Enterprise Application Architect

Enterprise Application Architect

Long term contract

Location: Onsite Vienna, VA

Local candidates within 40 miles | F2F Interview Required

Job description:

Role Summary

• The Enterprise Architect is a senior technology leader responsible for shaping enterprise architecture strategy and translating business priorities into practical technology roadmaps and solutions.
• The role serves as a trusted advisor to business and technology leadership, providing architectural direction across complex initiatives.
• This individual will drive alignment to enterprise standards while balancing business value, scalability, risk, and speed of execution.

• Act as a key advisor to Business Unit and Functional leadership teams and as a key contributor to the Enterprise Architecture (EA) strategy.
• Develop a deep understanding of business priorities, strategic needs, and roadmaps, and work collaboratively with business and technology leaders to solve complex, business-critical architecture challenges, build capabilities, and shape technology strategy.
• Serve as a primary architecture domain expert within the accountable capability area.
• Lead the development of architecture strategies, roadmaps, standards, and guardrails.
• Apply business capability models, technology reference models, and functional roadmaps to guide investment decisions and enable execution of business and technology strategy.
• Represent capability and business domain needs within Enterprise Architecture.
• Assess emerging and existing technologies through a business-value lens, determine their relevance, and help translate innovation into practical enterprise capabilities.
• Influence and contribute to Enterprise Architecture and technology strategy, maintaining an enterprise-wide view of value streams, business capabilities, technology dependencies, and architecture roadmaps.
• Drive pragmatic alignment with technology standards and EA Guiding Principles while enabling business outcomes.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead architecture for complex initiatives requiring deep expertise within one or more architecture domains, providing clear architectural direction, designs, and implementation guidance.
• Act as a trusted advisor to Product Line and business leaders, helping address complex business and technology challenges through architecture, strategy, and practical solution design.
• Lead solution architecture across projects and products, ensuring alignment with enterprise strategy and standards while balancing business requirements, speed, scalability, cost, risk, and long-term maintainability.
• Contribute to the development of architecture principles, standards, and decision frameworks. Identify material exceptions to enterprise standards, assess business and technology implications, and drive appropriate resolution.
• Review and define architectural, security, integration, data, and technology requirements needed to support enterprise solutions.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and recommend opportunities to improve business capability, cost effectiveness, scalability, resilience, and technology flexibility.
• Develop, document, and communicate technology investment and architecture roadmaps, including modernization priorities, technology lifecycle decisions, and opportunities for cost optimization.
• Partner with business, engineering, product, delivery, data, security, and infrastructure teams to translate architecture strategy into executable solutions.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor s Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related discipline.
• Minimum 12 years of IT experience, with significant experience in enterprise architecture, solution architecture, engineering leadership, or related senior technology roles.
• Significant depth across business architecture and multiple technical architecture domains, including applications, integration, information and data, cloud/infrastructure, and cybersecurity.
• Strong business acumen and the ability to connect technology decisions directly to business priorities, operating requirements, risk, and measurable outcomes.
• Familiarity with information management practices, regulatory requirements, data privacy, cybersecurity, and governance requirements relevant to enterprise environments.
• Strong knowledge of modern enterprise technology ecosystems, including SaaS, IaaS, PaaS, APIs, ERP platforms, microservices, event-driven architectures, integration patterns, data platforms, and advanced analytics.
• Ability to define and communicate a compelling, business-enabling technology vision and articulate its value to executive, business, and technical stakeholders.
• Proven ability to translate strategic vision into actionable roadmaps and target-state architectures spanning people, process, data, and technology.
• Demonstrated ability to lead and influence cross-functional teams, gain stakeholder alignment, challenge assumptions constructively, and establish shared ownership for outcomes.
• Strong change leadership capabilities, with demonstrated success driving technology and organizational transformation through effective communication, planning, and execution.
• Ability to operate with significant autonomy, make sound decisions in ambiguous environments, and drive business and technology outcomes while remaining aligned with the evolving Enterprise Architecture strategy.
• Ability to manage multiple priorities with urgency while maintaining a rigorous, fact-based, and structured approach to problem solving.
• Demonstrated ability to establish trusted-advisor relationships with senior business and technology stakeholders.
• Proven ability to work effectively across disciplines and with stakeholders possessing varying levels of business and technical expertise.
• Executive-level written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to simplify complex technology topics and clearly articulate recommendations, trade-offs, and decisions.
• Experience with Agile delivery approaches, including Scrum / SAFe, DevOps, and modern engineering practices.
• Strong understanding of the strategic technologies the organization will need to adopt and operationalize over the next three to five years.
• Demonstrated ability to develop architecture guidance, standards, reference architectures, and reusable patterns that enable innovation while improving consistency and execution.