Vice President, Application Architecture

About the role

This position will be a hybrid work arrangement. You will receive 18 remote workdays per quarter to use at your discretion, subject to manager approval.

Responsibilities

• Set technical direction for enterprise and platform architecture within the organization.
• Define the target-state architectural vision.
• Establish standards, patterns, and reference architectures to modernize technology and enable scaling.
• Create enterprise architecture principles, standards, reference architectures, and modernization roadmaps that align technology investments with business growth objectives.
• Guide architecture decisions across product, platform, and enterprise initiatives, ensuring solutions are scalable, secure, interoperable, and aligned to long-term strategy.
• Guide modernization projects that transition legacy applications and platforms toward modern architectures such as microservices, event-driven systems, and micro-frontend-based user experiences.
• Define standard methodologies for architecture of distributed systems, including messaging, caching, data access, service communication, and domain decomposition by employing platforms such as Kafka and Redis.
• Evaluate new technologies, frameworks, and architectural approaches, making pragmatic recommendations that advance the organization’s technology strategy without introducing unnecessary complexity.
• Influence governance and engineering review processes to improve architectural quality, reduce technical debt, and ensure consistent execution across initiatives.
• Mentor architects and senior engineers, elevate architectural thinking across teams, and foster a culture of engineering excellence, simplification, and continuous modernization.
• Support additional critical initiatives as needed.

Requirements

The ideal candidate is:

• A recognized technical authority with demonstrated success in defining enterprise-scale architecture strategy and influencing adoption across multiple teams, platforms, and business domains.
• Strong proficiency in enterprise and solution architecture, demonstrating skill in defining target-state architectures, transition roadmaps, and pragmatic modernization strategies.
• Strong experience establishing an integrated platform design and enterprise standards that improve consistency, reusability, scalability, and long-term maintainability.
• Fluent in architectural design patterns and modern engineering practices, including microservices, micro-frontends, event-driven systems, cloud-native development, DevOps, and modern web application engineering.
• Lead through influence and hands-on technical credibility, helping teams make sound architectural decisions while raising engineering quality, consistency, and ongoing structural durability within the organization.

Qualifications

• A passion for defining durable organizational architecture alongside up-to-date engineering standards that develop long-term business and technology value.
• Demonstrated success driving enterprise-wide architecture and modernization initiatives across applications, platforms, cloud, and integration domains.
• Deep hands-on experience with modern architecture patterns such as distributed services, component-based frontends, event-centric architecture, principles driven by a passion for the core business logic, and API-based integration.
• Strong knowledge of cloud engineering and distributed systems design, with experience building scalable, resilient, and observable solutions in enterprise environments.
• Practical expertise with modern application development stacks and frameworks, including Angular, React, TypeScript, Node.js, and current web application architecture patterns.
• Experience with messaging, caching, and data access technologies and patterns, including Kafka, Redis, API integration, persistence strategies, and service-to-service communication.
• Solid understanding of DevOps and software delivery processes, with a focus on CI/CD, automation, source control strategy, environment management, and release lifecycle considerations.
• Ability to connect business goals to architecture strategy, translating organizational priorities into actionable technical roadmaps and standards.
• Strong mentoring, collaboration, and communication skills, capable of raising architectural maturity and improving engineering efficiency within the enterprise.

Skills

• Fluency in architectural and software design patterns, with the ability to guide teams in selecting the right patterns, tradeoffs, and implementation approaches.
• Expertise in contemporary web application development and architecture, including frameworks and technologies such as Angular, React, TypeScript, Node.js, and development focused on web-based interfaces.
• Ability to balance strategic architecture direction with practical execution, helping teams modernize incrementally while maintaining delivery momentum.
• Strong understanding of integration, interoperability, data flow, and domain boundaries across enterprise software and infrastructures.
• Outstanding communication skills, demonstrated by the capacity to translate architectural strategy and technical tradeoffs into clear recommendations for engineering leaders, executives, and non-technical partners.
• A collaborative, influential leadership style with a demonstrated ability to support and develop architects and engineers, build alignment, and raise technical standards across the organization.

Benefits

HarbourVest is an equal opportunity employer.

Pay

Base Salary Range $225,000.00 - $240,000.00

Schedule

This role is eligible for a discretionary annual bonus, which is determined based on individual and overall firm performance. In addition to salary and bonus, total compensation may include eligibility for long-term reward programs and a comprehensive total rewards package that may include retirement, health, insurance, paid time off, and wellness programs.