Architect - Technology

Why Wellmark

We are a mutual insurance company owned by our policy holders across Iowa and South Dakota, and we’ve built our reputation on over 80 years’ worth of trust. We are not motivated by profits. We are motivated by the well‑being of our friends, family, and neighbors–our members.

Wellmark is building innovative, modern solutions using cutting edge technology. We are driving organizational transformation and business strategy by empowering our technology team to innovate new and elegant solutions to enhance the customer experience. Together, we are leaning into the future, owning the outcome, and driving organizational change to transform how we work.

• Architecture and Solution Intent:
  Define and evolve logical architecture and solution intent for one or more systems and their interactions.
• Infrastructure Architecture and Platform Alignment:
  Define the infrastructure capabilities, constraints, nonfunctional requirements, and risk treatments required to support solution intent across cloud, on‑premises, network, compute, storage, runtime, identity, observability, resilience, backup, recovery, and continuity concerns.
• Upstream Shaping and Feasibility:
  Engage in discovery, intake, portfolio, and product planning before investment decisions are committed.
• Architectural Decisions:
  Lead designated architectural decisions from framing through commitment. Make trade‑offs explicit; identify decision owners and affected stakeholders; and document what was decided, why, where the decision applies, and the conditions that would cause reconsideration.
• AI and Agent Architecture:
  Determine when AI is appropriate and select architecture patterns consistent with intended use and risk.
• Standards, Guardrails, and Reuse:
  Apply and evolve enterprise principles, standards, reference architectures, approved patterns, and regulatory obligations.
• Lifecycle, Risk, and Technical Debt:
  Steward architectural integrity across introduction, change, operation, modernization, and retirement.
• Cross‑Functional Partnership:
  Partner with product management, business owners, engineering, data, security, infrastructure, network, platform, operations, compliance, and other architects.
• Evidence and Continuous Improvement:
  Maintain architecture models, decision records, risks, assumptions, standards, and conformance evidence in governed systems of record.

• Experience with cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Knowledge of microservices, APIs, and event‑driven architectures.
• Exposure to architecture frameworks (e.g., TOGAF, SAFe, Zachman).
• Experience in a regulated industry such as health insurance, healthcare, financial services, or government.
• Experience with product operating models, Lean Portfolio Management, SAFe, or comparable enterprise planning and delivery approaches.
• Experience with enterprise architecture modeling, architecture repositories, and governed architecture decision records.
• Experience defining testable architectural guardrails, fitness functions, policy‑as‑code, or delivery‑pipeline conformance checks.
• Experience with AI, machine learning, retrieval‑augmented solutions, or agent‑based systems, including evaluation, monitoring, data governance, privacy, security, and human oversight.
• Depth in one or more relevant domains, such as business architecture, data, security, integration or interoperability, application, cloud, platform, infrastructure, network, resilience, or a health‑plan value stream.
• Relevant architecture or domain certification.

• Bachelor's degree or direct and applicable work experience.
• Minimum 7 years of experience of which could be any combination of the following:
  Security application experience including program controls, processes, security tools such as encryption at rest, encryption in transit, etc.
• Minimum 4 years of cloud architecture experience, including system integration, applicationdevelopmentand system analysis.
• Proven experience designing and guiding complex technical systems. Strong understanding of software architecture principles and system integration. Experience collaborating across technical and non‑technical teams. Ability to…