Sr Director Architecture - Train Operations - Remote

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As we move America’s workforce toward the future, Amtrak connects businesses and communities across the country. We employ more than 20,000 diverse, energetic professionals in a variety of career fields throughout the United States. The safety of our passengers, our employees, the public and our operating environment is our priority, and the success of our railroad is due to our employees.

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Our values of ‘Do the Right Thing, Excel Together and Put Customers First’ are at the heart of what matters most to us, and our Core Capabilities, ‘Building Trust, Accountability, Effective Communication, Customer Focus, and Proactive Safety & Security’ are what every employee needs to know and do to be most impactful at Amtrak. By living the Amtrak values, focusing on our capabilities, and actively embracing and fostering diverse ideas, backgrounds, and perspectives, together we will honor our past and make Amtrak a company of the future.

Job Summary

The Sr. Director Architecture - Train Operations is responsible for providing visionary senior architecture leadership to ensure technology investments are in alignment with corporate goals and its ability to move towards the future in an evolving business environment. As a Digital Technology senior leader, this role will utilize communication, guidance, and governance processes to maximize return on technology investment, and reduce time to capability, while minimizing operational costs. The Sr. Director Architecture will use visionary strategic thinking to choose technology capabilities, strategize and build around them to solve corporate problems.

As part of the DT management team the senior director will be responsible for communicating train operations technology target state, roadmap and change progress to senior leadership and other stakeholders. They will also use their communication and influence skills to promote awareness and understanding of architecture principles across the organization, evangelizing for strategic enterprise change, executing strategy, technical senior leadership.

As a senior people leader they will provide direction and development of leaders and teams to move architecture and business objectives forward.

Essential Functions

• Set up and provide senior leadership steering for the architectural vision for core enterprise capabilities and aligning patterns to allow for consistency and reuse
• Govern and direct enterprise principles, patterns and guidance that help in technology infrastructure, how applications are built, deployed, and maintained to align with strategic needs and maximizing technology investments
• Provide Oversight and Governance to the current, interim and potential future state of key architecture domains value aligned with the organization's overall goals and objectives.
• Ensure the reference architectures, standards, and guidelines of the organization's technology is safe, secure, stable and compliant with industry standards.
• Direct enterprise-wide, transformational leadership to drive adoption and re-use of the preferred resources, processes and technology across the company.
• Champion organizational design, enterprise strategy, innovation leadership for the architecture practice
• Lead and mentor a team of architects, providing guidance and fostering a culture of excellence.
• Create and provide senior leadership steering of strategic roadmaps and comprehensive plans that outline how the Digital Technology architecture will evolve to support the business strategy over time and ensure DT initiatives are prioritized based on their expected business value and strategic importance.
• Guide Investment Decisions Aligning technology plans and investments to business vision and strategy that is necessary to ensure we are building the right things.
• Provide senior leadership steering in the design, governance, and oversight for implementing robust, scalable, and efficient architectural solutions for domain business problems.
• Guide and govern the translation of complex technical ideas into digestible concepts for both technical teams and non-technical stakeholders. Act as a leadership liaison for architecture best practices between digital technology and business teams to ensure alignment and understanding.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, data and intelligence or related field with 15+ year’s relevant architecture experience or equivalent work experience.
• Experience creating significant business value realization with $1B+ or more enterprises as an architect providing vision and choosing platforms moving organizations forward and scaled for expanding future initiatives.
• 11+ years of relevant technical and business managerial experience with 2 to 3 years leading an Architecture Practice area.
• Requires leadership experience in managing architecture teams and influencing executive level management and key stakeholders.
• Requires demonstrated ability to manage multiple architecture engagement and effectively plan and use staff to ensure the architecture view.
• Previous experience shaping enterprise architecture vision and leading an org-wide transformation and culture shift to that vision
• Must possess strong communication and interpersonal skills, work well with others in an integrated team environment, and must be self-motivated.
• Must possess a mastery of business acumen
• Relationship building and collaboration skills across diverse and matrixed stakeholders and customers.
• Ability to surface, prioritize, and balance priorities across multiple stakeholders.
• Excellent problem-solving and analytical skills, including experience leveraging data to inform decision-making.
• Passenger Rail Operations Architecture: Fellow-level expertise defining target-state architectures and capability roadmaps for large-scale, mission-critical day-of-train operations across passenger rail networks.
• Crew, Yard, and Consist Management: Deep domain knowledge designing integrated capabilities for crew planning and assignment, yard operations, equipment and consist management, and operational readiness.
• Unified Train Tracking and Predictive Intelligence: Experience architecting real-time train tracking and status platforms that combine operational data to deliver predictive ETA/ETD, disruption awareness, and actionable decision support.
• Schedule Management and Service Recovery: Expertise in operational schedule management, real-time re-planning, conflict resolution, and service recovery across complex passenger rail environments.
• Optimization, Simulation, and Decision Science: Proven ability to apply optimization, simulation, digital-twin, and advanced analytics capabilities to crew, yard, consist, schedule, and network operating decisions.
• Train Movement and Dispatch: Strong architecture experience with train movement, dispatching, traffic management, route and resource conflict management, and safety-critical operational integrations.
• Rail Ecosystem Integration: Experience establishing secure, resilient, standards-based data exchange and partner communications with host railroads, state sponsors, commuter agencies, and other operating partners.
• Resilient Real-Time Platforms: Demonstrated expertise architecting highly available, scalable, observable, and cybersecure event-driven platforms spanning IT/OT systems, edge environments, control centers, and cloud services.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s degree in business or related field
• Travel and Transportation experience or relevant technology domain experience
• Experience with governance, risk, regulatory and compliance.
• The Architect’s skills and knowledge should span multiple architecture domains (e.g., Business Architecture, Application/Solution Architecture, Technical/Infrastructure Architecture & Information/Data Architecture)

