IT Architect

About the role

The IT Architect role at Koch Engineered Solutions bridges the gap between business needs and technical capabilities. This position provides technical leadership and consulting across the organization, from strategic decision-making to project planning. The IT Architect defines and executes on technology visions and strategies, including developing related roadmaps.

Responsibilities

• As part of the infrastructure capability, be accountable for the evolution of current platforms and the evaluation and adoption of emerging technologies.
• Partner closely with business and IT stakeholders to understand business strategies, challenges, and outcomes, and translate them into scalable, secure, and pragmatic infrastructure architectures.
• Continuously evaluate emerging infrastructure technologies and industry trends, including cloud, networking, security, automation, and platform services, and lead the assessment, alignment, and adoption of capabilities that deliver business value.
• Act as a thought partner to the business, helping determine when technologies should be incubated internally, adopted from partners, or deferred based on value, risk, and readiness.
• Define, maintain, and evolve infrastructure standards, reference architectures, and technology roadmaps, ensuring alignment with both near-term needs and long-term strategy.
• Lead architecture alternatives analysis, clearly framing problems and opportunities, evaluating tradeoffs, and making recommendations grounded in business requirements, cost, risk, and operational impact.
• Collaborate with application and platform teams to guide infrastructure design for on-premises, hybrid, virtualized, and cloud environments.
• Develop and communicate clear architecture artifacts, including diagrams, reference models, design patterns, and decision records, to enable consistent execution across teams.
• Establish and refine governance models, work processes, and operational runbooks that balance innovation with reliability, security, and operational excellence.
• Serve as a senior escalation point for complex infrastructure issues, while driving long-term solutions that reduce recurrence and improve system resilience.
• Influence and align cross-functional teams and external partners without direct authority, using technical credibility and business context to drive outcomes.
• Participate in architecture and technology advisory forums, advocating for customer and business needs and assessing the impact of proposed changes across the enterprise.

Requirements

• IT architecture or Senior Systems Engineering experience, including in hands-on design and implementation.
• Experience with multiple infrastructure technology pillars (endpoint, mobility, compute, storage, network, security, etc.) and their management tools.
• Experience conducting research, experimenting, and deploying emerging technologies and trends, standards, and products.
• Practical Experience with Cloud Architecture design (AWS or Azure).
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills; adept at tailoring messages for technical, executive, and nontechnical audiences.

What Will Put You Ahead

• Experience with Operational Technology (OT), manufacturing systems, and Plant/Process Control Networks (PCN).
• Familiarity with cloud-native architectures on AWS or Azure.

Benefits

Our goal is for each employee, and their families, to live fulfilling and healthy lives. We provide essential resources and support to build and maintain physical, financial, and emotional strength - focusing on overall wellbeing so you can focus on what matters most. Our benefits plan includes medical, dental, vision, flexible spending and health savings accounts, life insurance, ADD, disability, retirement, paid vacation/time off, educational assistance, and may also include infertility assistance, paid parental leave and adoption assistance. Specific eligibility criteria is set by the applicable Summary Plan Description, policy or guideline and benefits may vary by geographic region. If you have questions on what benefits apply to you, please speak to your recruiter.