Enterprise Architect

Enterprise Architect

Zions Bancorporation's Enterprise Technology and Operations (ETO) team is transforming what it means to work for a financial institution. With a commitment to technology and innovation, we have been providing our community, clients, and colleagues with the best experience possible for over 150 years.

The Opportunity:

We are seeking an experienced Enterprise Architect who combines deep, foundational architectural rigor with high-level strategic business acumen. At Zions, this role operates at the "sweet spot" of scale: we are a premier $90B+ western regional bank facing complex, enterprise-level engineering challenges, yet nimble enough that a talented architect will see the direct, tangible impact of their decisions.

You will own the foundational target-state architectures across our business, data, application, infrastructure, and security domains. Building upon that foundation, you will act as a strategic partner to our business executives—translating long-term business goals into dynamic technology roadmaps, modernizing our technology governance to be an enabler rather than a blocker, and safely driving our enterprise AI strategy.

Key Responsibilities:

• Develop, maintain, and mature target-state architectures and strategic roadmaps across business, data, application, infrastructure, and security domains.
• Define core architectural principles, integration patterns (e.g., API-led, event-driven), and technology standards to ensure scalable, resilient, and standardized solutions across the enterprise.
• Manage baseline architectures to actively identify and reduce technical debt, driving continuous application portfolio simplification and rationalization.
• Guide the technical design of complex solutions, ensuring alignment with enterprise architecture standards and seamless integration across transactional, analytical, and core banking systems.

• Lead and participate in Architecture Review Boards (ARB) and Technology Strategy Boards, enforcing compliance to technology and regulatory standards.
• Actively modernize and simplify Zions' Technology Governance. Respect the critical nature of our regulatory environment while evolving our review frameworks into an "enablement-first" model that uses automated guardrails and playbooks to accelerate delivery teams.

• Partner directly with executive business leaders to define capability models and perform value stream analysis.
• Act as a trusted advisor in portfolio management and investment prioritization, ensuring our technology spend is ruthlessly aligned to our highest-value business capabilities.
• Guide enterprise sourcing strategies, objectively evaluating market solutions against internal capabilities to maximize investment value and operational agility.
• Optimize executive-level decision-making by embedding rigorous trade-off and risk analysis into the architectural discipline, ensuring leaders have clear visibility into the long-term impacts of technology investments.

• Govern the enterprise adoption of emerging technologies, including Generative and Agentic AI. Establish the architectural boundaries, data privacy guardrails, and integration patterns necessary to safely deploy AI in a highly regulated environment.
• Continuously monitor industry trends and emerging platforms, evaluating their potential value to Zions' digital transformation.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Technology Management, or a related field.
• 8+ years of proven experience in enterprise architecture, solutions architecture, or IT leadership, with a strong track record of designing complex, enterprise-scale systems.
• Deep, hands-on understanding of modern architectural paradigms, including cloud computing (AWS/Azure), CI/CD, microservices, containerization, and data lake modernization.
• Demonstrated ability to produce strategically focused written content, architectural artifacts, and formal presentations for technical and non-technical audiences.

• Executive Gravitas & Translation:
  Proven ability to sit with business leaders, understand their operational goals, and translate those objectives into a coherent technology strategy without relying on technical jargon.
• Diplomatic Disruption & High EQ:
  Strong emotional intelligence to challenge legacy thinking, negotiate conflicting priorities, and drive transformation through influence and collaboration rather than mandates.
• Comfort with Ambiguity & Systems Thinking:
  The ability to connect dots across highly siloed departments, resolve conflicting requirements, and bring order to complex business and technical challenges.

Nice to Have

Experience:

• Experience in banking or other financial services sectors (e.g., knowledge of core banking systems such as TCS BaNCS, FIS, Fiserv).
• Working understanding and certifications in related frameworks such as TOGAF and BIAN.
• Experience using formal EA repository software (e.g., Bizz Design, Orbus).
• Knowledge of regulatory direction and industry-related frameworks (e.g., FFIEC controls) in…