
Senior Director of Data Architecture
Empower
full-time
Posted on:
Location Type: Remote
Location: United States
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Salary
💰 $151,800 - $220,050 per year
Job Level
Tech Stack
About the role
- Lead, develop, and retain a high-performing architecture team through hiring, coaching, performance management, and career development
- Establish role clarity, expectations, and growth paths for architects, ensuring consistent practice maturity and strong engagement
- Define and evolve current-state and target-state architectures aligned to business strategy, regulatory expectations, and long-term sustainability
- Establish and maintain enterprise and domain reference architectures, standards, and guiding principles that enable consistent solution design
- Lead architectural governance processes, including architecture reviews, decision records, and lifecycle guidance for technology adoption and retirement
- Ensure architectural components and standards are fully documented, including value proposition, current and target state, operational considerations, KPIs, and decision rationale
- Enable delivery teams through reusable patterns, templates, guardrails, and clear architectural guidance that reduces friction and rework
- Provide architectural leadership across data architecture, data management, data security, data delivery, advanced analytics enablement, and business architecture alignment
- Partner with engineering, product, infrastructure, security, risk, and business stakeholders to align architecture decisions with delivery and operational outcomes
- Drive modernization efforts that reduce technical debt, simplify integrations, and improve system resilience and scalability
- Guide API-first and event-driven integration approaches that improve reuse, consistency, and observability
- Promote security, privacy, and resiliency by design through architectural standards and review practices
- Support cloud maturity through cost-aware, operationally sound architecture decisions and platform enablement
- Evaluate emerging technologies and innovation opportunities, converting successful proofs into scalable, governed capabilities
- Plan and manage team capacity, prioritization, and investment alignment to meet strategic objectives and delivery commitments
Requirements
- 10+ years of experience in software development
- 4+ years successfully managing a team(s), including developing, motivating, and directing people as they work.
- Demonstrated experience leading people, including coaching, developing talent, setting expectations, and driving accountability for outcomes
- Significant experience in enterprise, solution, or domain architecture within complex environments, ideally regulated financial services
- Demonstrated ability to define target-state architecture and drive adoption through standards, governance, and roadmaps
- Strong architectural breadth with depth in data and integration concepts, including APIs, event-driven patterns, and cross-cutting concerns such as security and resiliency
- Experience establishing and operating architectural governance, including tradeoff analysis and decision facilitation
- Proven ability to influence and align senior stakeholders across engineering, product, infrastructure, security, and business teams
- Ability to translate complex technical concepts into clear business outcomes, risks, and value statements
- Strong written and verbal communication skills suitable for executive and senior stakeholder audiences
- Bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering, information systems, or equivalent practical experience
Benefits
- Medical, dental, vision and life insurance
- Retirement savings – 401(k) plan with generous company matching contributions (up to 6%), financial advisory services, potential company discretionary contribution, and a broad investment lineup
- Tuition reimbursement up to $5,250/year
- Business-casual environment that includes the option to wear jeans
- Generous paid time off upon hire – including a paid time off program plus ten paid company holidays and three floating holidays each calendar year
- Paid volunteer time — 16 hours per calendar year
- Leave of absence programs – including paid parental leave, paid short- and long-term disability, and Family and Medical Leave (FMLA)
- Business Resource Groups (BRGs) – BRGs facilitate inclusion and collaboration across our business internally and throughout the communities where we live, work and play. BRGs are open to all.
Applicant Tracking System Keywords
Tip: use these terms in your resume and cover letter to boost ATS matches.
Hard skills
software developmententerprise architecturesolution architecturedomain architecturedata architecturedata managementAPI integrationevent-driven architecturearchitectural governancecloud architecture
Soft skills
team managementcoachingtalent developmentsetting expectationsdriving accountabilityinfluencing stakeholderscommunicationstrategic planningproblem-solvingcollaboration