Executive Director, Enterprise Architecture

CVS Health•Work At Home-Colorado, CO

1d•$175,100 - $334,750

About The Position

The Executive Director, Enterprise Architecture provides strategic technical leadership across the enterprise, defining and governing the architectural direction for platforms, applications, cloud infrastructure, and AI capabilities. This role partners with senior technology and business leaders to align architecture decisions with organizational strategy, drive modernization initiatives, and ensure the enterprise technology portfolio is secure, scalable, and cost-effective.

Requirements

15+ years of progressive experience in technology, with at least 5 years in senior architecture or engineering leadership roles.
Deep expertise in enterprise and solution architecture across cloud platforms (AWS required; Azure or GCP familiarity preferred).
Demonstrated experience leading architecture governance, platform strategy, and technology portfolio management at scale.
Track record of partnering with senior business and technology leaders to drive strategic outcomes.
Strong understanding of application security, compliance frameworks, and risk-based prioritization.
Experience building and scaling architecture teams.

Nice To Haves

Experience in healthcare, health insurance, or similarly regulated industries.
Hands-on background with AI/ML platform architecture, including model evaluation, multi-model orchestration, and responsible AI practices.
Familiarity with enterprise cost management, FinOps, and aligning architecture decisions to budget and P&L impact.

Responsibilities

Define and maintain the enterprise architecture vision, principles, reference architectures, and technology roadmap in alignment with business strategy.
Lead architecture governance — establishing review boards, standards, and decision frameworks that accelerate delivery without compromising quality or security.
Drive cloud infrastructure strategy across primary and secondary cloud providers, including cost optimization, workload placement, and multi-cloud positioning.
Own the enterprise technology radar — evaluating emerging technologies (AI/ML platforms, cloud-native services, data platforms) and making directional recommendations to senior leadership.
Lead application portfolio rationalization using risk-tiered frameworks — prioritizing business-critical systems for hardening, modernization, or retirement.
Partner with security and compliance teams to embed architecture-level controls across the portfolio, reducing blast radius for high-severity vulnerabilities.
Establish patterns for API governance, service mesh, identity, and zero-trust architecture across the enterprise.
Translate complex architectural trade-offs into clear, outcome-oriented narratives for Aetna Technology Leadership.
Represent architecture in budget and investment discussions — framing technology spend in concrete dollar terms tied to risk reduction, capability enablement, and operational efficiency.
Build and maintain relationships with strategic technology vendors and partners.
Build, lead, and mentor a small but highly influential architecture team including Principal Engineers and Solution Architects.
Foster a culture of architectural thinking across engineering — coaching teams on design reviews, trade-off analysis, and system-level reasoning.
Manage hiring pipeline and team development to ensure coverage across key domain areas.