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.

The Enterprise Architect - Integration is a senior technology leadership role responsible for defining and governing Empower's enterprise integration strategy across APIs, events, messaging, batch/file transfer, SaaS platforms, cloud-native services, legacy systems, data flows, and partner ecosystems.

This role partners closely with business and technology teams to create a technology vision and ensure that resulting systems and solutions are secure, resilient, scalable, observable, reusable, and aligned with business capabilities. The architect will develop integration strategies, reference architectures, reusable patterns, roadmaps, standards, and guidance across the IT delivery organization while addressing total cost of ownership, stability, performance, operational efficiency, and risk.

The ideal candidate combines enterprise-level architecture leadership with practical delivery experience. They can evaluate technology options, influence architecture decisions, explain trade-offs, coach delivery teams, and rapidly prove technical concepts using modern integration platforms, cloud services, automation, and engineering practices.

Responsibilities

• Define and execute a business-aligned integration architecture strategy and vision for Empower.
• Develop, document, and maintain technology roadmaps for enterprise integration capabilities, including API management, event streaming, messaging, iPaaS, data integration, cloud integration, and partner connectivity.
• Create reference architectures, reusable patterns, standards, and decision frameworks for integration across applications, data, SaaS, legacy, and third-party ecosystems.
• Guide teams on when to use synchronous APIs, asynchronous messaging, event-driven architecture, batch/file transfer, data replication, change data capture, or workflow/process orchestration.
• Leverage knowledge of service-oriented architecture, microservices, domain-driven design, APIs, events, and integration patterns to deliver secure and scalable solutions.
• Ensure technology teams understand how to use RESTful APIs, resource-oriented design, OpenAPI, API gateways, event brokers, message queues, schema registries, integration runtimes, and modern authentication patterns.
• Define governance for API and event lifecycles, including design standards, versioning, discoverability, ownership, documentation, reuse, consumer onboarding, and deprecation.
• Design and modernize complex systems into cloud-compatible or cloud-native applications where applicable, including strategies for safely migrating legacy integrations to modern platforms.
• Participate in evaluation of new applications, integration platforms, vendor products, cloud services, and technical options; challenge the status quo and create solid business cases that influence technology direction.
• Develop and implement best practices, standards, guardrails, and guidance, and coach technology teams on adoption.
• Make leadership recommendations regarding strategic architecture considerations related to business process design, workflow orchestration, integration modernization, and platform consolidation.
• Provide leadership and direction in software development, platform engineering, DevOps, CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code, test automation, and operational readiness practices as they apply to integration solutions.
• Collaborate with business, application, data, infrastructure, cybersecurity, operations, PMO, vendor, and third-party teams on architecture and design decisions.
• Respond to evolving security, privacy, resiliency, regulatory, and operational conditions; recommend and implement integration security guidelines.
• Design for reliability and operational excellence, including retries, circuit breakers, idempotency, correlation IDs, distributed tracing, dead-letter handling, error management, monitoring, alerting, and supportability.
• Provide thought leadership, advocacy, articulation, assurance, and ongoing maintenance of the Enterprise Architecture discipline.

