Vice President, Enterprise Data Architecture

Bain & Company • Washington, DC

13d • $225,750 - $282,250 • Hybrid

About The Position

The Vice President, Enterprise Data Architecture is accountable for the vision, strategy, and results of Bain’s enterprise data architecture function and serves on the senior data and technology leadership team. Reporting to the EVP, TSG Data & Technology, the role partners with senior business and technology leaders across functions, departments, and regions, as well as colleagues in data governance, information security, privacy, and legal. The Vice President sets technical direction through senior leaders who guide internal engineering teams and external delivery partners, and represents the firm’s data architecture direction with strategic technology partners and external peers.

Bain is building a single, governed data platform on Databricks spanning structured and unstructured data. The platform will support the firm’s agentic AI platform and serve as its authoritative data and knowledge platform. The Vice President owns the target-state architecture and roadmap, makes architecture trade-offs, and recommends investment priorities aligned with the firm’s goals. The role sets the multi-year direction for enterprise data platforms, models, and related capabilities, ensuring a scalable, secure, and governed foundation for trusted data, analytics, and AI use across the firm.

The Vice President leads the data architecture function, including the Data Modeling Center of Excellence, through a team of senior leaders and architects. The role builds the leadership bench and succession plan, advises on the firm’s data strategy, establishes standards for data modeling, ontology, and semantic layers, and drives adoption of reusable enterprise data products and models. The position also leads organizational planning, talent development, performance management, and recruiting for senior technical talent while fostering an inclusive, psychologically safe, collaborative, and globally distributed team culture.

This is a hybrid role requiring in-office presence one day per week at the employee’s Bain home office. The position is permanent full-time. The U.S. annualized salary range is $225,750–$282,250, with placement depending on factors including experience, education, licensure or certifications, training, and skill level. Compensation also includes an annual discretionary performance bonus, a 4.5% 401(k) company contribution that increases after three years of service, and Bain’s benefits and wellness program.

Requirements

• 10–15+ years of experience in enterprise data architecture and engineering, including leading architecture strategy for complex, large-scale data environments across multiple business domains and data platforms.
• Track record of defining and delivering multi-year enterprise architecture roadmaps and scalable, secure, governed data platforms using modern cloud technologies, with demonstrated business impact.
• Deep experience in data modeling and related architecture disciplines, including establishing standards across complex data domains and supporting analytics and AI workloads on structured and unstructured data.
• Experience leading architecture and/or data modeling organizations through senior leaders and developing senior technical talent and succession.
• Experience directing distributed engineering teams and managing strategic relationships with external technology partners and vendors.
• Demonstrated experience advising and influencing senior stakeholders, resolving complex cross-organizational trade-offs, and driving adoption of enterprise architecture standards at scale.
• Ability to translate business strategy into a multi-year enterprise data architecture vision, roadmap, and investment priorities.
• Expert knowledge of enterprise data architecture, data modeling, and modern data platform concepts, including related engineering, governance, security, and AI disciplines and how they interrelate.
• Ability to influence senior leaders and stakeholders across functions, build alignment, and drive adoption of strategic initiatives without direct authority.
• Excellent communication skills, including the ability to explain complex architecture choices clearly to senior leaders and communicate credibly with engineering, product, business, and executive audiences.
• Ability to work in a hybrid model, with in-office presence one day per week at a Bain home office.

Responsibilities

• Set the vision and multi-year roadmap for enterprise data architecture, platforms, and capabilities in alignment with business strategy and data and AI ambitions.
• Own the target-state data architecture, principles, standards, and technology direction to ensure scalable, secure, governed, and maintainable enterprise data capabilities.
• Make and defend major architecture and platform decisions; balance speed, cost, risk, and long-term flexibility; recommend investment priorities; and create reference architectures.
• Provide senior technical leadership on complex architecture issues and set technical direction for internal engineering teams and external delivery partners through their senior leaders.
• Partner with data governance, security, privacy, legal, and technology leaders to incorporate data quality, governance, security, and control requirements into architecture.
• Build senior-leader alignment and drive adoption of enterprise architecture and platform standards across functions, departments, and regions; resolve dependencies and competing priorities, promote reuse, and reduce fragmentation.
• Identify opportunities to apply data and AI capabilities and lead integration of AI and agentic use cases into the enterprise data foundation.
• Advise business and technology leaders on architecture decisions, strategic trade-offs, and emerging data and AI capabilities, and help shape the firm’s broader data strategy.
• Own senior relationships with strategic data platform and technology partners and lead benchmarking against external practices and peers.
• Lead the Data Modeling Center of Excellence and establish enterprise standards and practices for data modeling, ontology, and semantic layers.
• Ensure standards support consistent, governed, reusable data products and models across business domains.
• Partner with senior business and data owners to define data domains, ownership, and authoritative sources across structured and unstructured information.
• Set quality expectations for architecture and modeling work and continually scale, automate, and improve application of standards.
• Create and implement reference architectures for Databricks, Glean, Palantir, and other platforms.
• Lead the data architecture function through senior leaders and architects; establish its organizational structure, operating model, and capacity plan.
• Coach and develop senior technical leaders, build succession, develop future firm leaders, and mentor beyond the direct team.
• Lead performance management, professional development, and recruiting of senior technical talent.
• Cultivate an inclusive, psychologically safe, collaborative culture across a globally distributed team and sponsor technology and AI experimentation consistent with responsible-use policies.
• Coordinate with peer leaders across Data & Technology and other functions to align priorities, resourcing, and ways of working with broader firm initiatives.

Benefits

• Annual discretionary performance bonus; role may also be eligible for other discretionary compensation.
• 4.5% 401(k) company contribution, increasing after three years of service and fully vested upon start date.
• Bain pays 100% of individual employee premiums for medical, dental, and vision programs.
• Generous paid time off, including parental leave, sick leave, and paid holidays.
• Paid life and long-term disability insurance.
• Annual fitness reimbursements.

What This Job Offers

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