Subject Matter Expert; SME) Enterprise Architect

Job Title:
Subject Matter Expert (SME) Enterprise Architect

Location:

Hybrid - 2 days a week on-site - Suitland, MD

Salary: 190-260K

Position Summary

We are seeking a Subject Matter Expert (SME) Enterprise Architect to join our team supporting a large-scale federal modernization program. This role owns enterprise architecture direction across business, data, application, security, and technology domains. You will be setting target-state architecture and modernization priorities, to running architecture governance and review processes, to ensuring the architecture repository and modeling practice stay current and adopted across the organization.

This is a hands-on architecture role. You'll be expected to work in real architecture artifacts and drive real decisions, not just set direction from a distance.

This is a hybrid role based out of Washington, DC. Candidates must be U.S. citizens.

• Architecture Vision & Strategy
• Assess and continuously improve the enterprise architecture framework to support the organization's mission, business, and IT objectives.
• Define target-state architecture direction and cross-domain integration priorities across business, data, application, security, and technology.
• Set modernization priorities and connect strategic architecture direction to practical, implementable designs.
• As-Is, To-Be & Transition Architecture
• Develop and maintain current-state (As-Is), target-state (To-Be), and transition architectures across business, data, application, security, and technology domains at appropriate physical, logical, solution, and technical levels.
• Maintain architecture principles, standards, reference architectures, technology standards, inventories, and roadmaps.
• Governance & Review Leadership
• Operate or support the Architecture Review Board, investment reviews, engineering reviews, design reviews, working groups, and phase-gate reviews with clear intake, criteria, decisions, and records.
• Evaluate proposed architectural deviations, document risks and impacts, and provide recommendations for approval.
• Serve as a senior architecture voice in governance forums, working directly with leadership stakeholders.
• Architecture Assessment & Modernization
• Perform architecture assessments to identify gaps, redundancy, technical debt, and opportunities for modernization, standardization, optimization, and rationalization.
• Provide recommendations for technology modernization, application rationalization, cloud adoption, and process improvement based on architecture analysis.
• Repository & Modeling Practice
• Administer and improve the enterprise architecture modeling suite (repository, models, metamodel guidance, quality rules, permissions, and workflows).
• Drive artifact inventory, remediation, migration, quality validation, training, and adoption across the organization.
• Stakeholder Coordination & Reporting
• Coordinate architecture activities with cybersecurity, data management, cloud, infrastructure, application development, and portfolio management stakeholders.
• Prepare and deliver periodic reports summarizing architecture activities, compliance status, risks, modernization initiatives, and progress toward the target architecture.

• 12+ years of experience in enterprise or solution architecture, including significant responsibility for architecture governance, standards, and cross-domain design decisions.
• Demonstrated experience developing or governing As-Is, To-Be, transition, domain, solution, and technical architectures.
• Hands-on experience with architecture review boards, compliance reviews, deviations/waivers, standards, roadmaps, and decision records.
• Proven ability to connect strategic architecture direction to practical designs, implementation gates, technical…