System Architect Director - BI & Data Platform

You have a clear vision of where your career can go. And we have the leadership to help you get there. At CNA, we strive to create a culture in which people know they matter and are part of something important, ensuring the abilities of all employees are used to their fullest potential.
CNA seeks to offer a comprehensive and competitive benefits package to our employees that helps them - and their family members - achieve their physical, financial, emotional and social wellbeing goals.
For a detailed look at CNA's benefits, check out our Candidate's Guide .
The System Architect (SA) Director has overall technical authority for one or more programs/Agile Release Trains (ARTs) within the Data & AI Platform portfolio, with direct management accountability for a staff of Engineers and Business Analysts. The SA Director works closely with an Enterprise Architect, Product Management and Release Train Engineer (RTE) to ensure ongoing alignment of technical and business outcomes. They also work with Technical Architects, as needed, to ensure architectural outcomes are within required guardrails. The SA Director owns the creation, maintenance and communication of the Architectural Runway, along with oversight through implementation by one or more development teams. The SA Director is an expert and champion of Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) architectural design and development, incrementally building the associated mindset and behaviors across stakeholders with which they work.
JOB DESCRIPTION:
Essential Duties & Responsibilities
Performs a combination of duties in accordance with departmental guidelines:

• Builds and continually refines detailed Architectural Runway and Vision, and Enabler Epics in collaboration with various stakeholders, for applications, data or infrastructure architectures.
• Define and lead implementation, advancements of data and BI platform, based on requirements, scalability, performance, and security considerations. Partner with enterprise architecture, engineering teams and define a clear roadmap for the platform's evolution, aligning it with the organization's strategic goals.
• Define and Implement platform observability to track performance. Identify bottlenecks and areas for improvement, and lead efforts to optimize platform's efficiency.
• Drive continuous platform improvement, innovation and experimentation to enhance the platform's capabilities, security, and user experience.
• Lead the support of platform health and resolve critical priority issues in collaboration with RTB, engineering, infrastructure, security, devops teams.
• Contributes to and influences the program increment roadmap, backlog and prepares architectural outcomes for program increment planning.
• Incrementally builds and shepherds the scaled agility mindset, values, principles, and practices across teams, ARTs
• Owns measurable velocity, specifically around overcoming hurdles, implementing new designs, and implementing best practices
• Provides expert knowledge to, and participates in, weighted shortest job first prioritization of Epics
• Guides and negotiates with Developers/Engineers, Business Analysts, Product Manager/Owner, RTE, and Enterprise Architect to ensure architectural alignment
• Engages with Technical Architects as needed for support and guidance, working with them and Enterprise Architects to ensure technical standards, procedures and methodologies are adhered to and/or provide feedback where changes are needed
• Actively engages in all ART events, collaborating, coaching and guiding stakeholders to ensure ongoing alignment with the Architectural Vision
• Influences and creates the ongoing Enabler Epics for maintaining and stabilizing of all ART applications and pipelines; including upgrades of technology, frameworks, and infrastructure.
• Has full management responsibility for the performance and development of subordinate staff, including resource planning, hiring, talent, performance, and career development
• Presents Architectural Overview at program increment planning, socializing and enabling Product Owners and teams to successfully complete associated Enabler Epics
• Negotiates Enabler Epic scope adjustments, as needed, and accepts them as they are completed
• Ensures technical guardrails are enforced via designs and pull request

May perform additional duties as assigned.
Reporting Relationship
Typically, Director or above
Skills, Knowledge & Abilities

• Expert knowledge of design and implementation of enterprise BI and Data platforms.
• Senior level knowledge of the system development life cycle, along with system and application program development technological alternatives and architecture methodologies for multi-platform environments.
• Solid understanding of coding principles and practices, experience managing code quality through pull requests and other processes
• Extensive experience at highest technical level of all phases of system architecture design using state of the art architecture, object oriented component analysis and development and proficiency in web-based systems architecture, service-based architecture and enterprise application architecture.
• Strong knowledge of contemporary technology and business trends that allows architecture to solve problems in a creative and cost effective manner.
• Expert understanding of SAFe/Agile, architecture, SDLC, and testing practices with experience incrementally building and shepherding the scaled agility mindset, values, principles, and practices across teams and ARTs
• Excellent written, verbal and presentation skills. Able to communicate, collaborate and consult effectively with vendors, clients, peers, and IT management and staff
• Strong analytical, problem solving and negotiations/conflict resolution skills. Able to balance technical excellence with business results
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills to coach, influence, guide and mentor teams, peers, clients and leadership in cross functional teams
• Extensive experience developing strategic system architecture plans and/or architectural runways and decomposing architectural initiatives into program Epics Extensive experience with information processing fundamentals, understanding of current and emerging best practices
• Proven experience identifying, analyzing and resolving system problems

Education & Experience

• Bachelor's Degree or Master's Degree (preferred) in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related discipline; or equivalent work experience.
• Typically, a minimum of 10 years work experience in technical delivery, including experience with systems architecture methodologies, concepts and frameworks like TOGAF
• Typically, a minimum of five years work experience with architecture in some of the following technology: Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Big Query, Looker, Tableau, QlikView and Business Object.
• Experience with insurance or finance based products
• Applicable certifications preferred - ARCH, ASE, SDP
• Preferred experience with use of Jira, Confluence, and LucidSpark

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CNA is committed to providing reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities in the recruitment process. To request an accommodation, please contact [email protected] .