Portfolio Architect - Distribution Field Services and Mobility

American Electric Power•Gahanna, OH

15d

About The Position

The Portfolio Architect serves as the senior architecture leader for the Distribution Field Services and Mobility portfolio. The role connects business strategy, operational capabilities, technology investments, and delivery by maintaining a coherent current-state, target-state, and transition architecture across the portfolio. The Portfolio Architect partners with business and technology leadership to shape portfolio strategy, inform investment decisions, improve application and technology health, reduce duplication and technical debt, and ensure initiatives advance the portfolio toward an agreed future state. The role applies Enterprise Architecture standards and guardrails while providing practical architectural direction to solution architects, engineering teams, product teams, and major programs. The Portfolio Architect is accountable for architecture coherence and direction across the portfolio. Delivery execution remains the responsibility of the appropriate project, product, engineering, and operational teams.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, or related technical field is required.
8 years of relevant work experience is required.
Demonstrated experience developing architecture across multiple applications, platforms, data domains, integrations, and delivery teams.
Ability to connect business capabilities, operational processes, technology investments, and architecture roadmaps.
Experience with application portfolio management, application rationalization, technical-debt analysis, lifecycle management, and modernization planning.
Strong understanding of architecture governance, reference architectures, standards, exception management, and architecture decision records.
Ability to assess complex options across business value, cost, risk, resilience, security, supportability, and long-term sustainability.
Experience guiding architects and engineering teams without assuming ownership of project or product delivery.
Ability to influence senior business and technology leaders through clear options, recommendations, roadmaps, and tradeoff analysis.

Nice To Haves

Experience operating in regulated, safety-sensitive, asset-intensive, or utility environments is strongly preferred.
Experience with enterprise architecture repositories and APM platforms, including LeanIX or comparable tools, is preferred.

Responsibilities

Develop and maintain current-state, target-state, and transition architectures for the portfolio, covering business capabilities, applications, data, integrations, platforms, infrastructure, security, resilience, and operational dependencies.
Create and maintain a multi-year portfolio architecture roadmap that identifies modernization, consolidation, migration, rationalization, technical-debt reduction, and capability-enablement priorities.
Partner with business and technology leaders to connect business outcomes and operational capabilities to technology strategy, ensuring architecture work is driven by measurable portfolio needs rather than isolated project requirements.
Lead Application Portfolio Management for the assigned portfolio, using LeanIX and other authoritative sources to evaluate application ownership, business capability alignment, functional fit, technical fit, lifecycle, business criticality, cost, risk, and strategic disposition.
Identify duplication, fragmentation, obsolescence, unsupported technology, integration complexity, resilience gaps, and security risks across the portfolio and develop prioritized remediation recommendations.
Provide architectural input into six-quarter planning, demand intake, capital planning, and investment prioritization, clearly communicating options, dependencies, costs, risks, tradeoffs, and expected business outcomes.
Ensure significant initiatives align with portfolio roadmaps, enterprise standards, reference architectures, approved platforms, security requirements, and regulatory obligations.
Participate in architecture governance, including architecture reviews, standards discussions, technology evaluations, exception decisions, and escalation of unresolved risks to Enterprise Architecture or the Architecture Review Board.
Guide solution architects and delivery teams in translating portfolio direction into implementable solution architectures while ensuring that solution-level decisions remain aligned with the target state.
Coordinate cross-portfolio and cross-domain architecture decisions, particularly where Distribution Field Services and Mobility depend on asset management, work management, GIS, customer systems, data platforms, integration platforms, cybersecurity, cloud, or operational technology.
Maintain architecture information and decision traceability in LeanIX and other approved repositories, including capability mappings, application relationships, technology dependencies, roadmaps, lifecycle positions, architecture decisions, and exceptions.
Establish clear architecture outcomes and measures, such as reduction in application duplication, retirement of obsolete technology, remediation of critical risks, adoption of approved patterns, improved portfolio-data quality, and progress toward target-state capabilities.
Mentor and provide architectural direction to solution architects, domain architects, engineers, and technical leaders supporting the portfolio.
Communicate architecture decisions and portfolio direction in business, operational, financial, risk, and technical terms appropriate for executives, portfolio leaders, product teams, project teams, and engineering teams.