VP of IT and Architecture

VP of IT Applications and Architecture Role Summary

Horizons is hiring a Leader, Custom Applications, Website, AI & Enterprise Architecture to own the end‑to‑end technology delivery and reliability stack for the enterprise. This leader is accountable for application lifecycle management (run + change), release coordination, integration, QA, and the platform foundation (hosting, SRE/observability, monitoring), while also leading Enterprise Architecture to ensure technology choices are scalable, secure, and cost‑effective.

This role sits at the center of execution-translating business priorities into delivered capability, maintaining stable operations, and creating a pragmatic architecture discipline that enables speed without chaos.

• Own delivery and operations for Horizons' custom application portfolio (and application‑layer accountability for key vendor‑supported applications, where scoped).
• Establish predictable delivery from intake through sizing, prioritization, build, test, release, and operations.
• Drive operational excellence across incident, problem, and change management with clear service ownership and continuous improvement.
• Build a "no surprises" operating model with defined service owners, SLAs/SLOs, and visible backlog and capacity management.

• Own website and platform engineering for performance, reliability, conversion, and content velocity, partnering with Marketing/Growth as needed.
• Implement a measurement‑driven optimization loop, including SEO/SEM technical hygiene, performance monitoring, A/B testing enablement, and page speed/Core Web Vitals.
• Ensure secure and compliant web delivery through disciplined patching, vulnerability management, WAF/CDN patterns, and release controls.

• Own integration strategy and delivery across APIs, middleware, eventing, and system‑to‑system reliability.
• Standardize integration patterns and tooling to reduce brittle point integrations and improve observability (shared logging and traceability for critical flows).
• Establish clear ownership boundaries with Data Platform and Data Engineering, including integration versus pipelines, source of truth, lineage, and stewardship.

• Define and execute the AI strategy for the Applications + Integration + Platform domain: where we will use AI, where we won't, and how we'll scale value responsibly.
• Stand up an "AI delivery factory" for rapid experimentation and productionization: with standard patterns for building and shipping: data access, model selection (build/buy), prompt and workflow design, testing, release, and monitoring.
• Deliver high‑impact AI use cases in partnership with business leaders (examples): agent assist for service desk, automated ticket triage, knowledge retrieval (RAG) for field/service ops, document ingestion, forecasting support, QA automation, and developer productivity.
• Establish AI architecture standards and guardrails
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  • Approved platforms/tools, integration patterns, and reference architectures (RAG, agentic workflows, embeddings, model gateways).
  • Clear boundaries with Data/Analytics for data sourcing, stewardship, lineage, and MLOps responsibilities.

• Establish architecture guardrails that enable speed, including reference architectures, standards, and lightweight decision records.
• Lead solution reviews for major initiatives to ensure scalability, security alignment, supportability, and cost discipline.
• Drive technology portfolio rationalization across applications, integration approaches, and hosting patterns to reduce accidental complexity.

• Manage key vendors and system integrators supporting applications, hosting, monitoring, and integration with clear outcome, SLA, and commercial accountability.
• Own budget inputs for the domain, including run/change spend, unit economics where possible, and cost‑to‑serve improvements.
• Reduce waste through rationalization, right‑sizing, license…