TD is assembling a roster of top technical talent

Milos Dunjic spent years building secure systems in industries far from the centre of Canadian finance.

He began with a degree in electrical engineering in Belgrade, Serbia, majoring in computer science.

“I really feel that as a Distinguished Engineer, I am making a difference and helping build a better bank.”

Milos Dunjic, TD

That foundation led him through roles in aerospace, capital markets, and eventually FinTech startups, each one deepening his expertise in building mission-critical systems.

By the time TD came calling in 2016, Dunjic had already secured several patents in the payments space. The opportunity to influence enterprise payments at a major Canadian bank, he said, felt like a natural step forward.

“I felt that if I joined TD, I could use my experience to influence and shape the evolution of payments processing in one of the leading Canadian banks and at the broader industry level in Canada and the US,” Dunjic said.

Today, Dunjic is a Distinguished Engineer, a title TD added to its job model to recognize and support deep technical leadership. For Dunjic, that title reflects his focus on depth, trust, and long-term thinking. 

For the bank, it’s a reflection of a strategically developed culture that gives engineers room to shape big ideas, build real solutions, and keep growing without stepping away from the craft. TD is building an all-star tech team, and it’s hiring top engineers to lead the charge.

Clearing the path to build

Brent Foster came to TD from Amazon, where he led engineering teams at global scale. At first glance, the move from a tech giant to a highly regulated Canadian bank might seem like a sharp pivot. But it opened up the kinds of challenges he found most compelling.

“I saw TD and the financial services industry as a great place to solve interesting challenges at scale, where you have the resources and the backing to do it while growing and developing talent,” Foster said.

As Vice President, Engineering Practices and DevSecOps Owner at TD, he leads several pillars of TD’s engineering transformation, including defining and applying best practices, DevSecOps, open source program office, software supply chain and builder tools, and talent acceleration. A core part of his work involves making the development experience faster, safer, and more efficient from the earliest stages of design to full production rollout.

The concept plays out in how TD handles composable architecture. Engineers begin with pre-approved patterns, such as building a secure Application Programming Interface (API), then work through reference implementations that handle compliance and testing. The result is less time spent on foundational setup and more time spent on meaningful work.

“One of the things that we’re working hard to do is help remove any barriers we have between folks managing risk and security considerations, folks who are building software, and folks who are operating in production. We want to bring all of that together in a more cohesive way,” Foster added.

That approach enabled the engineering team in their contribution to the launch of partial shares, a TD Direct Investing product that lets customers purchase fractions of stocks. Supporting fractional values required changes to interface specs, databases, and testing frameworks.

To help teams ship quickly, Foster’s group enabled ephemeral environments, which are short-lived testing setups seeded with realistic data. Engineers could spin up everything they needed to test a new feature, run it, and tear it down automatically.

Just as much effort goes into people. Day to day, engineers can build new skills through internal TechCon events, prompt-a-thons, and other challenges. They can take on complex projects without leaving the technical track, thanks to roles like the Distinguished Engineer. And they can stay engaged through platforms that support feedback, peer learning, and shared ownership.

“Happy people are productive people, and part of that, from a talent acceleration perspective, is recognizing the importance of fostering everyone’s growth and development,” Foster added.

Modernizing the mainframe

Sheree Britt joined TD in 2022 with a mission to help modernize one of TD’s most foundational but complex technical environments: mainframes, meaning the large, central systems that have powered core banking operations for decades. Today, she serves as Associate Vice President and US Lead Architect for Enterprise Architecture at TD.

One of Britt’s early efforts focused on connecting TD’s legacy mainframe systems with GitHub. Traditionally, mainframe developers worked within restrictive “green screen” terminals, which  required dozens of manual steps to complete even simple tasks. 

“There’s a lot of steps involved in doing that,” Britt said. “When we do it for so long, it becomes muscle memory, but it also doesn’t get you there any faster. And when you need to onboard new talent who aren’t familiar with that work environment, then we have to retrain.”

Integrating modern tooling such as GitHub changed that. Engineers could now use tools like VS Code to work on mainframe code, access modern search and navigation features, and collaborate with peers across TD. What once took a week to set up could now be done in under 30 minutes, Britt said.

Britt’s team also built a multi-layered learning ecosystem that included instructor-led sessions, vendor training, hands-on workshops, lunch-and-learns, peer shadowing, and ongoing drop-in support. She described these efforts as putting the focus behind the people, rather than just the systems.

“As you introduce new technology, you have to consider the ‘change’ aspect of it,” Britt said. “So how do we help these engineers learn this technology? How do we include them as a part of that journey and give them the ability to contribute and take control of their career?”

Some of these opportunities were developed through internal competitions, including TD’s Tech Jam and quarterly Innovation Days, which are dedicated sprints allowing engineers to explore new technologies, build internal demos, or refine previous work. 

Throughout her time at TD, Britt has also stayed close to her own roots as an engineer, and that perspective has shaped how she leads. 

“Anybody can learn if you really put the effort forward,” she said. “If the desire is there and people really want to be a part of that process, they will.”

Staying close to the work

Next year will mark Dunjic’s 10th anniversary at TD, and the scope of his work continues to evolve. The payments landscape has changed dramatically since he joined, but what’s stayed constant is his depth in the tech and his understanding of the business.

“I really feel that as a Distinguished Engineer, I am making a difference and helping build a better bank,” Dunjic said.

That sense of purpose echoes across teams. For Foster, it means creating the systems and structures that help engineers move faster and solve harder problems. For Britt, it means giving developers better tools, and the confidence to use them. Dunjic sees those efforts as part of the same goal.

“There’s more to life as an engineer than just coding. If you can break out of your shell, you can start to make an impact, and it’s rewarding.”

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Engineers at TD are building secure systems, improving how teams work, and shaping important industry tools. 

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All photos provided by TD.