Shahir A. Daya is an IBM Distinguished Engineer and Business Transformation Services Chief Architect in IBM Consulting in Canada. He is an IBM Senior Certified Architect and an Open Group Distinguished Chief/Lead IT Architect with more than twenty-five years at IBM. Shahir has received the prestigious IBM Corporate Award for exceptional technical accomplishments. He has experience with complex high-volume transactional applications and systems integration. Shahir has led teams of practitioners to help IBM and its clients with application architecture for several years. His industry experience includes banking, financial services, and travel & transportation. Shahir focuses on cloud-native architecture and modern SW engineering practices for high performing development teams.

As CTO, Shahir is responsible for overall solution design and technical feasibility for client transformation programs. He has supported the design and stand-up of several joint clients and IBM delivery centers adopting modern SW engineering practices to deliver modernization programs. Shahir is also responsible for defining the sectors' technical strategy relating to asset development/harvesting, new technical areas of focus and thought leadership for the specific technology area. He provides technical oversight and direction on critical projects.

Shahir holds a B.A.Sc. in Computer Engineering from the University of Toronto and has co-authored 3 IBM Redbooks on Microservices and Hybrid Cloud Integration. He is an inventor with several issued U.S. Patents. Shahir is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). Shahir is an active mentor in the University of Toronto Engineering Alumni Mentorship Program and the University of Toronto Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) Mentorship Program. He is also a coach for the FIRST LEGO Robotics Jr. League.