Senior Director of Enterprise Architecture & ERP Applications

ZS • Chicago, IL

2d • Hybrid

About The Position

ZS is on a path to becoming a $5B company with more than 30,000 employees, driving rapid growth, increasing global complexity, and expanding business models across multiple industries. As the firm scales, ZS is modernizing and evolving its core enterprise systems to ensure they remain cohesive, resilient, and fit for long‑term growth. We are seeking a Senior Director, Enterprise Architecture & ERP Transformation to provide senior-level leadership, architectural direction, and decision-making authority across the firm’s enterprise technology landscape.
This role is designed for a seasoned technology and business transformation leader who has personally led multiple large-scale enterprise transformations, understands how modern technology ecosystems function end-to-end, and can confidently guide senior stakeholders toward the right long-term architectural outcomes—balancing collaboration, expertise, and decisiveness.
This role represents a step-change in how ZS governs, designs, and evolves its enterprise systems. The Senior Director will shape the firm’s technology foundation for the next decade—ensuring systems scale with growth, support new business models, and enable leaders to focus on strategy rather than system constraints.
The Senior Director’s chief accountability will be the architectural vision and enterprise systems strategy, establishing enterprise architecture principles across applications, data, integration, and infrastructure to ensure Finance, HR, MarComm, Legal, IT, CRM technologies and their associated data evolve in a cohesive, scalable, and well‑governed manner.

Requirements

• 20+ years of progressive leadership experience across enterprise technology, architecture, or large-scale business systems.
• Proven leadership of multiple enterprise transformation initiatives, including ERP-centric programs.
• Demonstrated experience operating in complex, multi-function organizations (Finance, HR, Marketing, Legal, Operations).
• Track record of delivering transformations on larger and more complex organizations than ZS, with clear evidence of: Where the organization started, Where it ended, How the transformation was achieved
• Recognized ability to operate credibly with senior executives.
• Strong leadership presence—able to guide, influence, and at times provide verifiable justification(s) if overriding functional preferences in service of enterprise outcomes.
• Comfortable navigating cultures that value collaboration, trust, and minimal hierarchy
• Deep understanding of ERP platforms and enterprise ecosystems (e.g., Finance, HR, MarComm, CRM, Legal, and Data Management platforms).
• Familiarity with modern enterprise technology ecosystems, including SAP (preferred) and Microsoft enterprise platforms, and the ability to apply this knowledge to ERP‑centric, cross‑functional architecture decisions.
• Strong grounding in enterprise architecture, integration patterns, and system lifecycle management.
• Experience working with global regulatory and data privacy considerations.
• Ability to balance best‑of‑breed approaches with long‑term architectural coherence.
• Fluency in English
• Client-first mentality
• Intense work ethic
• Collaborative spirit and problem-solving approach
• Candidates must have authorization to work in the United States that does not now or in the future require employer sponsorship.

Nice To Haves

• Experience partnering with or leading alongside major consulting firms (e.g., Big 4, global integrators).
• Exposure to cloud platforms, data platforms, and emerging technologies (including AI) as part of enterprise transformation.
• Background in professional services or similarly matrixed organizations is a plus.
• Good familiarity with multi-jurisdictional regulatory and data privacy requirements - including regional differences in AI governance, data sovereignty, and compliance frameworks (e.g., EU AI Act, GDPR, and equivalent regimes) - particularly as they affect global enterprise platform decisions.

Responsibilities

• Translate business strategy into executable enterprise architecture
• Serve as the firm’s authoritative voice on technology, architecture and cross-platform design
• Ensure alignment across functions that historically owned their own systems
• Transformations safeguard current operations while enabling future scale
• Define and take accountability for the enterprise systems architecture, including ERP platforms and adjacent ecosystems (HR, Finance, MarComm, CRM, Data Management, Integrations).
• Establish clear architectural principles and decision frameworks that guide platform selection, integration patterns, and system evolution.
• Rationalize the enterprise application portfolio by reducing redundancy, legacy sprawl, and accumulated technical debt, while preserving essential business functionality and operational continuity.
• Serve as the determining agent on enterprise architecture tradeoffs, informed by stakeholder input and expert analysis.
• Act as a senior partner to the enterprise leaders.
• Guide stakeholders through complex decisions by combining deep expertise, strong executive presence, and pragmatic diplomacy.
• Balance inclusive collaboration with the confidence to drive decisions that are best for the enterprise.
• Translate complex technical topics into clear, executive-ready recommendations.
• Lead and ensure the delivery of multi-year ERP transformation initiatives, including modernization, upgrades, consolidation, and integration efforts.
• Define and own the enterprise ERP strategy, ensuring the platform can support ZS’ highly customized operating model while minimizing unnecessary customization and long‑term architectural risk.
• Ensure ERP programs are delivered with strong attention to: Business continuity and production stability, Organizational change management, Data integrity, governance, and regulatory requirements
• Partner with external system integrators and advisory firms while retaining ownership and institutional knowledge inside the firm.
• Strengthen architectural governance to reduce complexity, risk, and long-term cost.
• Improve enterprise‑wide data quality, governance, lineage, and accessibility across platforms to support analytics, AI enablement, regulatory compliance, and executive decision‑making.
• Ensure enterprise platforms meet global requirements for security, privacy, and regulatory compliance.
• Protect and optimize the current production environment while transformations are underway.
• Build and lead a small, high-impact enterprise architecture and ERP leadership team.
• Leverage dotted-line partnerships with PMO, engineering, data, security, and operations teams.
• Establish sustainable operating models that outlast individual programs.

Benefits

• Comprehensive total rewards package that supports your health and well‑being, financial future, time away, and professional development.
• Robust skills‑building programs
• Multiple career progression paths
• Internal mobility
• Deeply collaborative culture
• Opportunity to do meaningful work, expand your capabilities, and thrive as part of a global community.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed