Director of Enterprise Architecture

Job Description

ABC Supply is North America’s largest wholesale distributor of exterior and interior building products.

ABC Supply is proud to be an employee-first company. In fact, we have won the Gallup Exceptional Workplace Award every year since its inception in 2007, and Glassdoor has named us one of the best places to work in the country. Be part of a company that recognizes your talents, rewards your efforts, and helps you reach your full potential. At ABC Supply, we have YOUR future covered.

Role Summary:

The Director of Enterprise Architecture (Head of Architecture) plays a critical leadership role in shaping the technical direction of the organization by enabling fast, aligned, and scalable decisions across a modern IT landscape. This leader drives the evolution of architecture from a traditional centralized gatekeeper model to a federated, self-service enablement model, deeply embedded within value streams and product delivery cycles.

Reporting to the VP, Strategy and Delivery, this role leads both Enterprise Architecture and Solution Architecture capabilities, guiding the design of robust, reusable, and standards-aligned architectures that accelerate flow and reduce technical debt.

The Head of Architecture partners closely with Product, Engineering, Data, Security, and Infrastructure leaders to ensure that architecture empowers teams to self-serve using templates, reference models, and guardrails while enabling speed without compromising cohesion or governance.

Core Capabilities & Responsibilities:

1. Enterprise Architecture – “Define, Enable, Scale”

• Vision & Roadmaps: Translate enterprise and IT strategy into clear technical vision and progressive architectural roadmaps.
• Reusable Frameworks: Build and evolve abstract reference architectures, starter kits, and self-serve playbooks for common solution patterns.
• Principles & Standards: Define scalable, minimal viable standards (e.g., cloud-first, composability, API-first) that empower teams to build independently with confidence.
• Future-State Modeling: Support strategic change by documenting current and future states to inform transformation paths and support decentralized execution.
• Governance-by-Enablement: Implement lean governance models that provide automated checks, guidance, and decentralized assurance instead of manual reviews.
• Technical Debt Visibility: Make technical debt transparent and actionable, with clear thresholds and remediation patterns.

2. Solution Architecture – “Support, Guide, Accelerate”

• Fit-for-Purpose Design: Deliver modular, scalable solution blueprints that align with enterprise patterns and meet localized product needs.
• Embedded Enablement: Serve as consultants and coaches to delivery teams, embedding architectural practices into their agile workflows.
• Tooling & Templates: Provide technology evaluation checklists, integration templates, and data flow diagrams as self-serve assets.
• Solution Viability: Ensure architecture enables performance, scalability, and maintainability while supporting time-to-market goals.
• Engineering Partnership: Work side-by-side with engineering teams to support high-impact design decisions in delivery.

3. Alignment with Domain Architects – “Connect, Harmonize, Govern Lightly”

• Collaborative Leadership: Lead a distributed community of architects (Data, Security, Infra, etc.) through architecture guilds and shared backlogs.
• Standard Harmonization: Maintain integration between domain-specific standards and enterprise-wide guidelines, using self-service registries.
• Conflict Resolution: Mediate competing priorities through a structured architectural decision-making process.
• Knowledge Sharing: Publish architectural “how-tos”, success patterns, and failures openly to foster learning across domains.

Scope of Activities:

Manage and Mature the Architecture Practice

• Transform architecture into a consultative, self-service, product-aligned function.
• Lead and coach a team of enterprise and solution architects to operate as enablers and internal advisors.
• Design EA services as reusable offerings, such as capability maps, platform decision trees, or governance-as-code tooling.
• Establish a federated model of architecture stewardship, assigning ownership of key patterns to domain or platform teams.

Formulate Strategy & Guide Execution

• Translate strategic imperatives into architectural execution paths across products and platforms.
• Use architecture to accelerate strategy realization by enabling teams to align autonomously through clarity of direction.
• Construct and maintain tooling and guidance that connects long-range architectural vision to in-flight initiatives.

Facilitate Innovation

• Support experimentation by publishing emerging tech guides, validating patterns, and providing safe architecture “sandboxes.”
• Run lean architecture experiments to validate new approaches before scaling.
• Incorporate innovation into reusable assets once proven.

Build and Maintain Relationships

• Position architecture as a trusted partner, not an approver.
• Enable Product Managers and Engineers to understand the “why” behind standards through storytelling, decision rationale, and open playbooks.
• Offer on-demand consultation, embedded advisory support, and open office hours to support teams across the enterprise.

Orchestrate Delivery of Business Outcomes

• Ensure every architectural decision maps back to business value and user impact.
• Develop business-aligned architectural artifacts, capability maps, maturity models, and platform heatmaps that can be reused by others.
• Lead architectural reviews only where needed, replacing oversight with tooling where possible.

Architectural Contribution to IT Portfolio Planning

• Enable transparent portfolio decisions via roadmaps, architecture debt scoring, and technical health metrics.
• Ensure architectural considerations are baked into early-stage planning via self-service intake kits for initiatives.
• Provide high-value input to digital platform investment prioritization.

Credentials and Experience:

• Master's or bachelor's degree in business, computer science, computer engineering, electrical engineering, system analysis, or a related field of study, or equivalent experience.
• Ten or more years of experience in at least three disciplines, such as business, information, solution, or technical architecture, application development, middleware, information analysis, database management, or operations in a multitier environment.
• 10+ years in architecture, engineering, or technology strategy, including leading distributed or matrixed teams.
• Proven experience shifting architecture practices to modern, federated models in product-centric environments.
• Experience leading architecture in flow-based delivery environments (e.g., Lean, Team Topologies, domain-driven design).
• Expertise across SaaS, IaaS, PaaS, APIs, data architectures, and platform services.

Key Skills & Competencies:

• Enablement-first mindset: Ability to design practices that empower others to execute architecture without waiting.
• Lean governance: Skilled at implementing oversight models that reduce friction and support decentralized decisions.
• Architectural storytelling: Able to frame architectural decisions around business value and user impact.
• Consultative influence: Leads with questions, not commands; prioritizes shared understanding over control.
• Systems thinking: Understands the broader enterprise implications of localized technical choices.

Characteristics:

• Trusted, respected, and diplomatic, earns buy-in without imposing control.
• Obsessed with clarity, flow, and continuous improvement.
• Comfortable shifting between strategic leadership and in-the-weeds collaboration.
• Resilient, pragmatic, and vendor neutral.
• Future-focused and adaptable, always learning and evolving architecture with the business.

Benefits may include:

• Health, dental, and vision coverage - eligible after 60 days, low out of pocket
• 401(k) with generous company match - eligible after 60 days, immediately vested
• Employer paid employee assistance program
• Employer paid short term and long-term disability
• Employer paid life insurance
• Flex spending
• Paid vacation
• Paid sick days
• Paid holidays

Equal Opportunity Employer / Drug Free Workplace.

​ABC Supply values diversity and we actively encourage women, minorities, and veterans to apply.

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