Lead Architect - Consumer, Employee, & Financial Solutions

You want more out of a career. A place to share your ideas freely - even if they're daring or different. Where the true you can learn, grow, and thrive. At Verizon, we power and empower how people live, work and play by connecting them to what brings them joy. We do what we love - driving innovation, creativity, and impact in the world. Our V Team is a community of people who anticipate, lead, and believe that listening is where learning begins. In crisis and in celebration, we come together - lifting our communities and building trust in how we show up, everywhere & always. Want in? Join the #VTeamLife.

What you'll be doing

We are seeking an experienced and strategic Lead Enterprise Architect to join our growing team. The ideal candidate will have a deep understanding of enterprise architecture, business process optimization, and technology integration. As the Lead Enterprise Architect, you will be responsible for aligning the portfolio's IT infrastructure and systems with its business goals, ensuring long-term scalability, security, and efficiency.

• You will lead the creation, continual curation, and oversight of architectural artifacts and technical financial research, to prescribe or analyze systems for business, operational, and technical fit, continually scanning the horizon for optimization opportunities.

• You will drive data-driven, actionable enterprise architecture practice across Customer, Employee, and Financial systems. Working alongside Data, Solution, and Application architects, you will be responsible for architecture spanning 200+ systems to address complex business challenges. You will additionally leverage your experience in data mining, machine learning, AI, and statistical data modeling to extract meaningful insights from data and drive data-driven decision making.

• You will define, publish and maintain Northstar Architecture documentation and be architecturally responsible for the alignment and evolution of systems in order to meet platform strategy and optimization targets.

• You will be providing strategic input on IT investments and portfolio management, ensuring architecture roadmaps are fully integrated with business objectives. The position will have you working across diverse portfolios and product teams, ensuring the progression of our Northstar architecture while balancing the needs of business programs.

• You must be able to establish relationships and work with leaders at all levels without supervision. You must be able to articulate problem statements and openly bring up challenges/roadblocks and impediments, negotiate, influence and drive solutions with directors and VPs in the CSG space for tactical and strategic enterprise architecture approaches and business capabilities.

Responsibilities include, but are not limited to the following...

• Leading the development and execution of the enterprise architecture strategy, aligning technology systems with business objectives to drive transformation and growth

• Overseeing the design of scalable and secure enterprise architectures that meet business needs and adhere to industry standards and best practices.

• Mentoring a team of architects, working closely with other IT leaders, project managers, and business stakeholders to ensure successful solution implementation.

• Evaluating and recommending emerging technologies and tools that can enhance the organization's IT capabilities and streamline business processes.

• Establishing architectural governance frameworks, including standards, policies, and processes, and ensuring compliance with industry regulations and organizational objectives.

• Leading integration efforts for key enterprise applications and platforms, ensuring seamless data exchange and functionality across systems.

• Identifying and mitigating architectural risks, ensuring that the IT infrastructure is robust, resilient, and secure.

• Promoting continuous improvement of enterprise architecture practices, frameworks, and tools to increase efficiency, reduce costs, and improve the customer experience.

• Continually working internally and externally with subject matter experts on identifying best-in-class architecture solutions for pain points common to Enterprise systems.

• Leveraging standardized architecture frameworks (TOGAF, TMForum, etc.) that drive repeatable processes, technology efficiencies and improvements, governance, and a dynamic Northstar architecture.

• Driving Application & Portfolio Rationalization recommendations to either Tolerate, Invest, Migrate, or Eliminate (Gartner TIME model) individual enterprise-level systems.

• Publishing build vs buy decisions, and determining on-prem vs cloud tenancy for relevant functions based on TCO, speed and scale, vendor maturity and support, and operational effectiveness.

• Developing and maintaining architectural documentation, including diagrams, policies, and standards into a centralized architecture repository.

• Providing technical leadership and mentorship to junior team members.

• Drive roadmapping (product and vendor-based) of IT patterns and trends for quarterly executive reviews.

• Directing engagement in Strategic Planning, Project Planning, & Ongoing Operations to ensure IT alignment with business goals.

• Fostering the creation of Business Process Maps for alignment to system architecture choices and decisions

• Holding Architecture Review Board, TechTalk, and similar presentations for mass communications.

• Partnering with business and IT stakeholders to align with business drivers and product strategy across various lines of business, and apply service-oriented architecture, microservices architecture patterns and cloud native principles to deliver architecture artifacts.

What we're looking for...

You'll need to have:

• Bachelor's degree or four or more years of work experience

• Eight or more years of relevant experience required, demonstrated through one or a combination of work and/or military experience, or specialized training.

• Experience in IT architecture, in a lead role capacity

• Proven experience with enterprise architecture frameworks (e.g. TOGAF, Zachman, FEAF, etc.)

• Strong understanding of IT security, data management, and integration strategies.

• Experience with large-scale IT transformation initiatives.

Even better if you additionally have:

• Bachelor's/Master's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field.

• Certification in Enterprise Architecture (e.g., TOGAF, Zachman, etc.)

• Experience with enterprise architecture using cloud-based platforms

• Proven ability to design and implement complex enterprise-wide solutions.

• Ability to break down complex topics into simple-to-digest information and data points, adjusted to audiences at various levels.

• Ability to facilitate group meetings/discussions

• Ability to broker solutions for issues between functional domains, senior leaders

• Excellent communication, interpersonal, and presentation skills.

• Demonstrable experience in articulating the business drivers and architectural approach/trade-offs during discussions for solution buy-in at various levels

If Verizon and this role sound like a fit for you, we encourage you to apply even if you don't meet every "even better" qualification listed above.

Verizon is an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to veteran status, disability or other legally protected characteristics.