Enterprise Architect

Central Coast Salary Range: $136,000 - $205,000

While candidates from anywhere in California are welcome to apply, there is a strong preference for those who reside on the Central Coast (Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Monterey and Santa Cruz Counties). This role may offer opportunities for remote work; however, familiarity with and proximity to our local customers is valued.

Job Summary

The Enterprise Architect serves as the organization's senior technology strategist and architectural authority, responsible for defining, governing, and evolving the enterprise-wide technology vision. This role ensures that applications, platforms, integrations, and data capabilities align with long-term business objectives and comply with Medi-Cal and CMS regulatory requirements. The following are the core responsibilities:

1. Enterprise Architecture Vision & Governance:
   Define, govern, and evolve the enterprise-wide technology vision, ensuring alignment with organizational strategy and compliance with Medi-Cal and CMS regulatory requirements.
2. Strategic Technology & Investment Guidance:
   Design the target-state enterprise architecture and guide technology investment decisions to ensure solutions are scalable, secure, interoperable, sustainable, and cost-effective.
3. Business-Technology Alignment:
   Serve as a strategic bridge between business strategy and technology execution by translating business objectives into architectural capabilities and standards.
4. Modernization, Risk Reduction & Technical Debt Management:
   Lead efforts to modernize the enterprise ecosystem by reducing technical debt, mitigating architectural risk, simplifying complexity, and lowering total cost of ownership.

Duties and Responsibilities

1. Enterprise Architecture Vision & Governance - (Defining standards, oversight, and enterprise-wide architectural direction):

• Define, maintain, and evolve the Enterprise Architecture Blueprint across Business, Application, Data, Integration, and Technology domains.
• Establish and lead the Architecture Review Board (ARB), serving as the architectural gatekeeper for all enterprise-impacting initiatives.
• Define and enforce architectural standards, principles, and guardrails related to security, scalability, interoperability, and sustainability.
• Define enterprise cloud architecture standards, patterns, and governance guardrails across environments.

2. Strategic Technology & Investment Guidance - (Guiding roadmap, vendor decisions, and long-term platform strategy):

• Own and maintain the architectural roadmap for core health plan systems, including Claims, Care Management, Provider Portals, and member-facing platforms.
• Lead architectural due diligence for vendor evaluations and RFPs, assessing integration readiness, vendor risk, scalability, and total cost of ownership.
• Provide objective, fact-based technology recommendations grounded in business impact, long-term maintainability, and financial considerations.
• Guide the organization from basic "lift-and-shift" migrations toward cloud-native architectures where appropriate.

3. Business-Technology Alignment - (Translating business strategy into architectural capabilities):

• Partner with executive and operational leaders (e.g., Claims, Care Management, Member Services, Provider Relations) to translate business strategies into enabling technology capabilities.
• Develop and maintain business capability maps that align organizational needs with technology solutions.
• Partner with infrastructure, security, and compliance teams to balance innovation with regulatory requirements and risk management.

4. Modernization, Risk Reduction & Technical Debt Management - (Improving interoperability, resilience, and long-term sustainability):

• Identify, prioritize, and drive reduction of technical debt through application rationalization, platform consolidation, and modernization planning.
• Define and enforce an enterprise API-first integration strategy.
• Lead the architectural response to CMS Interoperability Rules and CalAIM data exchange requirements.
• Design enterprise integration patterns that support secure, scalable FHIR-based data exchange with providers, HIEs, vendors, and state agencies.
• Architect identity and access management (IAM) solutions, including single sign-on (SSO), to support secure, seamless cross-platform experiences.
• Ensure enterprise designs incorporate high availability, disaster recovery, resiliency, and fault tolerance by default.

Scope Clarification:

This role provides architectural leadership and governance, not operational delivery. The Enterprise Architect does not:

• Directly manage BI, analytics, or data engineering teams
• Own day-to-day IT operations or application support
• Perform hands-on software development or sprint execution
• Act as a Product Manager or Program Manager

Knowledge / Skills / Abilities

• Expert knowledge of enterprise architecture concepts, principles, and best practices.
• Strong understanding of health plan operations, including Claims, Utilization Management, Enrollment, and Encounter processing.
• Proven ability to translate complex business needs into scalable, secure technology architectures.
• Deep understanding of healthcare interoperability standards, including HL7, C-CDA, and FHIR.
• Experience designing enterprise integration patterns, including API management, ESB, and event-driven architectures.
• Strong knowledge of cloud architecture concepts and platform design.
• Solid understanding of security, identity, and access management principles in highly regulated environments.
• Exceptional communication skills, with the ability to explain architectural tradeoffs, risks, and recommendations to executive and non-technical stakeholders.
• Strong analytical and critical-thinking skills, with a focus on reducing complexity and long-term technical risk.
• Ability to influence without direct authority and collaborate effectively across business and IT leadership.

Education and Experience

• Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Seven (7) or more years of progressive IT experience, including at least three (3) years in a senior Solution Architect or similar role.
• Five (5) or more years of experience supporting or designing systems for Medi-Cal or managed care operations.
• Experience applying enterprise architecture frameworks such as TOGAF or Zachman (certification preferred but not required).
• Experience supporting technology initiatives in regulated healthcare or government environments strongly preferred.