Founded in 1991 with the idea to be the alternative to the big banks, Wintrust has since grown into a financial services company with more than $45 billion in assets, headquartered in Rosemont, Illinois. Through our multiple companies and divisions, we provide traditional community banking and commercial banking services, wealth management solutions, commercial and life insurance premium financing, mortgage origination, and short-term accounts receivable financing and certain administrative services, such as data processing of payrolls, billing, and treasury management services. We provide community-oriented personal and business banking services to customers located in the greater Chicagoland area, northwest Indiana, and southern Wisconsin through more than 175 community bank locations.
Position Summary
The Principal Enterprise Architect - Enterprise Architecture, leads the program to develop, maintain and govern the architecture and the technology portfolio roadmaps across multiple application portfolios.
Work across all architectural disciplines, including business (processes/activities/functions/information), application, data, integration, infrastructure, security and technology, and creates and maintains related best practices, patterns and reference architectures.
The Principal Enterprise Architect facilitates the development, implementation and maintenance of standards, guidelines and statements of direction for company IT system architectures, establishing a framework that constrains the design of systems for the purpose of integration of systems and accessibility of data supporting various interdependent business processes and functions. Works closely with applications system architects, data architects, network technologists, business analysts and other stakeholders to ensure consensus on direction, in line with global strategies for future integration. Produces a set of standards of what will be built, guidelines and statements of direction within a framework that enable architectures to be modular, vendor-independent and loosely coupled with interchangeable parts for maximum flexibility. Focus is often on establishing and maintaining a reusable architectural blueprint to reduce business costs, improve time-to-market of products and services, improved product quality, and customer satisfaction.
Lead the design, architect and implement new capabilities that address any gaps and provide integrated end to end scalable, enterprise-class services. Has a proven capability to analyze existing products and infrastructure, understand how to leverage existing investments and introduce best of breed, emerging infrastructure.
Accountable for creating and defining an IT Architecture Governance Framework. Voting member of Architecture Standards Review Board. As a primary change enabler, Principal Enterprise Architect provides leadership direction and accountability for delivery of strategic architectural and business goals, including governance and oversight of delivery against the defined roadmap, architectural standards and patterns. This will be delivered through the process of defining the strategy, plans and governance needed to implement and manage enterprise architecture domain designs and technology standards. Collaborate with business and IT stakeholders to enable planning and realization of the business and architectural goals, and drive business and technology transformation.
Provide oversight and guidance to leaders and engineering staff. Oversee vendor relationships for technologies within purview. Enhance and monitor KPI and KRIs. Represent Enterprise Architecture in collaborative meetings with Information Security. Represent Enterprise Architecture as necessary in regulatory meetings.
Areas of Responsibility:

• Serve as the lead architecture and technology authority in the enterprise for all business and IT users. Act as centralized touchstone in looking at the "big picture" and bridging across the various technology platforms to ensure continuity of direction, leveraging of company assets, best practices, and overall integration.
• Contribute to the definition of architectural strategies and plans for enterprise's information technology. Conduct assessments, studies, and/or surveys to obtain data; analyzes data to advise and recommend solutions.
• Participate in key planning sessions to advise and clarify capabilities, limitations, and trade-offs of established enterprise architectures and technology in general.
• Develop and maintain a strong understanding of enterprise's businesses. Understand current and future needs of the business and align technology roadmap to deliver upon those needs.
• Collaborate with the technology leadership and architecture group to define the technology roadmap for the company. Maintain the roadmap that defines path of the company in implementing, adopting, and enhancing the architecture, establishing technical directions and strategies that ensure cross-platform architectural components properly "fit".
• Assist business leaders and senior IT management in leading the organization in the evaluation and the identification of enterprise systems specifications utilizing industry best practices and proper use of technology and applications architecture.
• Identify, analyze, and communicate architecture and integrations options and make recommendations to management.
• Advise and define the architecture approach for projects that guides project activities toward desired Architecture model. Analyze project requirements with development teams and influence the appropriate technical design at the project level maintaining consistency with architecture vision.
• Provide key strategic consulting and advisory services to IT executives, project teams, operations and engineering teams to ensure that systems solutions are in line with the architectural direction and business strategies. Review -- with managers, team leads, software architects, and development teams -- the implementation of technology and assure its conformance to the practices and patterns defined in the technology strategy (the roadmap).
• Develop architectural diagrams that document project plans and production systems. Assist the architecture team with the specification of design patterns, development standards, best practices, coding styles and other development guidelines to be followed
• Create prescriptive examples of new technological approaches (both proof-of-concept and also potentially production-ready componentry) to illustrate technology directions or best practices. Provide guidance on the evolution of systems and architectures and the adoption of such technologies that meet specified cost/benefit criteria. Develop prototypes and conduct proof of concept feasibility studies; cost/benefit documentation, staff training, configuration recommendations, contract and service level requirements, etc.
• Develop documentation on recommended solutions that would include relevant research, cost analysis data, risk information, implementation strategies and industry positions. Conduct industry research and evaluations in order to develop solutions to resolve business needs.
• Facilitate teams of technical experts and other stakeholders in defining principles and recommend standards. Facilitate the assessment and decision making process, providing expertise and intelligence regarding options and directions, and ensuring that appropriate issues are raised and answered.

Minimum Requirements:

• Experience leading Enterprise Architecture team. Experience coaching Enterprise Architects to strengthen the skills both hard and soft.
• Banking Technology or related regulated environment experience.
• Demonstrated experience facilitating business and IT senior leaders and executives in definition of business-driven IT roadmaps.
• Demonstrated ability to make informed, data-driven decisions, applying appropriate decision making rigor around projects, solutions and preferred technology.
• Strong analytical skills, with demonstrated ability to assess system and technology portfolios, recommend improvement opportunities, and align stakeholders around remediation of gaps.
• Grasp of current and emerging technologies and trends, with ability to rapidly assess and apply new and emerging technologies.
• Strong or working knowledge of one of the following EA tools: BiZZdesign, LeanIX, HOPEX, Abacus, Ardoq, or Software AG.
• TOGAF (The Open Group Architecture Framework) certification a plus
• Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal, with ability to communicate effectively at all levels of the organization.
• Strong presentation and well-practiced "soft skill" delivery.
• Experience with UML or other modeling language.
• Demonstrated ability to build strong relationships with both business and IT stakeholders and leaders, as well as IT engineering teams.
• Knowledge of varying architecture methodologies, with demonstrated ability to select and apply the appropriate method to the problem at-hand.
• In-depth knowledge of Cloud Technologies, preferably experience with Azure and Salesforce.
• A strong understanding of Information/Application security on premise and on-cloud
• Expert understanding of foundational architectural concepts and architecture frameworks and tools.
• Knowledge of application design patterns, data modeling, service-oriented integration, business intelligence domains.
• Diverse Technology Stack experience coupled with .Net and Open Source Solution technology options (Cisco Routers & Firewalls, MPLS, Telephony, Security, Microsoft, Azure, Active Directory, DNS, DHCP, Intune, O365, Linux, SQL, LAMP...etc....)

Wintrust Financial Corporation, including community banking and financial services subsidiaries, is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, citizenship status, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and expressions, genetic information, marital status, age, disability, or status as a covered veteran or any other characteristic protected by law.