Required Qualifications

• 15+ years of experience in the development, integration, architecture, and delivery of enterprise software systems.
• 7+ years of experience creating solution architectures and strategies across multiple architecture domains, including business, application, data, integration, infrastructure, cloud, and security.
• Demonstrated experience leading enterprise integration architecture across APIs, messaging, events, batch/file, SaaS, cloud, legacy, and partner integration scenarios.
• Strong knowledge of RESTful API design, OpenAPI specifications, API gateways, API management, API security, versioning, lifecycle management, and developer experience practices.
• Strong knowledge of event-driven architecture, messaging, publish/subscribe patterns, event streaming, event contracts, schema evolution, idempotency, replay, and eventual consistency.
• Hands-on architecture experience with one or more integration technologies or platforms such as MuleSoft, Boomi, Azure Integration Services, Workato, Informatica, IBM App Connect, SAP Integration Suite, Kafka, Confluent, Solace, AWS integration services, or comparable technologies.
• Experience designing secure integrations using OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, JWT, mTLS, certificates, secrets management, encryption, least privilege, audit logging, and zero-trust principles.
• Experience with cloud and hybrid integration patterns across SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, container platforms, on-premises systems, private connectivity, and enterprise network boundaries.
• Expertise in architectural cross-cutting concerns and trade-offs, including security, resiliency, performance, scalability, caching, observability, availability, operational support, and total cost of ownership.
• Strong knowledge of data modeling, data contracts, canonical data models where appropriate, schema governance, transformation patterns, and integration data ownership.
• Experience with DevOps processes and tools, CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, code quality controls, deployment automation, environment strategy, and release management for integration solutions.
• Demonstrated competency applying architecture frameworks, architecture decision records, reference architectures, standards, governance processes, and modern delivery methods.
• Understanding of business process analysis, business process management, workflow orchestration, and process automation.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to simplify complex architecture topics for business, executive, and engineering audiences.
• Demonstrated continuous learning of new technologies and ability to translate emerging technology trends into practical enterprise architecture guidance.
• Self-motivated individual who thrives in a collaborative, cross-functional team environment.

Preferred Qualifications

• Financial services, retirement services, insurance, investments, asset management, or other regulated-industry experience.
• Strong experience with enterprise API management, AWS, system design.
• Advanced experience with Kafka, Confluent, AWS MSK, MQ, or other event streaming and enterprise messaging platforms.
• Experience with change data capture, event sourcing, stream processing, data replication, ETL/ELT, lakehouse integrations, metadata, data lineage, and operational-to-analytical data flows.
• Experience applying domain-driven design, bounded contexts, domain events, anti-corruption layers, and business capability mapping to integration architecture.
• Experience with platform engineering and self-service integration enablement, including reusable templates, golden paths, shared libraries, policy-as-code, developer tooling, and automated governance.
• Experience with Kubernetes, containerization, ingress patterns, service mesh, cloud-native networking, and workload modernization.
• Experience evaluating and rationalizing integration platform portfolios, including iPaaS, API management, event broker, ESB, managed file transfer, B2B/EDI, workflow, and automation tools.
• Experience with enterprise architecture management tools, architecture repositories, capability maps, application portfolio management, and technology lifecycle management.
• Experience with cost optimization for integration platforms, cloud services, runtime consumption, licensing, API traffic, broker throughput, data egress, and platform consolidation.
• Experience enabling AI, automation, or agentic use cases through governed APIs, events, trusted data access, identity controls, and secure integration patterns.
• Relevant certifications such as TOGAF, cloud architect certifications, Kubernetes, security, API management, Kafka/event streaming, MuleSoft, Boomi, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, or equivalent practical experience.

Leadership and Behavioral Skills

• People skills - interacts effectively with business stakeholders, technology teams, executives, vendors, and third-party integrators.
• Influence and motivation - evangelizes architecture direction, motivates teams, and drives adoption without relying solely on formal authority.
• Negotiation and facilitation - helps teams align on architecture decisions, trade-offs, prioritization, and implementation approaches.
• Problem solving - evaluates complex and unique problems, identifies options, explains trade-offs, and recommends pragmatic solutions.
• Big-picture thinking - avoids tunnel vision and evaluates architecture decisions across business, application, data, integration, security, infrastructure, operations, and cost dimensions.
• Business savvy - understands financial services business capabilities and how technology decisions affect customer experience, operational risk, scalability, compliance, and delivery speed.
• Delivery orientation - balances enterprise standards with practical delivery needs and enables teams to move faster through reusable patterns and clear guardrails.
• Coaching mindset: mentors architects, engineers, product owners, and delivery leaders on integration architecture practices and decision-making.

Suggested Interview Focus Areas

• Ask the candidate to compare when they would use REST APIs, events, messaging, batch/file, change data capture, or workflow orchestration.
• Ask how they would modernize a heavily point-to-point integration landscape without disrupting critical business operations.
• Ask how they govern APIs and events while still enabling delivery teams to move quickly.
• Ask how they design for duplicate messages, retries, partial failures, schema changes, observability, and operational ownership.
• Ask how they evaluate integration platforms and make build-versus-buy or consolidate-versus-specialize recommendations.

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, 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.