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent applied experience.
• 15+ years’ experience in relevant industry experience
• 11+ years in managing talent.
• Experience managing teams.
• Strong understanding of Architecture best practice and value methodology
• Knowledge of IT, OT, domain and business architecture
• Experience with Agile process for business value realization

Environmental Conditions/Physical Demands

The salary/hourly range is $206,200.00 – $267,192.00. Pay is based on several factors including but not limited to education, work experience, certifications, etc. Depending on an employee’s assigned worksite or location, Amtrak may consider a geo-pay differential to be applied to the employee’s base salary. Amtrak may offer additional incentive and pay programs to recognize and reward our employees, including a short-term incentive bonus based upon factors such as individual and company performance that is commensurate with the level of the position.

Learn more about our benefits offerings here.

Requisition ID: 167496

Work Arrangement: 02-Remote Optional Click here for more information about work arrangements at Amtrak.
Relocation Offered: No
Travel Requirements: Up to 25%

You power our progress through your performance.

We want your work at Amtrak to be more than a job. We want your career at Amtrak to be a fulfilling experience where you find challenging work, rewarding opportunities, respect among colleagues, and attractive compensation. Amtrak maintains a culture that values high performance and recognizes individual employee contributions.

Amtrak is committed to a safe workplace free of drugs and alcohol. All Amtrak positions requires a pre-employment background check that includes prior employment verification, a criminal history check and a pre-employment drug screen.

Candidates who test positive for marijuana will be disqualified, regardless of any state or local statute, ordinance, regulation, or other law that legalizes or decriminalizes the use or possession of marijuana, whether for medical, recreational, or other use. Amtrak's pre-employment drug testing program is administered in accordance with DOT regulations and applicable law.

In accordance with DOT regulations (49 CFR § 40.25), Amtrak is required to obtain prior drug and alcohol testing records for applicants/employees intending to perform safety-sensitive duties for covered Department of Transportation positions. If an applicant/employee refuses to provide written consent for Amtrak to obtain these records, the individual will not be permitted to perform safety-sensitive functions.

In accordance with federal law governing security checks of covered individuals for providers of public transportation (Title 6 U.S.C. §1143), Amtrak is required to screen applicants for any permanent or interim disqualifying criminal offenses.

Note that any education requirement listed above may be deemed satisfied if you have an equivalent combination of education, training and experience.

Amtrak is an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race/color, to include traits historically associated with race, including but not limited to, hair texture and hairstyles such as braids, locks and twists, religion, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth and related conditions, such as lactation), national origin/ethnicity, disability (intellectual, mental and physical), veteran status, marital status, ancestry, sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression, genetic information, citizenship or any other personal characteristics protected by law.