VP of Data Architecture

Empower Company S.R.O. • Greenwood Village, CO

4d

About The Position

Our vision for the future is based on the idea that transforming financial lives starts by giving our people the freedom to transform their own. We have a flexible work environment, and fluid career paths. We not only encourage but celebrate internal mobility. We also recognize the importance of purpose, well-being, and work-life balance. Within Empower and our communities, we work hard to create a welcoming and inclusive environment, and our associates dedicate thousands of hours to volunteering for causes that matter most to them. Chart your own path and grow your career while helping more customers achieve financial freedom. Empower Yourself. Applicants must be authorized to work for any employer in the U.S. We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment visa at this time, including CPT/OPT. The Vice President, Data Architecture is responsible for setting and driving Empower's enterprise data architecture direction to support business growth, modernization, and a secure, scalable technology ecosystem. This role partners with engineering, platform, security, and business leaders to shape architectural decisions that improve stability, performance, time-to-value, and cost efficiency—particularly across Empower's cloud-first strategy, i ntegration evolution, and API-first integration patterns. This is a senior leadership role focused on architectural outcomes and decision-making, achieved through clear direction, practical guardrails, reusable patterns, and scalable operating practices rather than hands-on implementation. W hat you will do:

Requirements

• Minimum ten (10) years relevant IT architecture experience, including at least four (4) years of experience directly managing people, including hiring, developing, motivating, and directing people as they work.
• High-level communications, consulting, and client relations experience with all levels of management.
• Strong executive acumen required.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to frame tradeoffs (risk, cost, stability, delivery speed) and drive decisions.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or Information Systems, or equivalent experience.
• Experience in the retirement, wealth management, recordkeeping, or closely related financial services domain.
• Experience with AWS and cloud-first architectural patterns, including resiliency, automation, scalability, and cost visibility.
• Strong capability in reliability and operability practices, including observability, production readiness, failure modes, and availability patterns.
• Demonstrated ability to lead senior technical professionals and drive outcomes through influence and clear architectural decision-making.
• Strong understanding of enterprise data consumption patterns across BI/reporting, API/data services, and advanced analytics platforms.
• Strong security-by-design fundamentals for enterprise data access and integration, including encryption, access controls, auditing, and protection of sensitive data.

Nice To Haves

• Master's degree in a related systems or business field (strongly desired).
• Experience with modern data platforms such as Snowflake and/or Redshift.
• Experience with distributed processing patterns.
• Experience with event-driven and streaming architectures for data movement, including operational considerations and scalable consumption patterns.
• Experience shaping enterprise API strategies and developer enablement patterns, including policies and reusable capabilities.
• Experience implementing CI/CD enablement for data pipelines, including testing strategies, deployment guardrails, and rollback approaches.
• Experience with cloud-native runtime environments such as Kubernete s .
• Familiarity with modern observability and monitoring approaches and tools.
• Experience partnering with innovation teams to implement analytics or GenAI capabilities in a controlled, secure way.

Responsibilities

• Lead the enterprise data architecture function, including hiring, developing, and retaining architecture talent, and setting expectations for how architecture work is produced, reviewed, and adopted across delivery organizations.
• Own Empower's enterprise data architecture strategy and direction and hold the organization accountable for maintaining the target state, roadmaps, and guidance needed to execute modernization priorities.
• Direct the architecture team's definition of enterprise patterns for data movement, processing, storage, and consumption across operational, analytical, and advanced analytics/AI use cases.
• Communicate enterprise data architecture direction to executives and delivery leaders, making tradeoffs explicit (risk, cost, stability, speed) and driving decisions that improve outcomes.
• Sponsor and oversee modernization of legacy data capabilities, ensuring the team drives migration sequencing, platform evolution guidance, and decommissioning plans that reduce complexity and technical debt.
• Partner with platform leadership to advance AWS-based cloud maturity and scalable platform patterns, ensuring the architecture team provides guardrails that enable automation, repeatability, and delivery speed.
• Own the enterprise approach to i ntegration evolution and reusable integration capabilities, ensuring the team reduces point-to-point complexity and improves enterprise data access through consistent patterns.
• Ensure the team defines and drives API-first and event-driven patterns (including streaming where appropriate), with clear expectations for latency, scalability, resiliency, and consumer experience.
• Prom otes the creat ion of architecture that c onform s to enterprise standards .
• Oversee the definition of enterprise consumption standards across BI/reporting, APIs/data services, and analytics workbenches, including performance practices, traceability, and compliance/audit readiness.
• Sponsor architectural direction for ETL/ELT performance and cost optimization, ensuring the team establishes practices for tuning, workload design, capacity planning, and pipeline reliability instrumentation.
• Establish an architecture engagement model and operating rhythm that provides timely guidance and reduces late-cycle rework.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, vision and life insurance
• Retirement savings - 401(k) plan with generous company matching contributions (up to 6%), financial advisory services, potential company discretionary contribution, and a broad investment lineup
• Tuition reimbursement up to $5,250/year
• Business-casual environment that includes the option to wear jeans
• Generous paid time off upon hire - including a paid time off program plus ten paid company holidays and three floating holidays each calendar year
• Paid volunteer time — 16 hours per calendar year
• Leave of absence programs - including paid parental leave, paid short- and long-term disability, and Family and Medical Leave (FMLA)
• Business Resource Groups (BRGs) - BRGs facilitate inclusion and collaboration across our business internally and throughout the communities where we live, work and play. BRGs are open to all.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Executive
• Number of Employees: 51-100 employees