Lead IT Architect

McKesson•Columbus, OH

About The Position

The Lead IT Architect defines and drives technology strategy, architectural direction, AI-enabled engineering transformation, and solution design across a Value Stream and its Agile Release Train (ART). The role owns the ART’s architectural runway, providing technical direction, architecture patterns, technical enablers, architectural context, and future-state designs that help teams deliver scalable, secure, resilient, and maintainable solutions. It works closely with Engineering, Product Management, Enterprise Architecture, Security, Delivery Leadership, shared services organizations, and the CoverMyMeds AI Enablement team to identify technology opportunities, modernization initiatives, architectural risks, and emerging engineering practices. The role leads architecture for AI adoption across the Value Stream, putting approved AI capabilities and agentic engineering practices into operation. It develops solution designs and implementation-ready architecture artifacts, guides Agile delivery, mentors technical teams, and represents the ART in architecture governance. It also owns the ART and application portfolio architecture repository, maintaining architectural context, decision records, diagrams, roadmaps, and documentation. The Lead IT Architect ensures designs incorporate security, privacy, audit, regulatory, and compliance requirements, including the handling of PHI and PII and relevant frameworks such as HIPAA, HITRUST, SOC, and SOX. The role designs cloud-native architectures using Azure and modern platform services, promotes organizational engineering standards, and advances platform reliability, scalability, maintainability, and operational excellence. The position typically requires a degree or equivalent and 10+ years of relevant experience; fewer years may be required with relevant Master’s or Doctorate qualifications. The stated education requirement is a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, or a related discipline. The base pay range is $150,800–$251,300. Additional compensation, such as an annual bonus or long-term incentive opportunities, may be offered.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, or a related discipline.
Degree or equivalent and typically 10+ years of relevant experience; fewer years may be required with relevant Master’s or Doctorate qualifications.
10+ years of experience in software engineering, solution architecture, enterprise architecture, or related technology disciplines, including 5+ years in a Lead Architect, Principal Architect, Solution Architect, or equivalent technical-leadership role.
Demonstrated experience owning architecture across multiple applications, products, or Agile engineering teams.
Experience establishing architectural roadmaps and technical direction in Agile, Scrum, or SAFe delivery environments.
Experience designing enterprise solutions using Microsoft Azure or a comparable cloud platform, including cloud-native or distributed architectures, APIs, microservices, event-driven systems, and enterprise integrations.
Experience with architecture governance and documentation, including architecture review processes, ADRs, technical diagrams, roadmaps, or implementation-ready architecture artifacts.
Experience applying DevOps, CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, or related modern engineering practices to enterprise software delivery.
Experience designing systems subject to security, privacy, or regulatory requirements, including experience with healthcare or other regulated data environments.
Demonstrated experience introducing or supporting AI-assisted software engineering, engineering-productivity initiatives, or agentic engineering practices.

Nice To Haves

Experience supporting an Agile Release Train or Value Stream within a SAFe environment.
Experience with Microsoft Azure, GitHub, Jira, Microsoft Copilot, GitHub Copilot, Claude, Lucidchart, or comparable technologies.
Experience with architecture-as-code, documentation-as-code, policy-as-code, or automated architecture validation.
Experience developing enterprise architecture standards, reusable patterns, governance models, or engineering best practices.
Experience in healthcare technology or another highly regulated industry.
Relevant architecture, cloud, or Agile certifications, such as TOGAF, SAFe, Scrum, or Microsoft Azure credentials.

Responsibilities

Plan the ART’s architectural runway, defining solution approaches, technical enablers, architecture patterns, dependencies, and future-state designs.
Partner with Product Management, Engineering Leadership, and Enterprise Architecture to establish clear architectural paths for upcoming features, epics, and initiatives.
Develop and maintain technology and architecture roadmaps aligned with Value Stream objectives, balancing scalability, technical debt, reliability, security, compliance, and delivery velocity.
Identify capability gaps, modernization opportunities, architectural risks, and cross-team dependencies before they impede delivery.
Establish architectural direction across teams and applications, and ensure teams have the guidance, standards, patterns, artifacts, and technical enablers needed to deliver.
Partner with the CoverMyMeds AI Enablement team to evaluate, adopt, and operationalize AI-assisted software delivery practices across the ART.
Lead AI adoption architecture for the Value Stream and develop adoption roadmaps and implementation plans for AI-assisted delivery.
Identify and implement AI-enabled opportunities in engineering productivity, quality, documentation, testing, knowledge management, architecture governance, operational support, and delivery.
Promote AI-assisted development practices and agentic engineering workflows in partnership with engineering managers, technical leads, and development teams.
Maintain architectural context, Architecture Decision Records (ADRs), repository standards, architecture artifacts, and knowledge-management practices that support agentic engineering.
Drive architecture-as-code, AI-assisted documentation, automated architecture validation, and agent-enabled engineering workflows.
Create detailed solution architecture materials, including system context, solution and integration diagrams, deployment topologies, sequence diagrams, data flows, domain models, reference architectures, and implementation-ready designs.
Translate business and product objectives into actionable technical designs; assess alternatives and recommend solutions based on business, operational, compliance, security, and technical tradeoffs.
Establish reusable architecture patterns and create current-state and future-state architecture views for portfolio planning and modernization.
Participate in Agile, Scrum, and SAFe planning and delivery; ensure architectural priorities and technical enablers are reflected in backlogs and delivery plans.
Guide decomposition of large initiatives into implementable capabilities, features, and architectural enablers.
Mentor engineers and technical leaders, influence technical decisions across teams, and foster architectural thinking, engineering excellence, learning, and innovation.
Represent the ART in Architecture Review Board (ARB) governance, preparing, presenting, and defending designs, decisions, technology strategies, and exception requests.
Work with Enterprise Architecture to apply enterprise standards, reference architectures, guardrails, and strategic platform direction; promote adherence to approved patterns and platforms.
Partner with Security, Platform Engineering, Compliance, Infrastructure, Cloud Operations, Developer Experience, AI Enablement, and other shared service organizations.
Track and communicate architectural risks, technical debt, modernization opportunities, technology decisions, and dependencies that may affect delivery.
Own the ART architecture repository and maintain architectural context, ADRs, solution documentation, current- and future-state views, and architecture diagrams for the application portfolio.
Establish documentation standards and review processes that keep architecture knowledge current, accurate, discoverable, accessible, and useful to engineers and AI-assisted tools.
Ensure solutions meet enterprise security, privacy, audit, regulatory, and compliance requirements, including appropriate handling of PHI and PII and applicable frameworks.
Incorporate security, resiliency, observability, and compliance requirements into architectural planning and design, and promote secure-by-design and compliance-by-design practices.
Design cloud-native architectures using Azure and modern platform services; promote standards for platforms, APIs, integrations, distributed systems, observability, resiliency, scalability, security, and operations.
Evaluate technology investments and modernization initiatives that improve platform reliability, maintainability, scalability, and engineering effectiveness.