Head of Architecture, Direct Platform

About the Role

Morningstar's mission is to empower investor success. At the heart of that mission is the Direct Platform, which delivers the data, research, analytics, and software solutions relied upon by investors worldwide. As the scale, complexity, and pace of technological change continue to accelerate, Morningstar is investing in the modernization of its platforms, architecture, and engineering capabilities to power the next generation of investor experiences.

The Head of Architecture is the senior-most architecture leader responsible for defining and executing the long-term technology vision for the platform, ensuring architecture decisions enable business growth, scalability, innovation, and operational excellence. This role serves as a key partner to executive leadership, influencing technology investment priorities and shaping the future state of the organization’s products, platforms, data, and cloud ecosystem.

Leading a small team of approximately six architects, the Head of Architecture will establish enterprise architecture standards, govern major technology decisions, and drive modernization initiatives that improve agility, resilience, developer productivity, and speed to market. The role spans application, cloud, integration, and data architecture, with accountability for reducing technical debt, enabling platform scalability, and ensuring technology capabilities align with strategic business objectives.

This leader will work closely with Product, Engineering, Infrastructure, and Security teams to evolve the technology operating model and accelerate delivery of high-impact business outcomes. They will champion the responsible adoption of emerging technologies, including AI and automation, while building a high-performing architecture function that balances innovation, governance, and long-term organizational capability.

• Define and maintain the target-state Direct Platform architecture aligned to business priorities, product strategy, and long-term growth objectives.
• Develop and execute multi-year architecture and modernization roadmaps that reduce technical debt, simplify the technology landscape, and improve scalability, resiliency, maintainability, and operational efficiency.
• Establish enterprise architecture principles, reference architectures, technology standards, and cloud strategy across applications, data, infrastructure, and platform services.
• Lead evaluation of existing systems and technologies, identifying opportunities for consolidation, standardization, modernization, and adoption of cloud-native capabilities.
• Serve as the final escalation point for significant architectural decisions and trade-offs, balancing speed, scalability, resiliency, security, customer experience, and total cost of ownership.
• Establish and monitor architecture success metrics tied to business outcomes, including speed-to-market, platform reliability, operational efficiency, technology cost optimization, and customer experience.

• Facilitate alignment with Product, Engineering, Data, Security, Infrastructure, and Operations teams.
• Lead cross-functional architecture reviews for major initiatives and strategic investments.
• Influence technology investment planning and capital allocation decisions, including development of business cases and financial modeling for major architecture investments.
• Provide architectural direction and executive oversight of strategic vendor and partner technology relationships.
• Partner with Product and Engineering leadership to evolve organizational structures, delivery models, and platform operating practices that improve delivery velocity and developer effectiveness.
• Act as a trusted advisor to executive leadership on technology strategy, platform investment priorities, transformation risks, and emerging technology opportunities, including AI-enabled capabilities.

• Lead and mentor a small team of senior architects, working alongside them on design and delivery.
• Foster a culture of technical excellence, collaboration, accountability, and innovation.
• Develop architectural capability across the organization through coaching, technical thought leadership, and communities of practice that promote consistency and knowledge sharing.
• Build long-term organizational capability through talent assessment, succession planning, coaching, and development of future…