Job Description

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.

As an Enterprise Architect in the Data Architecture department, you will tackle Empower’s most complex data challenges and shape how teams across the enterprise design and build data solutions. You will be ahands-ontechnical leader who brings clarity to complex system landscapes by guiding how data moves between platforms and applications, how integrations are approached, and how solutions are built to be reliable, scalable, secure, and cost aware. This role is for someone who thrives in ambiguity, enjoys solving the hardest problems, and wants to amplify their impact by setting direction that helps many teams deliver better outcomes with less friction.

Responsibilities

• Lead the architecture of high impact data initiatives from problem framing through target design, delivery alignment, and measurable outcomes

• Shape enterprise data solution direction by defining and socializing repeatable approaches for how data moves between systems and platforms

• Create clear end to end data flow designs that show where data originates, how it moves, how it is transformed, and how it is made available for downstream use

• Guide teams toward integration patterns that improve reliability and reusability across batch, near real time, and real time data movement

• Partner closely with data engineers, platform teams, technical leads, and model builders to translate requirements into production ready designs and practical implementation paths

• Collaborate with application engineering teams to align on integration approaches that reduce point to point complexity and simplify long term maintenance

• Provide architectural leadership for data platforms and pipelines, including resilience, error handling, recoverability, performance, and operational readiness

• Lead architecture reviews and technical decision forums, ensuring key decisions are documented and aligned to enterprise direction

• Diagnose complex data movement problems such as latency, duplication, reconciliation gaps, and cross system consistency issues, then drive designs that address root causes

• Drive simplification and modernization by reducing duplicated tooling, inconsistent approaches, and avoidable complexity across the data ecosystem

• Define and track success measures for the solutions you influence, including delivery efficiency, reliability, reusability, quality, and cost transparency

Required Skills

• Deep experience delivering modern data solutions in complex environments, with strong engineering judgment and practical problem solving

• Proven ability to guide technical direction across teams through credible leadership, clear communication, and effective collaboration

• Strong understanding of common data movement approaches, including pipelines, orchestration, batch patterns, and streaming concepts

• Cloud experience designing or deploying data solutions on a major cloud platform, with understanding of scalability, reliability, security, and cost considerations

• Hands on experience with at least one modern data or analytics platform such as Snowflake, Databricks, AWS, Azure, GCP, SAS, Dataiku, or equivalent

• Strong understanding of modern data concepts including pipelines, data modeling fundamentals, data quality practices, metadata concepts, lineage concepts, and downstream consumption needs

• Strong written and verbal communication skills with demonstrated ability to create clear architecture artifacts and documentation that teams will use

Nice to Have Qualifications

• Experience in financial services, wealth management, retirement services, or another regulated industry

• Experience designing system to system integrations using APIs and service based approaches

• Experience with multiple integration and data movement technologies, including streaming and messaging platforms and orchestration frameworks

• Experience with multiple modern data and analytics platforms across ingestion, storage, transformation, and consumption

• Relevant cloud certifications or formal training in cloud architecture, data engineering, integration, or analytics

Education

• Bachelor’s and/ormaster’s degree in computer science or related field (information systems, mathematics, software engineering, etc.)

Physical Requirements/Working Conditions

• Normal Office Working Conditions

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.