Executive Director Enterprise Architect

This role leads Enterprise Architecture for the organization, setting the technology vision, standards, and governance that align business strategy with scalable, secure, and future-ready technology platforms. The Executive Director partners with senior IT and business leadership to shape the enterprise technology roadmap, drive architecture decision-making across data, cloud and infrastructure, application, and integration domains, and ensure technology investments deliver measurable business value.
This is both a strategic and hands-on leadership role, requiring the ability to influence at the executive level while maintaining the technical depth to guide complex, enterprise-wide architecture decisions, and to build and mentor a high-performing architecture organization. Security and AI architecture are delivered through close collaboration with the CISO and CAIO organizations, which maintain their own dedicated architecture teams; business architecture is owned by a separate business strategy function outside Digital and Technology.
Where and When
This is an on-site position 4 days/week, primarily based at our Sleepy Hollow, NY or Warren, NJ office. If eligible, we can offer relocation benefits; we cannot offer a fully remote option.
Enterprise Architecture Strategy & Vision
Define and own the enterprise architecture strategy, principles, and target-state blueprints across the data, cloud and infrastructure, application, and integration domains, incorporating security and AI architecture standards set in partnership with the CISO and CAIO organizations.
Translate business strategy and digital transformation priorities into a coherent, multi-year enterprise technology roadmap.
Establish and evolve the enterprise's architecture operating model, ensuring architecture decisions scale with business growth and complexity.
Assess emerging technology trends (AI/ML, cloud-native platforms, automation) and determine their strategic fit and adoption path for the enterprise.
Champion a “business capability first” architecture approach, ensuring technology investments map directly to business outcomes.
Architecture Governance & Standards
Establish and lead the enterprise architecture governance framework, including review boards, design authority processes, and exception management.
Define and enforce enterprise architecture standards, patterns, and reference architectures across build, buy, and integrate decisions.
Own the architecture review process for major programs and capital investments, ensuring alignment with enterprise standards, security, and regulatory requirements.
Maintain the enterprise architecture repository (current-state and future-state models, technology inventories, and roadmaps) as an authoritative source of truth.
Partner with Security, Risk, and Compliance to ensure architecture decisions meet enterprise risk tolerance and regulatory obligations (e.g., GxP, data privacy).
Technology Roadmap & Investment Planning
Lead enterprise-wide technology rationalization efforts, identifying opportunities to consolidate, retire, or modernize legacy platforms.
Partner with Finance and business unit leaders to build the business case for architecture-driven investments, balancing innovation with cost discipline.
Guide platform and vendor selection decisions for enterprise-critical systems, ensuring architectural fit, scalability, and total cost of ownership are fully evaluated.
Own the enterprise's cloud and infrastructure strategy, ensuring architecture decisions support performance, resilience, and cost efficiency at scale.
Drive the integration architecture strategy across the enterprise, enabling seamless data flow and interoperability between core business systems.
Business & Digital Transformation Partnership
Serve as a trusted architecture advisor to business unit leaders, translating business problems into technology-enabled solutions.
Partner with product, engineering, and program leadership to embed architecture thinking early in the delivery lifecycle, reducing rework and technical debt.
Lead architecture input into major digital transformation and modernization initiatives, ensuring solutions are designed for scale, security, and long-term maintainability.
Evaluate and guide the adoption of AI, automation, and data platforms to accelerate business capabilities and competitive differentiation.
Act as an escalation point for cross-functional architecture conflicts, driving resolution through data-driven, business-aligned decision-making.
Solution & Platform Architecture Oversight
Provide senior oversight and quality assurance for solution architectures developed by domain and solution architects across the enterprise.
Ensure architectural consistency and reuse across programs, preventing siloed or duplicative technology investments.
Guide the design of resilient, secure, and scalable platform architectures for enterprise applications, data platforms, and integration layers.
Champion architecture practices that support DevOps, CI/CD, and infrastructure-as-code adoption across delivery teams.
Oversee technical due diligence for mergers, acquisitions, and strategic partnerships, assessing architectural risk and integration complexity.
Executive Stakeholder Engagement & Communication
Present enterprise architecture strategy, roadmaps, and investment recommendations to executive leadership, technology governance forums, as needed.
Build strong, trusted relationships with the Digital and Technology Leadership, and business unit executives to ensure architecture remains a strategic partner, not a bottleneck.
Communicate complex technical concepts and trade-offs in clear, business-relevant terms to non-technical executive audiences.
Represent the enterprise architecture function in vendor, industry, and partner forums, staying current on best practices and market direction.
Establish and sustain the operating model for collaboration with the CISO and CAIO organizations' own architecture teams — defining clear decision rights, escalation paths, and shared standards so security and AI architecture decisions remain aligned to enterprise architecture without duplicated ownership.
Partner with the business strategy function that owns business architecture, ensuring enterprise technology roadmaps remain traceable to business capability models maintained outside Digital and Technology.
People Leadership, Mentoring & Team Culture
Build, lead, and develop a high-performing architecture team, directly leading the Data & AI, Cloud & Infrastructure, Application, and Integration Domain Architects, and fostering a culture of technical excellence and collaboration.
Mentor and coach architects and senior technical leaders, investing in career growth, technical depth, and succession planning.
Establish architecture communities of practice and knowledge-sharing forums that elevate architecture maturity across the broader technology organization.
Champion diversity, equity, and inclusion in hiring, development, and team culture within the architecture function.
Model and reinforce a culture of intellectual curiosity, pragmatism, and accountability across the architecture team.
Technical Competencies
Deep expertise in enterprise architecture frameworks and methodologies (TOGAF, Zachman, or equivalent) and their practical application in a large, complex organization.
Strong technical grounding across cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP), enterprise integration, data architecture, and application architecture patterns.
Strong grounding in enterprise integration architecture — API management, event-driven patterns, and integration platform strategy.
Working knowledge of AI/ML platforms, data and analytics architecture, and emerging technology evaluation.
Experience with enterprise security architecture, identity and access management, and regulatory/compliance frameworks relevant