VP, Chief Architect

Signet Jewelers•Irving, TX

About The Position

Signet Jewelers is seeking a VP, Chief Architect to serve as the principal architectural authority across our unified Digital & Technology (D&T) organization, reporting to the CDTO. This is a senior individual-contributor role with no delivery organization or reporting line, but the cross-cutting technical judgment that holds Signet's portfolio of banners together as one platform. The Chief Architect is the CDTO's most trusted technical partner, able to step into any initiative, understand its true business intent, and ensure it's built on the right foundations. The mandate is grounded in Signet's “Grow Brand Love” and “Connected Commerce” strategy, and the D&T priorities of platform harmonization, enterprise AI adoption, and Blue Nile integration. This role defines and upholds the principles every initiative is held to: Outcome before architecture; Harmonize over proliferate; Own the core, accelerate the edges; Simplify relentlessly; Decisions are explicit and durable; AI-native by default.

Requirements

15+ years of progressive technology experience, including time as Chief/Principal Architect, VP of Engineering, or CTO within a multi-brand, large-scale retail or e-commerce enterprise ($2B+ revenue).
Practitioner architect — majority of career spent designing and shipping production systems alongside engineering teams, not strategy-only.
Demonstrated cross-portfolio architecture ownership, ideally across distinct consumer brands sharing common infrastructure.
Track record of platform consolidation, brand harmonization, and simplification at scale.
Deep command of cloud, integration, event-driven, and headless/composable (MACH) architecture; hands-on fluency with a major cloud's serverless ecosystem (e.g., AWS).
Track record authoring durable architecture artifacts (capability maps, C4 diagrams, ADRs) that teams actually use.
Strong financial fluency and proven influence in a matrixed environment without reporting authority.
Experience with AI-assisted SDLC practices and agentic AI architecture patterns.
Bachelor's in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field; technical Master's preferred.

Nice To Haves

Specialty retail or jewelry experience.
SAP Commerce Cloud, IBM Sterling/Fluent/Manhattan OMS, headless CMS (AEM, Contentful, Contentstack), or Oracle Xstore at production scale.
Real-time CDP (Adobe, Amperity, Salesforce) and/or Salesforce Sales/Service Cloud in retail contexts.
Experience with permissioned distributed ledgers or heavy external APIs without adding latency.
Multi-national e-commerce or omnichannel operations; familiarity with TOGAF, C4, or ArchiMate.

Responsibilities

Own the cross-enterprise architectural view — current-state baseline, capability-to-system mapping, and a multi-year target-state architecture spanning commerce, store, supply chain, customer care, corporate, and data/AI.
Define the enterprise technical roadmap with domain and platform leaders, and keep it continuously tested against business strategy.
Lead harmonization of Signet's multi-brand technology estate, collapsing duplicative platforms and replacing brand-by-brand sprawl with shared foundations.
Drive architectural integration of Blue Nile and future acquisitions into the unified platform without eroding brand distinctiveness.
Make simplification measurable — track reduction of redundant systems and technical debt.
Establish enterprise architecture standards, reference patterns, and lightweight decision governance (ADRs, decision gates).
Serve as architectural arbiter for the CDTO on cross-cutting decisions and as primary liaison to the Enterprise Architecture team.
Review significant programs at inception and key gates; catch misalignment early and steer initiatives back to their true business intent.
Provide hands-on architectural leadership on a select few highest-impact, cross-domain initiatives (e.g., commerce platform modernization, CMS, order management, customer data).
Stay selective — most domain-specific architecture remains with domain architects; this role engages where the cross-portfolio view is decisive.
Drive the shift to an AI-assisted, agentic development model with integrated, end-to-end SDLC capability.
Architect patterns that make agentic and AI-native systems safe and scalable (orchestration, MCP-based integration, guardrails).
Build a small, skilled internal team, reducing reliance on external contractors over time.
Provide peer-level leadership to domain-embedded architects; run the enterprise Architecture Community of Practice and mentor across the organization.
Build trust-based relationships with senior executives across Product, Marketing, Merchandising, Store Ops, Customer Care, Supply Chain, and Finance; serve as the CDTO's architectural voice in executive forums.
Anchor every decision in customer/brand outcomes and clear economics (TCO, capex/opex, vendor terms).