AVP, AI Enterprise Architecture

About the role

This role is responsible for defining and advancing the enterprise AI architecture strategy, ensuring scalable, secure, and flexible AI capabilities that enable rapid delivery of business value. It serves as the bridge between enterprise architecture strategy and execution, shaping how solutions integrating AI are designed, governed, and deployed across the organization. The leader directly contributes to the design and development of enterprise AI platforms, reference architectures, and reusable patterns, while ensuring AI architecture and technology decisions align with Unum Group’s business strategy and long-term value. This role acts as a thought leader and orchestrator, partnering across technology and business teams to integrate AI into the enterprise in a disciplined, sustainable, and responsible way.

Responsibilities

• Define and evolve the enterprise AI architecture strategy and standards.
• Be the enterprise architecture representative in AI governance committees and directly contribute to governance frameworks and enterprise standards.
• Ensure enterprise AI capabilities are aligned to business outcomes and enterprise priorities.
• Design scalable, modular, and secure agentic AI solutions.
• Establish reference architectures, reusable patterns, and enterprise platforms to industrialize AI capabilities at scale (primarily cloud-based/hyperscaler capabilities).
• Align AI architecture with enterprise capabilities and technology roadmaps.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and guide tool/platform selection to ensure cost-effective, future-ready solutions.
• Continuously maintain and update the enterprise AI platform roadmaps as the technology and industry capabilities evolve.
• Ensure consistent adoption of architecture standards across delivery teams.
• Lead architecture governance, compliance, and quality (design-time and runtime performance).
• Influence senior leaders and drive alignment across stakeholders.
• Partner with business, product, and technology leaders to translate strategy into execution.
• Guide and mentor architects and technical leaders while being a champion of disciplined architecture practices across the organization.
• Drive continuous improvement through learnings from implementation and solution delivery.
• Define business outcomes, use cases, and success metrics; support AI business cases.
• Partner with the enterprise data team to ensure availability, governance, and compliance of data required for AI solutions.
• Lead evaluation and selection of foundation models (LLMs, etc.) based on business fit and cost.
• Oversee model training, validation, and risk assessment (e.g., bias, hallucination).
• Define deployment approaches and support enterprise adoption and change management.
• Establish monitoring frameworks for performance, drift, and continuous improvement.
• Ensure alignment with responsible AI principles (fairness, transparency, accountability) and regulatory requirements.
• Partner with risk, legal, and compliance teams to mitigate AI-specific risks (e.g., bias, model drift, data leakage).
• Establish clear roles, responsibilities, and oversight mechanisms for AI solutions.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree required; advanced degree preferred.
• 15+ years of experience in enterprise architecture with significant experience designing and implementing enterprise AI/ML platforms and solutions.
• Deep knowledge of AI/ML frameworks, cloud AI services (e.g., AWS), and modern data technologies.
• Experience with foundation models, prompt engineering, RAG architectures, and agentic AI patterns.
• Strong understanding of AI risks, governance frameworks, and regulatory considerations.
• Familiarity with Agile/Lean delivery and modern engineering practices (e.g., CI/CD, MLOps).
• Demonstrable experience delivering complex software systems as an engineer and architect.
• Proven ability to communicate complex technical concepts to both technical and business audiences.
• Experience with standard enterprise architecture modeling practices (ArchiMate and Bizzdesign preferred).
• Strategic thinker with strong problem-solving and analytical skills.
• Collaborative and influential leader across complex organizations.
• Curious and forward-looking on emerging technologies.
• Outcome-driven with focus on measurable business impact.

Benefits

Unum offers a portfolio of benefits and rewards that are competitive and comprehensive, including:

• Healthcare benefits (health, vision, dental).
• Insurance benefits (short & long-term disability).
• Performance-based incentive plans.
• Paid time off.
• 401(k) retirement plan with an employer match up to 5% and an additional 4.5% contribution whether you contribute to the plan or not.
• Onsite fitness facilities.
• Employee professional development programs.

All benefits are subject to the terms and conditions of individual Plans.

Pay

The base salary range for this position is $133,500.00 - $274,100.00. Unless actual salary is indicated in the job description, actual pay will be based on skill, geographical location, and experience.