IT Director, Data & AI Architecture

Abbott is a global healthcare leader that helps people live more fully at all stages of life. Our portfolio of life-changing technologies spans the spectrum of healthcare, with leading businesses and products in diagnostics, medical devices, nutritionals and branded generic medicines. Our 122,000 colleagues serve people in more than 160 countries. JOB DESCRIPTION: About Abbott Abbott is a global healthcare leader that helps people live more fully at all stages of life. Our portfolio of life-changing technologies spans diagnostics, medical devices, nutrition, and branded generic medicines. With 115,000 colleagues serving people in more than 160 countries, Abbott is committed to advancing healthcare through innovation, data, and technology.

The Opportunity

Reporting to the Director of Information Management, Data & Analytics, this person will play a critical role in defining and delivering Abbott's enterprise data and AI architecture vision. This leader will architect scalable, secure, and AI-ready data platforms, enable advanced analytics and AI use cases, and establish the technical standards that support Abbott's transition to a modern data ecosystem. The IT Director, Data and AI Architecture serves as Abbott's principal technical authority for enterprise data architecture, cloud data platforms, AI-ready ecosystems, and modern data engineering. This individual is expected to operate as the senior-most data architecture leader, guiding architectural strategy, reviewing solution designs, mentoring architects and engineers, and driving key technology decisions across Abbott's enterprise data landscape. This leader will establish the technical blueprint for Abbott's next-generation data platforms, ensuring scalable, secure, high-performing, and AI-ready architectures that accelerate analytics, automation, and artificial intelligence initiatives across the enterprise. This person serves as a technical authority for Enterprise Data Architecture and AI programs, providing guidance, governance, and decision-making support across the organization. We are seeking someone with the ability to define, challenge, and influence architectural standards, strategies, and technology roadmaps. Functions as a senior hands-on technical leader and trusted advisor, rather than a people manager. Acts as the primary go-to expert for complex architectural decisions and technology challenges. Drives and influences key technology and architecture decisions to ensure alignment with business objectives, scalability, and innovation goals.

What You'll Work On

Technical Architecture Leadership

• Lead architecture reviews for major data and analytics initiatives.
• Serve as a trusted technical advisor to engineering, architecture, and business leaders on enterprise data strategy and architecture decisions.
• Define reference architectures and implementation standards for Snowflake, Databricks, Microsoft Fabric, Azure Data Services, and related cloud technologies.
• Drive architectural decisions related to data lakehouse design, medallion architectures, semantic layers, metadata services, data observability, vector databases, and enterprise AI platforms.
• Define enterprise information architecture, canonical data models, domain ownership boundaries, and data product standards that support interoperability, scalability, and AI consumption.
• Review and challenge engineering designs to ensure scalability, resiliency, performance, maintainability, and cost optimization.
• Partner directly with engineering teams to solve complex technical architecture challenges and accelerate delivery of strategic initiatives.
• Chair architecture review boards and provide final architecture recommendations for critical data, analytics, and AI investments.
• Maintain hands‑on awareness of modern data engineering, cloud, analytics, and AI technologies.
• Design enterprise‑scale lakehouse architectures utilizing Databricks, Delta Lake, Apache Iceberg, Snowflake, and cloud-native storage platforms.

Data Engineering & Platform Architecture

• Define architecture standards for data ingestion, transformation, orchestration, observability, DataOps, CI/CD, and platform automation.
• Establish patterns supporting structured, semi‑structured, streaming, and unstructured data workloads.
• Define enterprise integration standards leveraging APIs, event‑driven architectures, messaging platforms, and real‑time data processing.
• Guide implementation of Infrastructure as Code (IaC), platform engineering, containerization, and automated deployment practices.
• Partner with infrastructure and platform teams to optimize performance, reliability, scalability, and cost management across enterprise data platforms.

Data Products & Information Architecture

• Define enterprise standards for data products, data contracts, metadata management, discoverability, interoperability, and lifecycle management.
• Drive implementation of Data Mesh and federated data ownership principles across Abbott business domains.
• Establish architecture patterns that enable reusable, trusted, and scalable data assets.
• Partner with business and technology leaders to translate strategic priorities into scalable enterprise information architectures.

AI & Advanced Analytics Architecture

• Architect AI‑ready data ecosystems supporting machine learning, predictive analytics, Generative AI, agentic AI, and advanced analytics workloads.
• Design reference architectures for Retrieval‑Augmented Generation (RAG), semantic search, vector databases, knowledge repositories, and enterprise AI platforms.
• Define enterprise approaches for embeddings, vector storage, semantic retrieval, knowledge management, and AI‑ready data foundations.
• Establish LLMOps and MLOps standards for model deployment, monitoring, observability, governance, and lifecycle management.
• Define architectural standards for feature stores, training datasets, metadata, lineage, and model operationalization.
• Evaluate emerging AI technologies and translate them into practical enterprise adoption roadmaps.
• Lead AI architecture assessments and provide technical recommendations for strategic AI investments.

