Department Leader - Architecture Governance

About the role

The Department Leader for Enterprise Architecture Standards, Governance & Tooling leads a team responsible for establishing architecture practices, standards, patterns, governance processes, and tools that enable consistent, scalable, and business-aligned technology decisions across the firm. This leader will define and operate the enterprise architecture governance model, establish reusable standards and reference architecture across application, data, infrastructure, integration, and platform domains, and ensure architecture guidance is integrated into strategic planning, product delivery, and technology investment decisions. The role requires strong partnership across business, product, engineering, delivery, security, risk, and vendor teams to improve decision quality, reduce fragmentation, and accelerate adoption of enterprise architecture practices.

What You'll Do

• Lead a department of architects, team leaders, and contractors responsible for enterprise architecture standards, patterns, governance, tooling, and enablement.
• Establish and maintain enterprise architecture principles, standards, patterns, reference architectures, and decision frameworks that guide solution design across portfolios.
• Operate architecture governance by setting clear decision criteria, facilitating design reviews, managing exceptions, and driving resolution of cross-domain architecture risks and trade-offs.
• Evaluate major solution designs to ensure alignment with enterprise guardrails, delivery feasibility, operational readiness, security, resilience, scalability, and maintainability.
• Partner with peers to embed architecture expectations early and align on dependencies, constraints, and enterprise impacts.
• Drive continuous improvement of architecture governance processes, standards management, tooling, metrics, and adoption.
• Build and develop architecture talent, including team leaders and successors for key roles, while fostering an accountable and collaborative team culture.

What You Will Need

• Bachelor's degree preferred, or equivalent related work experience.
• Minimum of 7 years of experience in information systems, technology, architecture, or related disciplines.
• At least 3 years of people leadership, team leadership, or equivalent leadership responsibility preferred.
• Experience leading architecture governance, enterprise standards, technology patterns, architecture tooling, or cross-domain architecture practices.
• Strong understanding of enterprise technologies, infrastructure dependencies, integration patterns, data architecture, application architecture, and delivery methodologies.
• Familiarity with SDLC and PDLC practices, change management, quality assurance, architecture review processes, and technology risk management.
• Demonstrated ability to translate business strategy into architecture direction, roadmaps, standards, and measurable adoption outcomes.
• Strong decision-making skills, including the ability to resolve complex escalations and trade-offs across teams and solutions.
• Proven ability to lead, influence, and develop teams across a matrixed organization.
• Process-oriented mindset with the ability to establish plans, define metrics, monitor progress, and drive continuous improvement.

Schedule

Candidates that live within a commutable distance from our Tempe, AZ and St. Louis, MO home office locations are expected to work in the office four days per week.