Director, Enterprise Architecture

The Director, Enterprise Architecture is responsible for defining and leading enterprise-wide architecture strategy, standards, governance, and target-state technology direction. This role partners with business, product, engineering, security, infrastructure, and operations leaders to ensure technology decisions align with enterprise priorities, approved standards, and long-term business capabilities. The position leads architecture oversight for major cross-functional initiatives, drives modernization across applications, platforms, data, cloud, security, and Dev Ops, and develops architecture talent while improving the maturity of the Enterprise Architecture practice.

Define and drive enterprise architecture strategy, standards, governance, reference architectures, approved patterns, and technology roadmaps.

Translate business objectives and complex requirements into scalable, secure, resilient, and cost-effective technology solutions.

Lead architecture reviews, establish guardrails, manage architecture exceptions, and ensure solution delivery aligns with enterprise standards.

Develop and socialize target-state architectures, operating models, modernization plans, and strategic roadmaps across business and technology stakeholders.

Drive modernization initiatives across cloud platforms, applications, integration patterns, data architecture, security, observability, CI/CD, and Dev Ops practices.

Partner with executive leadership, product teams, engineering, security, infrastructure, data, and operations to deliver integrated enterprise technology solutions.

Provide architecture leadership for major enterprise programs involving application development, cloud transformation, integration, data migration, platform engineering, and operational resiliency.

Evaluate emerging technologies and guide proofs of concept or proofs of value to validate architectural decisions, reduce delivery risk, and inform enterprise standards.

Build, mentor, and develop architects and engineering leaders while fostering a culture of collaboration, innovation, accountability, and engineering excellence.

Contribute to the growth and maturity of the Enterprise Architecture practice through reusable frameworks, documented standards, decision records, best practices, and knowledge sharing.

15+ years of experience in software engineering, enterprise architecture, solution architecture, or technology leadership with progressive leadership responsibility.

Experience managing, mentoring, and developing architects, engineers, and technical leaders.

Deep experience designing distributed systems, microservices, APIs, event-driven architectures, high-availability platforms, high-throughput systems, and low-latency services.

Proven success delivering enterprise-scale technology transformation, application modernization, cloud adoption, and greenfield solution delivery.

Strong understanding of enterprise architecture domains, including application, data, technology, security, privacy, identity and access management, scalability, resiliency, observability, CI/CD, platform engineering, and Dev Ops.

Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional teams, influence executive stakeholders, and make practical technology tradeoffs across competing priorities.

Strong business acumen with the ability to translate complex business needs into clear architectural direction and executable technology roadmaps.

Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain complex technical concepts in business terms.

Strategic enterprise thinker with the ability to connect technology direction to business outcomes.

Strong people leader who develops technical talent and builds high-performing architecture teams.

Clear communicator who can simplify complex topics for executive, business, and technical audiences.

Collaborative leader who builds alignment across product, engineering, operations, security, infrastructure, and business teams.

Practical decision-maker who balances speed, quality, cost, resiliency, security, and long-term architectural direction.

Strong consultative approach with experience facilitating executive-level discussions, tradeoff decisions, and governance forums.

Experience in financial services, Fin Tech, payments, or other highly regulated industries.

Familiarity with TOGAF, SAFe, architecture review boards, technology governance, and enterprise architecture operating models.

Experience leading architecture modernization in cloud-native, API-first, event-driven, and platform-oriented environments.

Experience establishing architecture standards, reusable patterns, reference architectures, governance forums, and architecture decision records.

HYBRID - Western Union values in-person collaboration, problem solving, and ideation whenever possible. We believe this fosters common ways of working and supports how we execute initiatives for our customers. The expectation is to…