IT Enterprise Architect

Reporting to the Chief Information Officer, the Enterprise Architect will serve as a trusted advisor to executive leadership, business owners, project teams, technical leaders, governance bodies, and vendors. The role will focus on enterprise alignment, architecture governance, solution review, technology lifecycle planning, risk reduction, and long-term sustainability. The Enterprise Architect will guide and coordinate domain specialists rather than assume operational ownership of every system or platform.

This position works in close partnership with the Director of Information Security, IT leadership, and agency governance bodies to ensure recommendations appropriately consider security, privacy, compliance, operational support, cost, and agency priorities.

IT Enterprise Architect Role and Responsibilities

• Manage and mature the Enterprise Architecture Program, including its governance processes, architecture standards, review practices, templates, decision records, reference architectures, roadmaps, and architecture repository.
• Partner with agency leaders and business owners to translate strategic priorities, business capabilities, service needs, and program objectives into current-state, target-state, and transition architectures.
• Establish practical architecture checkpoints within project intake, procurement, vendor review, security review, solution design, change governance, and transition-to-operations processes.
• Lead and facilitate architecture reviews for major projects, procurements, cloud services, SaaS platforms, applications, integrations, infrastructure changes, data platforms, AI-enabled solutions, and modernization initiatives.
• Document architecture decisions, conditions, exceptions, accountable owners, remediation actions, and escalation recommendations for review by the appropriate governance authority.
• Develop and maintain architecture principles, standards, design patterns, reference architectures, review criteria, technology roadmaps, and reusable decision frameworks.
• Provide architecture guidance across the Microsoft ecosystem, including Azure, Microsoft 365, identity services, data platforms, endpoint services, collaboration capabilities, security services, and AI-enabled solutions.
• Evaluate proposed technologies for business alignment, security, privacy, accessibility, operational supportability, resiliency, integration, scalability, interoperability, cost, and long-term sustainability.
• Evaluate total cost of ownership, licensing implications, vendor concentration, exit considerations, capability duplication, support models, and technology lifecycle costs when developing recommendations.
• Maintain visibility into technical debt, unsupported technologies, duplicated capabilities, architecture exceptions, lifecycle concerns, vendor dependencies, and modernization opportunities.
• Identify opportunities to standardize, consolidate, rationalize, modernize, replace, or retire technologies across the enterprise portfolio.
• Establish practical architecture guardrails for AI-enabled solutions, Copilot, and agentic automation, including approved data use, human oversight, identity and access, logging, testing, monitoring, exception handling, operational ownership, and records-management considerations.
• Promote secure application delivery and appropriate DevOps and DevSecOps architecture practices, including CI/CD, release governance, testing, rollback, monitoring, and operational handoff considerations.
• Partner with Information Security, IT Operations, Application Development, Data and Analytics, PMO, Procurement, Legal, Privacy, vendors, business owners, and executive leadership.
• Communicate architecture recommendations, risks, dependencies, options, and tradeoffs in clear, business-focused language for both technical and executive audiences.
• Improve architecture review and documentation practices through processes that are practical, repeatable, transparent, and measurable.

IT Enterprise Architect Role Boundaries and Decision Model

• The Enterprise Architect is expected to provide enterprise-wide leadership, facilitation, analysis, standards, and recommendations. The role is not expected to serve as the hands-on engineer or operational owner for every platform. Domain teams and system owners retain responsibility for detailed engineering, implementation, administration, and ongoing operations within their areas.
• Architecture recommendations, conditions, and exceptions will be documented and escalated to the appropriate governance or executive authority when formal approval is required., * Assess the current enterprise architecture capability, priority risks, and maturity gaps.
• Establish working relationships with business, technology, security, data, procurement, privacy, legal, project, and vendor stakeholders.
• Inventory existing standards, diagrams, roadmaps, decision records, exceptions, review practices, and architecture artifacts.
• Recommend an initial Enterprise Architecture operating model and prioritized maturity plan.

Within 6 Months:

• Implement repeatable architecture intake, review, decision-record, and exception-management practices.
• Publish priority architecture standards, review criteria, and reference patterns for our most important technology domains.
• Establish visibility into major technical debt, unsupported technologies, duplicated capabilities, vendor dependencies, and lifecycle risks.
• Integrate practical architecture checkpoints into significant projects, procurements, solution reviews, and operational transitions.

Within 12 Months:

• Deliver current-state, target-state, and transition roadmaps for agreed priority domains or platforms.
• Demonstrate consistent enterprise architecture involvement in significant technology initiatives and procurements.
• Identify actionable modernization, consolidation, risk-reduction, supportability, and cost-management opportunities.
• Provide a practical Enterprise Architecture scorecard that communicates outcomes, risks, exceptions, and progress to IT leadership.

• Ten or more years of progressively responsible IT experience, including at least five years in enterprise, solution, cloud, application, infrastructure, data, integration architecture, or related technology leadership roles with enterprise-level responsibilities.
• Practical experience engineering, administering, implementing, or supporting enterprise technical services and translating that experience into architecture decisions, standards, support models, and implementation guidance.
• Strong working knowledge of the Microsoft ecosystem, including Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365 and their associated cloud, identity, collaboration, security, management, and productivity capabilities.
• Strong working knowledge of enterprise integration architecture, including APIs, middleware, ETL, event-driven integration, data exchange, and related patterns.
• Experience evaluating solutions across cloud, infrastructure, SaaS, applications, integrations, data platforms, identity services, and operational support environments.
• Experience managing or facilitating architecture governance, technology standards, solution reviews, roadmap development, decision records, exception processes, or architecture documentation.
• Ability to develop and clearly communicate architecture diagrams, design recommendations, standards, risks, dependencies, options, and technology tradeoffs.
• Ability to evaluate designs, ask the right questions, identify enterprise impacts, and guide domain specialists toward secure, supportable, and sustainable decisions.
• Strong communication, facilitation, analytical, negotiation, and stakeholder coordination skills across technical, business, vendor, and executive audiences., * Experience in state government, the public sector, or another regulated environment.
• Familiarity with NIST SP 800-53, FIPS 199, CJIS, SSA, GTA, privacy, records-management, or comparable security and compliance expectations.
• Experience with Microsoft Fabric, Power BI, Salesforce, ServiceNow, enterprise integrations, identity governance, SIEM/SOAR, AI-enabled platforms, DevSecOps, or comparable enterprise capabilities.
• Experience with technology portfolio rationalization, lifecycle planning, technical debt management, total cost of ownership analysis, or vendor technology assessments.
• TOGAF, Microsoft Azure Solutions Architect, cloud, security, or comparable architecture certifications are helpful but not required.
• Experience supporting architecture review committees, technology governance boards, project governance, procurement reviews, or enterprise technology planning.