At Securian Financial Group the internal position title is Architecture Consulting Dir.

Position Overview
Securian’s Enterprise Architecture team is seeking a strategic, highly influential Enterprise Architect to help drive the continued evolution of our architecture practice and shape the future direction of the enterprise.

This is an exciting opportunity to join a function that is becoming an increasingly trusted, accountable, and business-connected partner across the enterprise. In this role, you will partner closely with senior Business Leaders, Enterprise Technology leaders, Business Architects, Technology Architects, Data Architects, and the Head of Enterprise Architecture to define future-state capabilities, guide major investment decisions/execution, establish enterprise direction, and drive long-term business and technology transformation.

This role is best suited for an architect who brings strategic thinking, sound judgment, business acumen, and strong executive engagement skills. You will help ensure that business strategies are supported by the right combination of people, processes, technology, data, governance, and organizational capabilities while driving modernization, innovation, simplification, and long-term enterprise sustainability.

You will also play a critical role in strengthening Enterprise Architecture as a strategic enabling function that helps leaders make informed decisions regarding business capabilities, technology investments, data strategy, innovation opportunities, and enterprise transformation.

Responsibilities
Enterprise Strategy, Capability Evolution & Target-State Architecture

• Lead the development and evolution of market/enterprise architecture strategy, ensuring the capabilities and investments required to execute Securian’s business strategies are clearly defined and governed.

• Partner with Business Architects to define and evolve future-state business capabilities that support enterprise and market objectives.

• Ensure enterprise strategies consider the full capability model, including people, process, technology, data, governance, and organizational readiness.

• Establish and evolve enterprise target-state architecture aligned to business strategy, market priorities, and long-term enterprise objectives.

• Align business capability roadmaps, technology roadmaps, and data strategies into a cohesive enterprise transformation direction.

• Ensure architecture decisions balance business value, customer outcomes, operational effectiveness, risk, cost, and long-term sustainability.

• Develop enterprise architecture viewpoints, capability maps, roadmaps, and strategic models that guide enterprise decision-making and transformation initiatives.

Technology Strategy, Innovation & Modernization

• Collaborate with Technology Architects to establish and communicate a clear technology north star that guides enterprise investments, modernization efforts, innovation initiatives, platform evolution, and technology lifecycle decisions.

• Define and maintain enterprise technology principles, standards, architectural guardrails, and strategic technology direction.

• Govern enterprise technology lifecycles, including decisions regarding adoption, investment, sustainment, containment, modernization, and retirement.

• Establish modernization and rationalization priorities across applications, platforms, services, and technology stacks.

• Evaluate emerging technologies, automation opportunities, AI-enabled capabilities, and innovation initiatives to determine enterprise applicability and business value.

• Ensure technology investments support both current business needs and long-term enterprise objectives.

• Promote simplification, reuse, interoperability, and architectural consistency across the enterprise technology landscape.

Data Strategy & Information Architecture Alignment

• Partner with Data Architects to ensure enterprise capabilities are supported by durable, scalable, secure, and business-aligned data architectures.

• Help shape enterprise data strategy to support growth, operational excellence, analytics, AI adoption, and business innovation.

• Ensure data architecture decisions support simplification, interoperability, governance, and long-term information management objectives.

• Promote alignment between business capabilities, technology platforms, data assets, and information flows.

• Support enterprise-wide efforts to improve data quality, accessibility, governance, and strategic use of information.

Business Engagement & Strategic Advisory

• Serve as a trusted advisor to senior business and technology leaders, helping shape enterprise strategy, business transformation initiatives, and investment priorities.

• Translate enterprise architecture direction into clear business outcomes, risks, trade-offs, and investment implications.

• Partner with business leaders to understand evolving business capabilities, market opportunities, competitive pressures, and strategic priorities.

• Influence portfolio planning and investment decisions by aligning business needs with enterprise architecture direction and long-term enterprise objectives.

• Facilitate executive-level discussions regarding capability evolution, technology strategy, modernization priorities, data investments, innovation opportunities, and rationalization initiatives.

• Drive alignment across markets, business units, shared capabilities, and enterprise domains while balancing enterprise consistency with market-specific needs.

