Lead Director Software Development; Architecture, Client

Position: Lead Director Software Development (Architecture, Client Experience)
We're building a world of health around every individual - shaping a more connected, convenient and compassionate health experience. At CVS Health, you'll be surrounded by passionate colleagues who care deeply, innovate with purpose, hold ourselves accountable and prioritize safety and quality in everything we do. Join us and be part of something bigger - helping to simplify health care one person, one family and one community at a time.

Position Summary The Lead Director - Architecture, Client Experience owns the end‑to‑end architecture vision and execution for highly complex, enterprise‑scale initiatives across Adjudication and Client Experience platforms, partnering closely with business leaders, product management, engineering, security, and enterprise architecture teams.

AI is an integral and mandatory component of all solution designs. The Lead Director will ensure that AI‑assisted, data‑driven, and intelligent capabilities are intentionally evaluated and embedded by default-not added later-across platforms, workflows, and developer experiences.

The Lead Director will establish and scale a technology incubation and innovation function, driving the identification, validation, and adoption of advanced architectures-including AI/ML, Generative AI, agentic workflows, cloud‑native platforms, event‑driven integration frameworks, and intelligent automation.

This is a hands‑on architecture leadership role requiring deep technical credibility, strong people leadership, and the ability to influence strategy while staying close to design and implementation.

Key Responsibilities Lead, manage, and mentor a team Architects, setting clear expectations for architecture quality, consistency, and outcomes

Own architecture standards, guiding principles, and review processes, ensuring AI‑first and automation‑first thinking is applied consistently across all solution designs

Provide hands‑on architecture oversight, design reviews, and technical guidance for Tier‑1 and strategic initiatives, explicitly validating AI, data, and intelligence opportunities

Drive reuse of platforms, patterns, shared services, and AI capabilities to reduce complexity and accelerate delivery

Lead the development of end‑to‑end, AI‑enabled solution architectures for highly complex, cross‑domain PBM initiatives

Ensure all solution designs evaluate AI assisted decisioning, Automation and intelligent workflows & Data driven insights and observability

Perform and guide Buy vs Build vs Partner analyses, including AI platforms, models, and services, using qualitative and quantitative inputs to make defensible recommendations

Develop and maintain reference architectures for cloud‑native, event‑driven, API‑first, microservices‑based, and AI‑enabled solutions

Partner with application, platform, and SRE teams to resolve architectural bottlenecks, including scalability, performance, resilience, integration, and operational intelligence

Drive AI‑first, automation‑first architecture, reducing manual processes across development, operations, and business workflows

Guide architects and teams in designing intelligent automation solutions, including:
Agentic workflows, Event‑driven orchestration

Lead modernization initiatives focused on technical debt reduction, legacy optimization, and cloud migration, embedding intelligence into modernized platforms

Ensure architectures incorporate security, observability, Responsible AI, and operational readiness by design

Partner closely with business leaders, product management, engineering, data science, security, and EA teams to translate AI capabilities into business outcomes

Present architecture strategies, AI prototypes, and emerging technology capabilities to executive leadership through compelling narratives and demos

Coach and develop architects to be AI‑literate, cloud‑native, and business‑aware technology leaders

Required Qualifications
10+ years of overall design and development experience, including enterprise‑scale solution architecture7+ years of hands‑on cloud architecture experience, primarily in Azure, with solid experience in GCPDeep expertise in software architecture patterns, including Domain‑Driven Design,…