Enterprise Architect - Application Architecture

Responsibilities

• Define, evolve, and communicate Empower's application architecture strategy , principles, standards, and roadmap in alignment with enterprise priorities and business goals.
• Lead the Application Architecture Guild and drive adoption of architecture standards, best practices, reusable patterns, reference implementations, quick starts, and engineering guardrails.
• Provide technical leadership for modern application architecture , including cloud-native, distributed, event-driven, API-first, and domain-aligned architectures.
• Guide engineering and product teams in designing scalable, secure, resilient, observable, and maintainable applications and services.
• Partner with business, product, engineering, security, infrastructure, and delivery leaders to align architecture decisions with business outcomes, risk requirements, and operational needs.
• Establish and govern application architecture principles covering areas such as integration, service design, data flow, resiliency, performance, security, observability, and platform usage.
• Lead architecture reviews and decision-making forums, clearly articulating trade-offs, risks, dependencies, and recommendations.
• Influence teams across the organization to adopt target-state architecture patterns and engineering best practices through education, coaching, and practical enablement.
• Create and maintain reference architectures, architecture playbooks, standards documentation, and reusable implementation assets.
• Drive consistency in architecture decisions across portfolios while enabling appropriate flexibility for product and domain-specific needs.
• Evaluate emerging technologies, tools, and frameworks for applicability to Empower's application landscape and recommend pragmatic adoption paths.
• Collaborate with enterprise architecture peers to ensure application architecture aligns with broader enterprise, data, security, and infrastructure strategies.
• Support modernization initiatives, including legacy rationalization, application decomposition, cloud adoption, integration modernization, and platform optimization.
• Champion architecture practices that improve developer experience, speed to market, operational excellence, and long-term maintainability.
• Provide thought leadership, advocacy, assurance, and continuous improvement for the application architecture discipline across the enterprise.
• Required Qualifications
• 15+ years of experience in software engineering, systems development, and technology delivery, including significant experience designing and evolving enterprise-scale applications.
• 7+ years of experience in architecture roles with deep hands-on expertise in application and solution architecture across multiple technology domains.
• Proven experience defining and implementing application ar

Benefits

Additional Information

Our vision for the future is based on the idea that transforming financial lives starts by giving our people the freedom to transform their own. We have a flexible work environment, and fluid career paths. We not only encourage but celebrate internal mobility. We also recognize the importance of purpose, well-being, and work-life balance. Within Empower and our communities, we work hard to create a welcoming and inclusive environment, and our associates dedicate thousands of hours to volunteering for causes that matter most to them. Chart your own path and grow your career while helping more customers achieve financial freedom. Empower Yourself. The Enterprise Architect, Application Architecture will play a critical leadership role in shaping and advancing Empower's application architecture strategy. This individual will operate at the intersection of business strategy and deep technical execution, defining the application architecture vision, guiding engineering teams toward modern architecture patterns, and influencing the broader organization to adopt sound architectural principles and best practices. This role requires a highly technical architect who can lead through expertise, credibility, and collaboration. The ideal candidate will drive architecture standards across the enterprise, establish practical guidance for delivery teams, and ensure application platforms and solutions are scalable, secure, resilient, maintainable, and aligned to business priorities. A key responsibility of this role is leading the Application Architecture Guild , which is responsible for defining and advancing application architecture standards, principles, patterns, best practices, reference architectures, quick starts, and implementation guidance across Empower. This leader will partner closely with Engineering, Infrastructure, Security, Product, Delivery, PMO, Data, and business leaders to improve architectural maturity and enable consistent, high-quality solution delivery. The ideal candidate is comfortable working in a fast-paced environment, navigating ambiguity, influencing across organizational boundaries, and balancing strategic thinking with hands-on technical leadership.

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