• Help business leaders understand how architecture decisions accelerate business outcomes, improve operational effectiveness, reduce complexity, and support future growth.

Governance, Standards & Architectural Leadership

• Lead enterprise architecture governance for major initiatives, architecturally significant changes, and non-standard technology decisions.

• Chair architecture governance forums, including Design Authority and Technology Council discussions, ensuring enterprise standards and strategic priorities are consistently applied.

• Establish and maintain enterprise standards, principles, and governance guardrails with clear accountability and measurable compliance expectations.

• Approve architectural exceptions and waivers with clearly defined remediation plans, timelines, and exit criteria.

• Serve as the final escalation point for significant deviations from enterprise standards and target-state direction.

• Ensure governance processes are transparent, efficient, measurable, and focused on enabling business outcomes.

• Maintain visibility into enterprise technology health, technical debt, modernization progress, rationalization opportunities, and strategic risks.

Enterprise Architecture Practice Leadership

• Mentor and coach architects across the organization, strengthening architecture capabilities, business engagement skills, strategic thinking, and enterprise decision-making.

• Foster strong collaboration across Business Architecture, Technology Architecture, Data Architecture, Solution Architecture, Security Architecture, and delivery organizations.

• Contribute to the evolution and maturity of the Enterprise Architecture practice, frameworks, governance processes, and operating model.

• Promote architecture best practices, capability-based planning, strategic road mapping, and outcome-oriented decision-making.

• Support continuous advancement of architecture maturity, governance effectiveness, and enterprise-wide architectural alignment.

Qualifications
Required Qualifications

• Demonstrated experience defining enterprise strategy, enterprise architecture direction, target-state architectures, governance models, and technology strategies aligned to business objectives.

• Proven ability to translate business strategy into enterprise capabilities, architecture roadmaps, modernization priorities, and investment recommendations.

• Experience working across business architecture, technology architecture, data architecture, and enterprise transformation initiatives.

• Strong experience guiding enterprise-level decision-making involving business capabilities, technology investments, data strategies, and modernization efforts.

• Experience establishing and governing enterprise standards, architectural guardrails, and technology lifecycle strategies.

• Broad knowledge across business architecture, application architecture, data architecture, technology architecture, cloud platforms, AI-enabled technologies, and enterprise governance practices.

• Strong executive communication and relationship management skills with demonstrated ability to influence senior leaders and drive enterprise-wide alignment.

• Proven ability to facilitate complex trade-off discussions and guide strategic decisions balancing business value, risk, cost, innovation, and sustainability.

• Experience mentoring architects, engineers, and technical leaders while advancing organizational architecture maturity.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience supporting life insurance, individual annuities, institutional retirement, institutional financial products, or other highly regulated industries.

• Experience with AWS and cloud-enabled architecture in large enterprise environments.

• Experience leading enterprise-wide modernization, rationalization, transformation, or capability planning initiatives.

• Familiarity with enterprise architecture frameworks, governance models, capability-based planning, and architecture maturity frameworks.

• Experience evaluating AI-enabled capabilities, emerging technologies, automation opportunities, and enterprise innovation investments.

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, Business, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Required Skills
•    Enterprise Architecture Strategy
•    Business Capability Planning
•    Target-State Architecture
•    Enterprise Transformation
•    Technology Strategy & Modernization
•    Data Strategy Alignment
•    Architecture Governance
•    Enterprise Standards & Guardrails
•    Rationalization & Simplification
•    Portfolio Planning & Investment Advisory
•    Executive Influence & Stakeholder Engagement
•    Innovation & Emerging Technology Strategy
•    Cross-Domain Architecture Leadership
•    Strategic Decision-Making
•    Architecture Practice Leadership

#LI-hybrid **This position will be in a hybrid working arrangement.**

Securian Financial believes in hybrid work as an integral part of our culture. Associates get the benefit of working both virtually and in our offices. If you’re in a commutable distance (90 minutes), you’ll join us 3 days each week in our offices to collaborate and build relationships. Our policy allows flexibility for the reality of business and personal schedules.

Preferred Skills: