Director, Enterprise Architecture (, IL, United States)

We seek a visionary leader capable of defining and executing a robust enterprise architecture (EA) strategy. The ideal candidate must clearly articulate what enterprise architecture is in practical terms and demonstrate how it directly supports business goals and strategy. You will be responsible for defining the architectural roadmaps and ensuring project solutions align with the strategic vision, collaborating closely with our product owners and business and IT leaders. Furthermore, you must possess the ability to guide an organization’s strategy and apply strategic architectural thinking to deliver measurable business results.

Success in this role requires outstanding personal qualities for leadership, influence, and communication. You must effectively engage and mediate with stakeholders and possess the skills to sell the benefits of architectural initiatives to executives, including the ability to justify projects and calculate the return on investment (ROI) for both overall EA programs. A critical function will be to evangelize architectures and strategies to executives and drive business initiatives by promoting cross-organizational participation. We require a track record of successfully leading enterprise change and effectively mediating opposing architectural viewpoints.

The candidate must demonstrate deep technical acumen, including a thorough understanding of architectural patterns. You should be comfortable identifying and proposing solutions that satisfy numerous business requirements, and be able to provide examples to handle complex projects in a leadership role, including the ability to point out weaknesses in technical plans.

Please note: Our current onsite work schedule requires attendance from Monday through Thursday each week, with remote work permitted on Fridays.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

• Application Rationalization and Optimization: Conduct an initial audit of the existing application portfolio to identify redundancies, underutilized systems, and opportunities for consolidation. Develop process to evaluate on an ongoing basis and in partnership with business line product owners.
• Application retirement or replacement: Develop and present business cases for application retirement or replacement, targeting a 10-15% reduction in application count within the next 18 months.
• Define clear functional and non-functional requirements and checklists for new or enhanced applications, ensuring alignment with overall enterprise architecture.
• Technology Standards and Governance: Establish and maintain a clear set of technology standards and guidelines for software development, infrastructure, and data management.
• Architecture review and governance: Implement a formal architecture review process for all new projects and major system enhancements, ensuring adherence to established standards and architectural principles.
• Metrics and governance tracking: Develop and track key metrics (e.g., compliance rates, technical debt reduction) to measure the effectiveness of architectural governance.
• Solution Architecture and Design Leadership: Lead the design and architecture of 2-3 critical business initiatives annually, providing hands-on guidance to development teams and ensuring robust, scalable, and secure solutions.
• Documentation and architecture artifacts: Create detailed solution architecture documents, including data flow diagrams, integration patterns, and deployment models for key projects.
• Mentorship: Mentor and guide junior architects and technical leads, fostering a culture of architectural excellence and best practices.
• Cloud Strategy and Implementation: Partner and incorporate the organization's cloud strategy, including a roadmap for migrating on-premise applications to cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Data Architecture and Management: Define and govern the organization's data architecture, including data models, data integration patterns, and data quality standards.
• Data collaboration: Collaborate with data engineering teams to design and implement robust data pipelines and data warehousing solutions.
• Data governance: Develop strategies for data governance, ensuring compliance with data privacy regulations and internal policies.
• Security Architecture Integration: Work closely with the security team to embed security best practices into all architectural designs and development processes.
• Security alignment: Ensure all architectural decisions align with the organization's overall security posture and compliance requirements.
• Innovation and Emerging Technologies: Research and evaluate emerging technologies relevant to the organization's business objectives, providing recommendations for adoption or experimentation.
• Proof-of-concept leadership: Lead proof-of-concept projects for new technologies, demonstrating their potential value and feasibility.
• Innovation culture: Foster a culture of innovation by encouraging exploration of new tools and approaches within the IT department.

REQUIRED SKILLS

The role requires both strong communication skills as well as analytical skills to ensure that businesses have the right tools for success. Skills include:

• Ability to define which issues need to be addressed, and the variables that may affect their resolution. Plus the ability to come up with solutions that effectively address business and IT issues through technical analysis, troubleshooting, research, evaluation, and communication.
• Discussing with stakeholders and getting agreement on the problem and solution. This requires both strong verbal and written communication skills to settle conflicts.
• Lead Architecture Review Board (ARB) effectively in a fast-changing environment. The role requires excellent judgment, including the ability to communicate architectural decisions effectively and describe how you correct a situation when a key decision doesn’t effectively solve the issue.
• Be able to turn solution proposals into reality throughout the process of development, testing, and deployment, and manage the solution through its lifecycle
• Author and own enterprise architecture artifacts and using appropriate tools to create and manage them. You will be responsible for establishing and helping to govern IT processes. You will define and use metrics to validate conformance of a solution to an architecture and ensure the adoption of new standards you introduce.
• Strong leadership skills are needed to empower our IT teams to remain on task and meet deadlines.
• Exhibit fluency to develop and use solution architecture patterns (tiered, microservices, service-oriented etc) , and best practices to drive business transformation.

REQUIREMENTS

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field.
• 10+ years of progressive experience in IT, with at least 5-7 years dedicated to Enterprise Architecture (EA), solution architecture, or strategic technology planning in a large-scale, complex enterprise environment.
• Proven expertise in defining, implementing, and governing Enterprise Architecture using industry-standard frameworks (e.g., TOGAF) and methodologies.
• Demonstrated expert-level, hands-on experience (6+ years) in designing, implementing, and governing large-scale solutions across the Data, Integration, and BI/Analytics architecture domains.
• A minimum of 5 years managing a team or leading a cross-functional architecture program is required.
• Demonstrated ability to develop and maintain strategic architectural roadmaps that translate business strategy into a phased, implementable technology plan.
• Experience developing business cases, justifying technology investments, and articulating the Return on Investment (ROI) for complex architectural initiatives (e.g., SOA, modernization).
• Proven ability to establish and enforce IT governance processes to ensure solutions conform to architectural standards and policies.

Salary: $169,000 - $206,000 per year; in addition to base salary, a discretionary annual bonus is provided.

The successful candidate's starting pay will be determined based on job-related skills, experience, and qualifications.

Highlights of the wellbeing benefits for Full-time employees include:

• Physical Wellbeing: Medical, dental, vision care and wellness programs
• Social Wellbeing: Paid holidays, annual vacation time, paid sick leave, new parent benefits, adoption assistance
• Financial Wellbeing: Competitive Compensation, 401(k) Retirement Savings Plan, Rent Discounts, FSA/HSA, and company-paid life & disability insurance
• Community Wellbeing: Paid Community Service Hours

Learn more about our Total Wellbeing program here.

Equity Residential is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunities for all job applicants and employees. No job applicant or employee will be discriminated against because of race, religion, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender, sexual/gender identity, age, disability, pregnancy, national origin, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. Equity Residential is committed to hiring a diverse workforce. Equity Residential has a smoke-free workplace environment.