Senior Director, Architecture – Enterprise & Strategy

AstraZeneca • Gaithersburg, MD

64d • $182,516 - $273,774

About The Position

AstraZeneca’s Enterprise Architecture team shapes the digital backbone that powers discovery, development, manufacturing, and delivery of life-changing medicines. We partner with senior leaders across R&D, Operations, Commercial, and Enabling Functions to translate strategy into scalable platforms, data and integration capabilities, and secure, modern architectures. We champion simplification, interoperability, and measurable business outcomes across a complex, global landscape. The Senior Director, Architecture – Enterprise & Strategy has overall accountability for the consistent implementation of architecture decisions across business and IT to support the AZ business and IS strategy, ensuring architectures are compliant with relevant AZ standards, blueprints, and roadmaps. The role will be responsible for partnering with key business and IT Leadership teams, integrating information from business strategies and portfolios to develop the overall strategic direction, integration, and quality for AstraZeneca’s architecture portfolio (AZ’s architecture assets: Business, Application, Information, and Infrastructure). The Senior Director, Architecture – Enterprise & Strategy will also be accountable for the overall health and effectiveness of key architecture processes such as standards management and lifecycle management. The role will drive change in EA and will proactively address industry trends (e.g., MicroServices, API, Big Data, etc.) in the definition of AZ’s imperatives and guidelines and educate EA stakeholders. Additionally, the role acts as a sponsor or steering group member of projects with a cross-functional or enterprise-wide scope.

Requirements

• Background: Relevant technical degree or equivalent experience; strong business acumen
• Thought leadership: + 5 years experience as leader in an Enterprise Architecture domain.
• Enterprise architecture impact: Proven ability to define multi‑year architecture roadmaps and align them to business strategy; experience building components of an Enterprise Architecture practice.
• Integration and simplification: Experience with rationalization, consolidation, and integration across business domains using a formal framework.
• Commercial rigor: Experience leading justification phases, including product evaluations and business case formulation.
• Stakeholder influence: Track record influencing senior business and IT leaders to drive change; strong communication, facilitation, and relationship‑building skills; ability to translate technical topics into business language.
• Leadership and delivery: Experience managing, developing, and leading distributed teams; vendor management and negotiation with third‑party suppliers.
• External awareness: Strong networking skills; awareness of market developments and their relevance to AZ IS; ability to work effectively in diverse, multinational teams.

Nice To Haves

• Mindset and management: Demonstrated initiative, customer orientation, cross‑cultural collaboration; people development and budget management experience.
• Education/certifications: Master’s degree and/or professional certification(s).
• Risk and compliance: Awareness of relevant legislation and data protection laws.
• Industry context: Understanding of the pharmaceutical/healthcare industry and competitor activity related to architecture and information management.

Responsibilities

• Lead enterprise design in one domain—Business, Data, Application, or Infrastructure—and set the segment’s architecture strategy, direction, and standards.
• Translate business priorities into enterprise architecture requirements; refine strategies and standards as needs evolve.
• Serve as the authority and sign-off for solution and segment architectures, blueprints, and 1–5 year roadmaps.
• Develop and oversee architecture roadmaps and blueprints, ensuring alignment with current priorities, global strategies, and solutions.
• Advise senior IT and business leaders and contribute to cross-functional decision-making forums.
• Champion Enterprise Architecture initiatives across IS; implement EA standards, processes, tools, and the information architecture design authority.
• Define holistic strategies and agreed approaches for managing key information to enable effective decision-making.
• Engage external experts, assess industry and market trends for enterprise impact, and build partnerships with key technology suppliers.
• Provide thought leadership across IS and continuously elevate architecture capability through best-practice sharing.

Benefits

• Benefits offered included a qualified retirement program [401(k) plan]; paid vacation and holidays; paid leaves; and, health benefits including medical, prescription drug, dental, and vision coverage in accordance with the terms and conditions of the applicable plans.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director
• Number of Employees: 5,001-10,000 employees