SR Director Enterprise Architecture

The Sr Director of Enterprise Architecture, reporting into the Head of Strategy & Transformation is a senior leader who oversees the overall architecture and is a key technology innovator who develops, implements, coordinates, and effectively problem-solves IT strategy goals across the firm. The Head Enterprise Architect will collaborate closely across the leadership team to build a pragmatic solution-excellence-focused culture and practice across all technology Initiatives and contribute to the development of an effective IT strategy and roadmap.

The Head Enterprise Architect is responsible for defining and maintaining a future state business architecture that aligns with business strategy, and manages gaps, risk, and technical debt. The business architecture clearly articulates business capabilities enabled by technology solutions. The role will stay on the leading edge of thought leadership / technology by bringing relevant emerging technologies, vendors, engineering best practices and innovation to BJs. The position is accountable for creating and maintaining the technology strategy / roadmap and establish a system landscape that is scalable, agile, fit for purpose, simple and cost effective. The function will ensure a pragmatic adherence to the architecture standards without stifling delivery and drive acceleration of technology innovation.

Responsibilities:

• Establishes and maintains the technology strategy and roadmap that successfully delivers a pipeline of value-creating innovation; Partners closely with the IT Business Partners to ensure there is buy-in from business leaders and the executive team.
• Develops, leads, and refines architecture governance; establishes guardrails teams can use to make independent architecture decisions
• Leads development blueprints, roadmaps, and other artifacts that help teams coordinate
• Establishes sustainable architecture patterns to streamline and enable nimble modular development
• Accountable for adherence of the company’s platforms to architectural best practices
• Manages the development and evolution of the enterprise business architecture (EBA), which represents the taxonomies, principles, requirements, and models for the enterprise's business processes and capabilities
• Develops and executes efficient processes for technology selection and application rationalization, across the enterprise
• Manages standards for application selection, development, DevOps, and testing, and enable broader architecture team to represent them inside agile teams
• Keep track of key developments in the technology space (in retail and beyond) to continually identify new ideas, tools and innovation trends that could provide opportunities. Evaluates current and emerging technologies, determining strategic application to business needs vs hype; Educates the organization on innovation trends
• Drives the modernization and transformation of the existing IT architecture to a robust and "future proof" technology stack.
• Fosters strong collaboration and serve as trusted technical adviser to the senior IT and Business leaders
• Develops and executes efficient processes for technology selection and application rationalization, across the enterprise
• Leads and participates in the identification of initiatives to close gaps between the current and future-state architectures, including technology road maps and proposed change projects
• Leads, develops, and coaches the Enterprise Architecture team to continually improve capabilities necessary to increase the performance of the team and the organization at large
• Provides timely and constructive feedback on a regular basis to ensure employees have a clear understanding of their work, roles, and impact
• Identifies and recommends solutions with internal and/or stakeholder performance issues
• Performs other related duties as assigned

Critical Leadership Capabilities

Strategic Thinking

Translates innovation and end-user needs into digital strategies, and successfully implements and optimizes them

Customer centric mindset, thinking 2-3 years ahead

Collaborating and Influencing

Negotiates with a genuine give-and-take approach, where parties act as true peers and decisions are shared

Spends time meeting and/or connecting with IT Leaders and stakeholders, product managers, business owners, platform teams and product development teams, neglecting no one to shape a collective consensus

Identifies opportunities to build relationships that will help others achieve their objectives and reaches out to those people or new people

Driving Results

Acts to surpass goals, seizing opportunities to push the envelope

Sets continually higher goals that are ambitious but realistic for self and team, geared to organizational objectives

Focuses on opportunities that enable business strategic targets to be exceeded

Leadership

Enterprise Mindset

Strategic thinking: takes a broad view of the business and IT to anticipate and plan for the future.

Leads through influence, often without direct authority, persuading through use of data and facts; demonstrate sufficient gravitas; inspire and motivate others.

Aligns and Engages the Team in the Vision: Provides clarity to each team member on their role in achieving the vision, strategy, and goals.

Self-starter: Proactive, and willing to take on whatever work is required to get the job done

Demonstrated ability to thrive in a fast-paced environment.

Demonstrated ability to think creatively; anticipate problems and opportunities.

Strong intellectual capital paired with equally strong emotional intelligence and “servant leadership”.

Possesses the right combination of strategic thinking and operational excellence.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Information Management, Engineering, or other related discipline
• 15 years of experience in IT, specifically in enterprise architecture roles, with at least 7 years in leadership positions overseeing enterprise architectural strategies and implementations
• Broad knowledge across web standards, ITIL, ERP, Supply Chain systems, Marketing systems, SaaS, Cloud infrastructure Relevant Enterprise Architecture and Cloud Engineering certifications desired (e.g., TOGAF, CISSP, AWS Certified Solutions Architect)
• Deep understanding of every aspect of enterprise architecture, including enterprise architecture, solutions architecture, data, cloud, and the role of newer technology areas (i.e., Machine Learning) and their potential implications and roles in driving the overall IT strategy . Knowledge of technology concepts and implementation methods covering API architecture, next-generation computing, big-data analytics, and cloud platforms
• Technology-driven transformation of products: Demonstrated ability to leverage technology to create innovative and scalable solutions, during large scale transformations. Able to work with product leaders and influence business and product outcomes through technology
• Ability to improve operational efficiency, service delivery and information management across the IT organization
• Deep understanding of every aspect of enterprise architecture, including enterprise architecture, solutions architecture, data, cloud, and the role of newer technology areas (i.e., Machine Learning) and their potential implications and roles in driving the overall IT strategy
• Knowledge of technology concepts and implementation methods covering API architecture, next-generation computing, big-data analytics, and cloud platforms
• Experience with architectural artifact (knowledge repository) and transitional roadmap development, system design, software prototyping, team mentoring, and support of business case development.
• Expert knowledge in web standards, ITIL, ERP, MES, SaaS, Cloud infrastructure
• Extensive leadership experience in the technical assessment of recent technologies and successful history of scaling up software and data products