Head of Enterprise Architecture (Houston)

Head of Enterprise Architecture - (8505)

Houston, TX 77032 US (Primary)

Role Purpose

The Head of Enterprise Architecture owns the design, security, and evolution of PSA BDP's global technology estate spanning AWS cloud and on-premises infrastructure, ensuring the organisation's platforms scale reliably, are secured by design, and are positioned to adopt emerging technology responsibly. This role leads the modernisation of PSA BDP's core in-house developed applications, owns the DevOps organisation, and sets the engineering standards and training that raise the bar for how PSA BDP builds and operates software. The role reports directly to the CIO and operates as a key member of the extended IT leadership team, translating strategic technology direction including programmes such as our AI investment and platform modernisation / rationalisation into a coherent, governed architecture that the rest of the organisation can build on with confidence.

Key Responsibilities

Enterprise Architecture — Scalable Design, Security & Innovation

• Own the enterprise architecture function end to end, setting the standards, reference patterns, and governance that ensure PSA BDP's technology estate is scalable, resilient, and secure across both AWS and on-premise environments.
• Define and maintain a target-state architecture and multi-year technology roadmap, aligned to PSA BDP's strategic programmes and to the CIO's broader technology vision.
• Chair an architecture review governance process for significant technology decisions, ensuring new solutions are assessed against scalability, security, cost, and total-cost-of-ownership principles before they are built.
• Partner closely with security/information security functions to embed security‑by‑design across the estate, identity and access management, data protection, network segmentation, and cloud security posture across AWS and on‑premise workloads alike.
• Own the evaluation and responsible adoption of emerging technology, including AI and agentic platforms, balancing innovation with enterprise risk, data governance, and operational resilience, collaborating with respective innovation teams and partners.
• Act as the senior technical authority on hybrid cloud/on‑premise architecture decisions, ensuring workload placement, integration patterns, and infrastructure investment are made deliberately rather than by accident of history.
• Support teams to rationalise cloud and AI spend based on best practices, oversee application rationalisation and removal of shadow IT where appropriate.

Application Modernisation

• Own and lead the modernisation programme for PSA BDP's core in‑house developed applications, moving the estate toward modern, cloud‑native, API‑first architectures.
• Define a modernisation prioritisation framework — balancing business value, technical debt, security exposure, and operational risk — to sequence which applications are modernised, re‑platformed, or retired.
• Partner with product and business stakeholders on application rationalisation across the broader portfolio, ensuring modernisation investment is tied to genuine business outcomes rather than technology for its own sake.
• Set and report technical debt reduction targets and modernisation KPIs to the CIO and, where relevant, to ExCo.

DevOps Ownership

• Own the DevOps organisation, including CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure automation, release management, and observability/monitoring practices across both AWS and on‑premise environments.
• Drive DevOps maturity across the organisation such as infrastructure as code, automated testing and deployment, and improvement of key delivery metrics such as deployment frequency, lead time for change, and mean time to recovery.
• Ensure consistent DevOps tooling and governance regardless of whether a workload runs in AWS or on‑premise, avoiding a two‑tier operating model.

Application Development Standards & Training

• Define and maintain enterprise‑wide application development standards; coding standards, architecture patterns, API design principles, and documentation practices are applied consistently across in‑house development teams.
• Build and lead a training and enablement programme that raises engineering capability across the organisation, including onboarding for new standards and continuous upskilling on modern architecture practices.
• Establish an architecture community of practice, giving PSA BDP's architects and senior engineers a forum to align on patterns and share lessons across programmes.
• Own developer experience and tooling strategy, reducing friction in the build‑test‑deploy lifecycle for engineering teams, leverage AI and developer tools to improve productivity.

Key Relationships

• Chief Information Officer (CIO) direct reporting line and primary strategic partner.
• IT leadership peers across infrastructure, security, application delivery, and product organisation.
• Business and product stakeholders across commercial, operations, and customer‑facing functions.
• External technology and cloud partners, including AWS and key platform vendors.

Candidate Profile

• 12+ years in enterprise technology roles, including 5+ years in an enterprise architecture leadership capacity.
• Demonstrated experience architecting and operating hybrid environments spanning AWS and on‑premise infrastructure at enterprise scale.
• A track record of leading application modernisation programmes; legacy systems to cloud‑native, API‑first, microservices‑based architectures.
• Experience owning a DevOps function and driving measurable improvement in delivery and operational metrics.
• Strong stakeholder management skills, with the credibility to operate directly with a CIO and, at times, ExCo‑level audiences.
• Experience in logistics, freight forwarding, or supply chain technology environments is an advantage.
• Relevant certifications such as AWS Certified Solutions Architect (Professional) and/or TOGAF are an advantage.

Success Measures

• Reduction in legacy/technical debt exposure across the core in‑house application portfolio.
• Adoption and compliance rate of architecture governance and development standards across engineering teams.
• Improvement in DevOps delivery metrics; deployment frequency, lead time for change, and mean time to recovery.
• Measurable improvement in security posture across both AWS and on‑premise environments.
• Engineering training and certification completion rates across the organisation.
• Project delivery of transformational initiatives.

Please note: There is no relocation or immigration assistance associated with this opening.

Compensation based on experience. We offer a very competitive salary, full benefits, matching 401(k), tuition reimbursement, and casual dress environment.