Director of Enterprise Architecture in Edmonton

Alberta Blue Cross® is an Alberta based organization dedicated to delivering exceptional customer experience and community leadership. We’re committed to providing the best health coverage to over 1.8 million members and take an active role in promoting wellness. We believe in what we do—and place trust in our employees to deliver our vision. Working at Alberta Blue Cross® means having a career where you’ll be recognized for your contributions. We value diversity, encourage our team members to maintain a healthy work-life balance and provide opportunities for career growth.

We have an exciting opportunity for a Director of Enterprise Architecture to provide senior enterprise architecture leadership for Alberta Blue Cross. Reporting to the Chief Architect, the Director of Enterprise Architecture leads and operates the Enterprise Architecture function, provides people leadership to Domain Architects, and plays a key role in EA governance. The role translates enterprise architecture strategy and executive direction into practical operating practices, standards, reference architectures, guardrails, compliance measures, and governance outcomes across the organization.

This senior leadership role establishes and matures the enterprise architecture framework that enables strategy execution, modernization, disciplined investment, risk management, and consistent decision-making across portfolios and domains. The role works closely with business, technology, security, privacy, risk, finance, EPMO, portfolio, solution, and domain architecture stakeholders to ensure enterprise architecture guidance is clear, credible, actionable, and consistently applied.

The Director of Enterprise Architecture advises senior leaders by translating complex architectural implications into clear options, risks, dependencies, and recommendations that balance business outcomes, cost, complexity, resiliency, compliance, and long-term sustainability. The Director of Enterprise Architecture is a senior people leadership and architecture governance role focused on enterprise-wide architecture direction, architecture discipline, domain alignment, and executive decision support.

Operating and maturing the enterprise architecture function in alignment with IT strategy, EA mandate, governance expectations, and executive decision-making needs. Setting and enforcing enterprise-level architecture principles, standards, reference architectures, guardrails, compliance expectations, and governance practices across domains and portfolios. Providing people leadership, coaching, performance support, and prioritization guidance for Domain Architects as direct reports. Establishing architecture as a trusted advisory and governance function with clear OKRs, KPIs, compliance measures, and value indicators. Driving coherent, reusable, resilient, secure, compliant, and sustainable architecture decisions across the enterprise.

What You Will Do

• Lead and operate the Enterprise Architecture function, ensuring architecture practices, standards, governance forums, and decision processes are consistently applied across the organization.
• Set, evolve, and steward enterprise architecture principles, standards, reference architectures, guardrails, compliance expectations, and governance practices that guide enterprise-wide decisions.
• Translate corporate strategy, business priorities, technology trends, regulatory expectations, and enterprise risks into actionable architecture guidance.
• Chair, guide, or support senior architecture governance forums, including decision rights, review processes, compliance expectations, escalation paths, and transparent decision records.
• Establish and monitor enterprise architecture OKRs, KPIs, compliance measures, and value indicators to demonstrate adoption, effectiveness, risk reduction, and enterprise value.
• Develop and steward enterprise reference architectures that guide business, information, application, integration, cloud, security, identity, data, AI, experience, and technology decisions.
• Provide enterprise architecture oversight for major programs, platforms, partnerships, modernization initiatives, and strategic investments.
• Partner with Portfolio Architects to ensure portfolio target architectures and modernization roadmaps align to enterprise strategy, principles, reference architectures, guardrails, and governance expectations.
• Lead Domain Architects as direct reports, providing coaching, prioritization guidance, performance support, role clarity, and alignment across domain-specific design authority.
• Coordinate Domain Architects so federated design authority remains aligned to enterprise direction while avoiding duplication with business, data, security, digital, delivery, and operations teams.
• Identify enterprise-level architectural risks, duplication, fragmentation, technical debt, capability gaps, and architectural drift, and recommend priorities for leadership action.
• Advise senior business and technology leaders on architecture options, risks, dependencies, enterprise implications, and recommended courses of action in clear business terms.
• Escalate unresolved cross-domain conflicts, material exceptions, or enterprise-level trade-offs through formal governance forums as appropriate.

Position Scope

Reports to the Chief Architect and leads the operational execution, EA governance, and people leadership of the Enterprise Architecture function. Provides enterprise-wide architecture discipline, domain alignment, and governance practices that guide strategic technology decisions. Owns enterprise architecture principles, reference architectures, guardrails, standards, governance practices, OKRs, KPIs, compliance measures, and architecture effectiveness reporting. Provides direct leadership, coaching, prioritization guidance, performance support, and development for Domain Architects, who report to the Director of Enterprise Architecture.

Accountability Boundaries and Role Clarity

The Director of Enterprise Architecture reports to the Chief Architect and is accountable for leading, operating, and maturing the Enterprise Architecture function, including playing a key role in EA governance. The role translates enterprise architecture strategy into clear operating practices, governance forums, standards, reference architectures, guardrails, compliance measures, and domain-level execution. The Director of Enterprise Architecture provides direct people leadership for Domain Architects and is accountable for ensuring domain-specific design authority is coordinated, consistent, and aligned to enterprise direction.

