Director, AI Enterprise Architecture

About the role

The Company Our client is an established biopharmaceutical company building out its IT function as the business scales. They are creating a newly established Director, Enterprise Architecture role reporting directly to the CIO, giving the organization its first independent, enterprise-wide architecture voice across the whole IT function.

Role And Responsibilities

• Own and evolve enterprise architecture standards, principles, and governance across applications, data, integration, and infrastructure, building reusable patterns and reference architecture so knowledge sits with the organization rather than any one person
• Act as the connective architecture authority across the IT function, making sure platform and integration choices in one area don't create fragmentation or duplicate technology elsewhere
• Establish and lead a disciplined technology investment and architecture review process for major platform and vendor decisions
• Translate the company's AI and data strategy priorities into concrete architecture requirements, including data model implications and the platform capabilities needed to host and govern AI and agentic workflows
• Partner with the emerging enterprise AI strategy effort to ensure architecture decisions reflect where the business is investing in AI
• Score and evaluate platform and vendor options against AI-readiness criteria as a standing input to major platform decisions, including the current ERP/HRIS and CRM evaluations
• Define integration architecture and standards across ERP, CRM, HRIS, and data platforms, partnering with the data strategy team on the underlying data architecture and governance model
• Partner closely with IT leadership across the business and bring material architecture decisions into governance forums to give the CIO an independent architecture view
• Work with the CIO to define the case, scope, and hiring plan for growing into a small architecture team as implementation work scales, mentoring solution architects across the organization in the meantime

Job Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business, or a related field, with 10+ years of progressive experience in enterprise or solution architecture roles, or equivalent experience
• Direct experience in the pharmaceutical, biotech, or life sciences industry, including familiarity with SOX ITGC, GxP, and data privacy frameworks such as GDPR and HIPAA, required
• Demonstrated ownership of multi-year technology roadmaps connecting business strategy to technology decisions
• Hands-on experience architecting or evaluating enterprise-scale ERP, CRM, and/or HRIS platforms, with Tier 1 platforms such as Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP, SAP S/4HANA, or comparable strongly preferred
• Substantive, current experience with AI and agentic system architecture, including evaluating platforms for native agentic capability, API and integration depth, and data model implications for AI use cases
• Strong data and integration architecture background, including master data management, enterprise data platforms such as Snowflake or comparable, and integration patterns across a fragmented, multi-system landscape
• Demonstrated ability to operate independently and cross-functionally at the executive level, advising CIO and leadership-level stakeholders on architecture trade-offs, vendor governance, and investment prioritization
• Track record of building architecture standards, governance, and documentation from a low-maturity or fragmented starting point
• Experience architecting for or alongside a managed services or hybrid resourcing model, where core architecture is owned internally while specialized execution is outsourced
• Prior experience building and leading an architecture team, or clearly demonstrated readiness to do so
• Strong stakeholder management and executive communication skills
• Proven ability to align enterprise architecture with business strategy and drive measurable outcomes

Benefits

• 401(k) plan with a generous employer match
• 12 weeks of paid parental leave
• Up to 12 weeks of living organ and bone marrow donor leave
• Equity incentive plans
• Health plans including medical, prescription drug, dental, and vision coverage
• Life insurance and disability coverage
• Flexible time off
• Annual winter holiday shutdown