at least someone else out there.

I swear, this is not a mugshot

What is a Distinguished Architect?

Let’s get this out of the way first… Until recently, Distinguished Architect really was my formal job title — I’m not being pretentious... I hope not, at least! I put my pants on one leg at a time. And unlike Christopher Walken’s early-2000s turn on SNL when my pants are on, I don’t even make gold records… :)

I’m just a former developer, who very much enjoys diving deep into the technical aspects of application infrastructure and who loves problem solving. I’ve been extremely fortunate to have been in roles that have provided me the luxury of indulging this inclination.

Any success I’ve had has been on the shoulders of those I’ve worked with. I have learned so much from a huge number of people I’ve worked with over the years, and I do my best to pay that forward. I love mentoring, I love consulting and working with people, but I can’t imagine a work-life where I wasn’t getting my hands (very) dirty, technically speaking. While I recently accepted a people-management role, that hasn’t always been my cup of tea.

Even though Sun Life is a financial services company, they feel it is important to provide a career path for those technical folks who don’t wish to take a people-management career track. At Sun Life, the Distinguished Architect honorific (and the related Distinguished Engineer honorific) is for highly technical roles, recognizing employees who are solving our most challenging technical issues without forcing them into people management positions for career advancement.

A Distinguished Architect is an AVP-level (or above) employee who meets multiple of the following criteria:

• Has broad business application knowledge integrating API’s, Data and Cloud components. Breadth of knowledge spans multiple business areas.
• Is viewed as the “go-to” person internally on issues of significant application and/or infrastructure complexity.
• Accountable for the overall architecture for a large complex portfolio of business applications or infrastructure services spanning multiple business areas.
• Generates solution breakthroughs by understanding multiple technology dependencies in our highly integrated environment
• Is recognized and known across Sun Life geographies or externally for their thought leadership and knowledge; may speak at conferences, write for journals or be interviewed for subject matter expertise by those outside Sun Life.
• Strong team player and mentor; makes others better.
• 16–20+ years total career experience (not necessarily just at Sun Life). A strong external candidate could be hired directly into a Distinguished Architect (or Engineer) role based on their experience elsewhere
• Has been nominated for the Distinguished Architect appointment by an executive sponsor and approved by the Digital Business and Technology Solutions executive team
• Has an established external brand

If this sounds like you, or sounds like how you would like to see your career move forward, let’s talk!

You can also follow me on twitter.

Sun Life supports diversity, equity and inclusion

Sun Life (and I personally) believe that adopting and embracing inclusion:

• Strengthens our culture and unleashes creativity, innovation and business value by welcoming different perspectives, experiences and beliefs
• Enables us to deepen our understanding of Clients in each of our markets and businesses
• Reduces and eliminates barriers to full participation in the workplace to help all of our people reach their full potential
• Is part of our commitment to social responsibility