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,integration 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.

What youwill do:

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 tointegration 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.

Promotes thecreationofarchitecture thatconformstoenterprisestandards.

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.

What you will bring:

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.

What will set youapart:

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 Kubernetes.

Familiarity with modern observability and monitoring approaches and tools.

Experience partnering with innovation teams toimplementanalytics or GenAI capabilities in a controlled, secure way.

This job description is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all duties, responsibilities and qualifications of the job. The employer has the right to revise this job description at any time. You will be evaluated in part based on your performance of the responsibilities and/or tasks listed in this job description. You may be required perform other duties that are not included on this job description. The job description is not a contract for employment, and either you or the employer may terminate employment at any time, for any reason.

What we offer you

We offer an array of diverse and inclusive benefits regardless of where you are in your career. We believe that providing our employees with the means to lead healthy balanced lives results in the best possible work performance.

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.

Base Salary Range

$166,900.00 - $242,050.00

The salary range above shows the typical minimum to maximum base salary range for this position in the location listed. Non-sales positions have the opportunity to participate in a bonus program. Sales positions are eligible for sales incentives, and in some instances a bonus plan, whereby total compensation may far exceed base salary depending on individual performance. Actual compensation offered may vary from posted hiring range based upon geographic location, work experience, education, licensure requirements and/or skill level and will be finalized at the time of offer.

Equal opportunity employer • Drug-free workplace

We are an equal opportunity employer with a commitment to diversity. All individuals, regardless of personal characteristics, are encouraged to apply. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age (40 and over), race, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, pregnancy, religion, physical or mental disability, military or veteran status, genetic information, or any other status protected by applicable state or local law.

***For remote and hybrid positions you will be required to provide reliable high-speed internet with a wired connection as well as a place in your home to work with limited disruption. You must have reliable connectivity from an internet service provider that is fiber, cable or DSL internet. Other necessary computer equipment, will be provided. You may be required to work in the office if you do not have an adequate home work environment and the required internet connection.***

Job Posting End Date at 12:01 am on:

01-17-2026

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