Key Accountabilities

• Lead, operate, and mature the Enterprise Architecture function, including playing a key role in EA governance, in alignment with the enterprise architecture mandate and executive direction.
• Own the enterprise architecture operating model, principles, reference architectures, guardrails, governance practices, standards, compliance expectations, and architecture effectiveness measures.
• Provide direct people leadership for Domain Architects, including coaching, prioritization guidance, performance support, development planning, and coordination of domain-level work.
• Maintain enterprise architecture OKRs, KPIs, compliance measures, decision records, and executive-level reporting that demonstrate value, adoption, governance effectiveness, and risk reduction.
• Ensure architecture governance is pragmatic, transparent, authoritative, and consistently applied across portfolios, domains, major initiatives, and enterprise decision forums.
• Provide enterprise architecture oversight for major platform, modernization, integration, cloud, security, data, AI, identity, experience, and application decisions with organization-wide implications.
• Promote consistency, reuse, interoperability, security, compliance, resiliency, cost discipline, and long-term sustainability across enterprise solutions.
• Identify architectural risks, gaps, duplication, capability constraints, technical debt, and cross-domain conflicts, and guide senior leadership on enterprise-level remediation priorities.
• Facilitate architecture decision-making across Portfolio Architects, Solution Architects, Domain Architects, delivery teams, business leaders, and enterprise stakeholders without assuming their distinct delivery, roadmap, or solution design accountabilities.
• Partner with executive, business, and technology leaders to embed architecture-by-design into strategy, planning, investment, governance, and delivery decisions.
• Escalate unresolved enterprise architecture conflicts, material exceptions, and strategic trade-offs through formal governance forums.

Key Success Measures

• Enterprise architecture principles, guardrails, standards, reference architectures, and governance practices are adopted and consistently used to guide major decisions.
• Architecture OKRs, KPIs, compliance measures, and executive reporting demonstrate measurable adoption, quality, risk reduction, governance effectiveness, and enterprise value.
• Domain Architects are aligned, effective, well-led, and operating as a coordinated enterprise capability with clear priorities, accountabilities, and development support.
• Portfolio, domain, and solution architecture decisions are materially better aligned to enterprise direction, strategic priorities, reference architectures, and approved guardrails.
• Reduced architectural fragmentation, duplication, unmanaged complexity, avoidable technical debt, and enterprise risk exposure across domains and portfolios.
• Senior business and technology leaders view enterprise architecture as a credible, strategic, practical, and trusted advisory and governance function.
• Enterprise architecture guidance enables business outcomes, regulatory compliance, resiliency, modernization, cost discipline, and long-term sustainability.
• Role boundaries between the Chief Architect, Director of Enterprise Architecture, Portfolio Architects, Domain Architects, Solution Architects, and delivery leaders are clear and consistently understood.

What You Will Have

• Bachelor’s Degree in Information Systems, Computer Science, Engineering, Business Administration, or a related discipline, or equivalent experience; advanced education is considered an asset.
• 12+ years of progressive experience in enterprise architecture, technology strategy, business architecture, solution architecture, domain architecture, or senior technology leadership roles.
• Demonstrated success establishing or maturing enterprise architecture operating models, principles, standards, reference architectures, guardrails, governance practices, and compliance measures in complex organizations.
• Proven people leadership experience, including leading, coaching, aligning, developing, and performance-supporting senior architecture talent or comparable senior specialist teams.
• Experience defining and reporting architecture OKRs, KPIs, compliance expectations, risk indicators, decision records, and enterprise value measures.
• Senior-level understanding of business, information, application, integration, data, AI, cloud, security, identity, infrastructure, experience, and technology architecture domains.
• Proven ability to work with senior business leaders as a trusted advisor on strategic architecture decisions, investment implications, enterprise risks, trade-offs, and technology direction.
• Experience influencing enterprise planning, portfolio management, EPMO, Finance, risk, security, privacy, legal, delivery, and operations decisions through clear architecture guidance.
• Demonstrated ability to clarify decision rights and role boundaries across enterprise, portfolio, domain, solution, delivery, and operations accountabilities.
• Exceptional executive communication, facilitation, governance, negotiation, stakeholder management, and decision-framing skills.

Additional Information

This position will remain open until suitable candidates are selected. Alberta Blue Cross® is an inclusive employer committed to a workplace that reflects the diversity of the communities we serve. We empower and are advocates for our team members by welcoming, respecting and valuing their unique perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences. We offer the opportunity to work in an innovative, high-energy team-focused environment. A criminal record check satisfactory to Alberta Blue Cross will be required as a condition of employment, following a conditional offer.