Data Governance & Trust by Design

• Partner with Data Governance and Information Management teams to ensure architectural alignment with metadata, lineage, master data, data quality, privacy, security, and regulatory requirements.
• Define architectural controls that enable trusted, auditable, and governed enterprise data.
• Promote "trust by design" principles throughout Abbott's data and AI ecosystem.

Required Qualifications

• Master's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field.
• 10+ years of experience in enterprise data architecture, cloud data platform architecture, or large-scale analytics architecture.
• 5+ years designing and implementing modern cloud-native data platforms and implementing enterprise-scale technology architectures and solutions.
• Minimum 10 years of overall professional experience in technology, with a strong background in enterprise architecture and solution design.
• Minimum 3 years at the Director level or in a comparable senior individual contributor leadership role.
• Demonstrated expertise in technical architecture leadership, including establishing architectural direction and driving strategic technology initiatives.
• Deep hands‑on expertise with Snowflake, Databricks, Microsoft Fabric, Azure Data Services, or equivalent modern data platforms.
• Proven experience designing and implementing large‑scale lakehouse architectures.
• Proven experience architecting AI‑ready data ecosystems supporting machine learning, Generative AI, vector retrieval, semantic search, and RAG architectures.
• Deep understanding of Data Mesh, Data Fabric, Data Products, domain‑driven design, and modern information architecture principles.
• Experience with enterprise integration patterns, APIs, event‑driven architectures, Kafka, streaming platforms, and real‑time data processing.
• Experience defining data architecture standards covering metadata, lineage, master data management, and data quality.
• Experience leading architecture reviews and providing technical oversight for strategic enterprise initiatives.
• Strong communication skills with demonstrated ability to influence senior executives, architects, engineers, and business stakeholders.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience serving as a Chief Data Architect, Lead Data Architect, Enterprise Data Architect, Principal Architect, or similar senior architecture leadership role.
• Experience within healthcare, medical devices, life sciences, pharmaceuticals, or regulated manufacturing environments.
• Hands‑on expertise with Databricks, Snowflake, Microsoft Fabric, Azure, Kubernetes, Apache Airflow, Delta Lake, Apache Iceberg, Kafka, and related cloud‑native technologies.
• Experience with vector databases, knowledge graphs, semantic search platforms, and enterprise AI platforms.
• Relevant certifications in Cloud Architecture, Data Engineering, AI Engineering, Enterprise Architecture, or related disciplines.

What Success Looks Like

• Establish Abbott's target‑state enterprise Data & AI Architecture and modernization roadmap.
• Define enterprise standards for data products, lakehouse architecture, AI‑ready datasets, integration, and platform design.
• Accelerate modernization of legacy data environments while maintaining operational stability.
• Increase adoption of reusable, trusted, and scalable enterprise data assets.
• Enable scalable AI, analytics, and automation capabilities that directly support business outcomes.
• Improve interoperability, architectural consistency, data quality, and platform performance across Abbott's global ecosystem.
• Be recognized by engineering and architecture teams as Abbott's technical authority for enterprise data architecture and AI‑ready platforms.

The base pay for this position is $149,300.00 – $298,700.00. In specific locations, the pay range may vary from the range posted.

JOB FAMILY: IT Services & Solutions Delivery

DIVISION: BTS Business Technology Services

LOCATION: United States > Waukegan : J46

ADDITIONAL LOCATIONS: United States > Chicago : Willis Tower Building 233 S Wacker Dr.

WORK SHIFT: Standard

TRAVEL: Yes, 10 % of the Time

MEDICAL SURVEILLANCE: Not Applicable

SIGNIFICANT WORK ACTIVITIES: Continuous sitting for prolonged periods (more than 2 consecutive hours in an 8 hour day)

Abbott is an Equal Opportunity Employer of Minorities/Women/Individuals with Disabilities/Protected Veterans.

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Abbott is about the power of health. For more than 135 years, Abbott has been helping people reach their potential — because better health allows people and communities to achieve more. With a diverse, global network serving customers in more than 160 countries, we create new solutions — across the spectrum of health, around the world, for all stages of life. Whether it’s next‑generation diagnostics, life‑changing devices, science‑based nutrition, or novel reformulations, we are advancing some of the most innovative and revolutionary technologies in healthcare, helping people live their best lives through better health.

The people of Abbott come to work each day with relentless energy, enthusiasm and a promise to enhance the health and well‑being of millions of people. They push the boundaries to help manage and treat some of life’s greatest health challenges.

We invite you to explore opportunities at Abbott, to see if your talents and career aspirations may fit with our openings.