Senior Director of Application Architecture & Intelligent Systems

North American Mission Board • Alpharetta, GA

1d • Onsite

About The Position

The Director of Application Architecture & Intelligent Systems leads NAMB’s transition to an agentic-first technology architecture - the technical backbone of NAMB’s declared shift from legacy application development to AI-powered ministry tools. This role owns the design, implementation, and evolution of NAMB’s intelligent systems platform: the orchestration layer, agent framework, secure data access infrastructure, and the architectural standards that govern how agents are built across all ministry areas. This is a strategic and hands-on technical leadership role skilled at whiteboarding architecture decisions with ministry stakeholders and writing code, reviewing infrastructure, and mentoring a application development team, both on and off prem. They serve as the conduit between NAMB’s mission needs and its emerging agentic technology stack.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree (B.A./B.S.) in Computer Science, Information Technology, Software Engineering, or related technical field required; Master’s degree preferred
• Seven or more years of software architecture and development experience
• At least three years designing and deploying cloud-native systems on Microsoft Azure
• Equivalent combination of education and experience may be considered
• Deep expertise in Azure: AI Foundry, Azure OpenAI Service, Container Apps, Entra ID, Key Vault & App Insights
• Demonstrated experience designing and building agentic or LLM-powered systems, including: Function tools, Orchestrators, Prompt engineering & Retrieval-augmented generation
• Proficiency in Python and/or C#(.NET)
• Experience with FastAPI or similar API frameworks
• Strong security architecture background, including OAuth/OIDC, SAML, On-behalf-of (OBO) token patterns & JWT validation
• Microsoft Azure portal and CLI required
• Microsoft Office 365 required: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams
• Proficiency in development tools required: Visual Studio Code, GitHub or Azure DevOps
• Experience with Terraform or similar infrastructure-as-code tooling required
• Evidence of a mature and growing Christian Walk characterized, by Paul, in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1.
• Personal wisdom and sufficiency are grounded in Christ and the word of God, with a life submitted to God’s authority in all things.
• Models a daily soul-winning lifestyle.
• Can effectively lead others in prayer.
• Gives regularly and generously to the work of the church.
• Readily applies scripture to personal and professional situations.
• Can articulate Baptist theological understandings on a range of issues.
• Conducts ministry in keeping with the principles and spirit of the Baptist Faith and Message 2000.
• Enjoys health, affirming relationships with spouse (if married), family, neighbors and friends.
• Exhibits integrity in professional and personal life.
• Modest in dress and deportment and makes a favorable first impression in both bearing and manner.
• Aware of personal strengths and shortcomings, potential, psychological needs, biases and prejudices, and actively solicits and benefits from constructive criticism.
• Personal finances are in order, with no oppressive burden of consumer debt.
• Is a member of a local Southern Baptist church and takes an active role as time permits.
• Demonstrates a high level of energy, with a bright, positive affect, warmth and genuine interest in people.

Nice To Haves

• Master’s degree preferred
• Experience with Semantic Kernel, LangChain, or similar agent orchestration frameworks (preferred)
• Familiarity with MCP (Model Context Protocol) server design and enterprise tool integration (preferred)
• Experience with: SQL Server, Azure Data Lake & Enterprise data platform integration (preferred)
• Exposure to: Workday API integrations, Enterprise HR/finance system connectivity (preferred), Experience with Microsoft Dynamics 365 / Power Platform ecosystem (preferred)
• Azure certifications in Solutions Architecture or AI Engineering (preferred)
• Knowledge of NAMB’s purpose, ministry strategy, and organizational structure
• Familiarity with: Southern Baptist Convention structure, Church planting mission, Baptist doctrine preferred

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain NAMB’s hub-and-spoke agentic platform, including the OneAgent orchestrator, connected agent spokes, and the secure data access layer (MCP Gateway, OBO token patterns, Entra ID integration) governing how agents access ministry data
• Architect and evolve the technical standards, development patterns, and governance frameworks for all agent work at NAMB, including model selection, tool design, and security posture
• Lead the structured migration from legacy applications (MAP, SRVM, MyPath) to agent-based interfaces, defining what remains a system of record and what becomes an agent layer
• Lead the implementation team (internal staff and vendor resources) on all agentic development, providing technical direction, code review, and architectural guidance
• Participate in discovery and design sessions with ministry stakeholders across Send Network, Send Relief, Chaplaincy, and Evangelism and Pastoral Relations to translate ministry needs into agent architecture and roadmap
• Evaluate AI tooling, models, and platform decisions in partnership with the CTO and represent IT architecture in AI Steering Committee (AISC) planning and governance discussions
• Own the Azure infrastructure supporting the agentic platform, including Container Apps, Azure OpenAI Service, Azure AI Foundry, Key Vault, and App Insights
• Maintain Terraform infrastructure-as-code and Azure Pipelines CI/CD configurations, ensuring security, observability, and performance standards are met across all agentic workloads
• Lead evaluation and adoption of Small Language Model (SLM) worker agent patterns for high-frequency internal processing tasks
• Stay current on the MCP (Model Context Protocol) ecosystem, Azure AI roadmap, and enterprise agent frameworks, and advise on Claude Cowork enterprise deployment and employee agent enablement in partnership with the CTO and AISC
• Other duties as assigned

Benefits

• We work to support churches, pastors and missionaries who are reaching North America.
• We help churches meet needs through the compassion ministry of Send Relief and we help churches plant churches through Send Network.
• Our goal is to send the hope of the gospel to North America.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Executive