Position Summary
The Principal Enterprise Architect is the senior-most technical architecture leader in the organization, responsible for setting and stewarding the long-term enterprise architecture vision and leading the enterprise architecture practice. This role combines deep, broad technical expertise with executive-level influence, advising senior leadership on multi-year technology strategy, chairing enterprise architecture governance, and mentoring other architects across the organization. The ideal candidate has a proven track record leading architecture at scale and is equally comfortable in a whiteboard design session and an executive strategy conversation.
Primary Duties & Responsibilities
- Own and evolve the organization's 3 to 5 year enterprise architecture vision and strategy, and translate it into actionable multi-year technology roadmaps.
- Lead and chair the enterprise architecture governance function (e.g., architecture review board), setting the standards, patterns, and decision rights other architects and teams operate within.
- Serve as the senior technical advisor to the SVP of Technology & AI and the broader executive team on technology strategy, major investments, and architectural risk.
- Lead, mentor, and upskill Enterprise, Application, Data, Infrastructure, and Security Architects; build enterprise architecture capability and maturity across the organization.
- Own cross-portfolio technology investment prioritization, arbitrating trade-offs between competing initiatives and domains at the enterprise level.
- Lead technical due diligence and architecture integration planning for mergers, acquisitions, and major partnerships.
- Arbitrate and resolve complex, cross-domain architectural conflicts that cannot be resolved at the Enterprise Architect level.
- Evaluate emerging technologies and platforms at a strategic level, and provide point-of-view recommendations on adoption, build-vs-buy decisions, and vendor/platform selection.
- Represent the organization's architecture practice externally (industry forums, vendor strategic relationships, analyst briefings) as needed.
- Ensure architecture decisions and standards support scalability, security, regulatory compliance, and long-term cost-efficiency across the enterprise.
- Communicate architectural vision, trade-offs, and risk in terms accessible to both technical teams and the executive audience, including the board when required.
Qualifications
- At least 15 years of progressive experience in software/technology roles, including at least 7 years in an enterprise architecture capacity.
- Proven track record leading an enterprise architecture practice, team, or governance function, not just contributing to one.
- Demonstrated experience setting multi-year enterprise technology strategy and successfully driving its adoption across a large, complex organization.
- Enterprise architecture framework mastery (e.g., TOGAF); TOGAF certification (or equivalent) required.
- Deep technical fluency across applications, infrastructure, data, integration, and security domains, with the credibility to go deep in at least one.
- Strong software architecture background (e.g., C#, .NET, T-SQL, web services, modern JavaScript frameworks) with the ability to evaluate solutions at a technical depth.
- Experience with cloud platforms, particularly Microsoft Azure, including cloud governance, multi-cloud strategy, and cost management at scale.
- Experience with Palantir Foundry and Snowflake Platform a plus.
- Familiarity with common design patterns (GOF) and modern architecture patterns (microservices, event-driven, API-first, integration patterns).
- Demonstrated experience establishing and running formal governance processes, such as architecture review boards, at an organization-wide level.
- Experience advising C-suite or board-level stakeholders on technology strategy and major investment decisions.
- Experience with technical due diligence for mergers, acquisitions, or major partnerships is a strong plus.
- Exceptional executive communication and stakeholder-management skills; ability to translate technical concepts for non-technical, senior, and board audiences.
- Strong facilitation, negotiation, and influencing skills to drive alignment across multiple teams and domains without direct authority.
- Excellent documentation skills, including creating current/future-state models and reference architectures.
- Data architecture and data governance literacy: able to speak fluently to data domains even though not a dedicated Data Architect.
- Security and risk architecture fluency: sufficient depth to engage and constructively challenge the CISO's team, not simply defer to it.
- Strong workshop facilitation skills: able to run design sessions, architecture review boards, and cross-team alignment meetings at an executive level.
- Strong storytelling and visual communication skills: able to translate dense architecture into a clear, one-page narrative that resonates with executives and the board.
- Pragmatism ("pragmatic idealism"): able to balance textbook-correct architecture against what the organization can realistically execute given budget, skill, and timeline constraints.
- Demonstrated experience mentoring and developing other architects, and building organizational architecture maturity.
- Experience with the healthcare industry and workers' compensation is a plus.
