Blackbaud, Inc.

Enterprise Architect

Blackbaud, Inc.$130K — $180K *
US-AnywhereRemote in United States
Enterprise Technology
11 - 15 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 15+ years of experience in enterprise, solution, or platform architecture, with a focus on data and analytics
  • Proven experience designing enterprise-scale data platforms in cloud-based SaaS environments
  • Expertise in AI-enabled system architecture, focusing on ML and Generative AI
  • Strong understanding of AI/ML architectures, including data pipelines and integration patterns
  • Familiarity with modern data technologies like cloud data warehouses and streaming platforms
  • Experience collaborating with product, engineering, security, and business stakeholders
  • Excellent executive communication and storytelling skills
  • Familiarity with enterprise architecture frameworks (e.g., TOGAF) and governance

Responsibilities

  • Define and maintain enterprise data and AI architecture vision and roadmap
  • Establish data-as-a-product practices for ownership and quality management
  • Guide strategic platform decisions across data ingestion, storage, and analytics
  • Embed AI/ML capabilities into SaaS products and workflows
  • Define AI architecture patterns and responsible governance measures
  • Create and enforce standards for data platforms and AI services
  • Translate business objectives into actionable data and AI capabilities

Benefits

  • Mentorship opportunities with senior architects and engineers
  • Collaborative environment across product and engineering teams
  • Influence the evolution of data and AI technology across the organization
  • Access to the latest tools and technologies in data and AI
  • Opportunity to shape best practices in data governance and AI adoption
Full Job Description

Enterprise Architect

We are seeking an experienced Enterprise Architect for Data & AI to help shape the future of our SaaS platform. Data and AI are foundational to our customer experience, operational excellence, and long-term differentiation. This role ensures we scale intelligently, innovate responsibly, and treat data as a strategic product—not merely a byproduct of systems.

The Enterprise Architect – Data & AI is a senior, strategic role responsible for defining and governing the enterprise-wide data and AI architecture that enables scalable SaaS growth, trusted analytics, and responsible AI adoption.

This architect serves as a bridge between business strategy, data platforms, analytics, and AI/ML capabilities, partnering closely with product, engineering, security, compliance, and business leaders to translate vision into durable competitive advantage.

 

What you'll do

Enterprise Data & AI Strategy

  • Define and maintain the enterprise data and AI architecture vision, principles, and roadmap aligned with business strategy and SaaS growth objectives

  • Establish data-as-a-product practices, including ownership models, quality standards, SLAs, discoverability, and lifecycle management

  • Guide strategic platform decisions across data ingestion, storage, processing, analytics, ML, and AI enablement

AI Enablement & Responsible Governance

  • Partner with product and engineering teams to embed AI/ML capabilities into SaaS products and internal workflows

  • Define AI architecture patterns, such as feature stores, model lifecycle management, vector databases, and LLM integration

  • Work with Chief Data & AI Officer to establish responsible AI guardrails, including governance, security, privacy, explainability, and regulatory compliance

  • Collaborate with Chief Data & AI Officer, Security and Legal teams to align AI and data architectures with evolving regulatory requirements

Architecture Governance & Standards

  • Create and enforce enterprise standards and reference architectures for data platforms, analytics, and AI services

  • Review and guide solution architectures to ensure scalability, interoperability, cost efficiency, and architectural consistency

  • Balance near-term innovation with long-term architectural sustainability

Business & Technology Alignment

  • Translate business objectives into data and AI capabilities that drive measurable outcomes such as growth, efficiency, and customer experience

  • Advise executives on data and AI investment decisions, trade-offs, and risk management

  • Act as a trusted thought partner to senior leaders across product, engineering, and the business

Platform & Cloud Architecture

  • Guide cloud-native data and AI architectures across modern SaaS stacks, including event-driven, API-first, and multi-tenant environments

  • Influence the evolution of data lakes, warehouses, streaming platforms, ML platforms, and AI services

  • Optimize architectures for scalability, reliability, cost management, and vendor portability

Change Enablement & Thought Leadership

  • Evangelize data and AI best practices across the organization

  • Mentor architects and senior engineers on data and AI architecture patterns

 

 

What you'll bring

  • 15+ years of experience with 10+ years of experience in enterprise, solution, or platform architecture, with deep focus on data and analytics

  • Proven experience designing enterprise-scale data platforms in cloud-based SaaS environments

  • Strong expertise in AI-enabled system architecture, including ML and/or Generative AI solution patterns

  • Solid understanding of AI/ML architectures, including data pipelines, model lifecycle management, and integration patterns

  • Hands-on familiarity with modern data technologies such as cloud data warehouses, data lakes, and streaming platforms

  • Experience working across product, engineering, security, and business stakeholders

  • Strong executive communication and storytelling skills

  • Pragmatic familiarity with enterprise architecture frameworks (e.g., TOGAF) and architecture governance

  • Proficiency in Agile and Lean delivery models

  • Ability to deliver work which meets all minimum standards of quality, security, and operability.

Preferred Attributes

  • Experience enabling AI-powered SaaS products or large-scale analytics platforms

  • Experience with LLMs, generative AI, and vector-based architectures

  • Experience with data governance, privacy, and regulatory frameworks (e.g., SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA, where applicable)

  • Experience with data mesh or domain-oriented data architectures

  • Background in a high-growth SaaS or platform company

  • Experience with observability for data and AI, including quality, drift, lineage, and cost/usage

About Blackbaud, Inc.

Blackbaud is a cloud computing provider that serves the social good community—nonprofits, foundations, corporations, education institutions, healthcare organizations, religious organizations, and individual change agents. Its products focus on fundraising, website management, CRM, analytics, financial management, ticketing, and education administration. Blackbaud's flagship product is a fundraising SQL database software, Raiser's Edge. Revenue from the sale of Raiser's Edge and related services accounted for thirty percent of Blackbaud's total revenue in 2012. Other products and services include Blackbaud Enterprise CRM, Altru, Financial Edge, Education Edge, Blackbaud NetCommunity, eTapestry, Luminate Online, Luminate CRM, Friends Asking Friends. In addition, Blackbaud offers consultancy services to nonprofit organizations. Blackbaud was founded in 1981 by Anthony Bakker. The company is headquartered in Charleston, South Carolina. It has regional offices in Austin, Texas; Plano, Texas; St. Paul, Minnesota; and Bedford, New Hampshire. Internationally, Blackbaud has offices in London, England; Sydney, Australia and Glasgow, Scotland. Michael Gianoni is Blackbaud's CEO.
Learn more about Blackbaud, Inc.
Size
3,600 employees
Market Cap
$3 billion
Industry
Net Income
$7.7 million
Founded
1981
5 Year Trend
+4.9%
Revenue
$913.2 million
NASDAQ

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