Director of Enterprise Architecture - Information Technology

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.

OVERVIEW:

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. The role directly leads Domain Architects and coordinates federated design authority across business, data and AI, application, integration, cloud, security, identity, experience, and technology domains.

Success in this role is achieved by:

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.

Works across senior business, technology, security, privacy, risk, finance, EPMO, portfolio, solution, domain architecture, delivery, and operations stakeholders.

Acts as a trusted senior advisor to business and technology leaders by shaping enterprise technology direction, risk visibility, investment confidence, and strategic decision quality.

Provides senior architecture oversight and governance for major enterprise decisions, while remaining distinct from initiative-level solution design, delivery-team management, and operational execution.

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. Domain Architects remain federated design authorities for their areas of specialty, including business, data and AI, experience, application, integration and API, cloud, security, identity, and technology architecture. This role ensures these domain accountabilities operate as one coherent enterprise capability rather than as isolated specialty functions.

The Director of Enterprise Architecture does not replace or duplicate Portfolio Architect accountabilities. Portfolio Architects own portfolio