Sr. Director, DEX Technology Architecture
Job Description
Position Summary
The Sr. Director, DEX Technology Architecture is the architectural conscience of the Digital Employee Experience (DEX) organization. This role exists to keep every buy-vs-build decision, AI investment, and platform choice tied to a coherent, durable technology strategy rather than to siloed, point-in-time decisions. Reporting into the VP of IT DEX with direct alignment to the CTO, this leader partners with HR and IT stakeholders to translate business capability needs into sound architectural choices, governs the organization's growing AI and agentic workflow footprint, and ensures new investment never outruns the discipline to fix, stabilize, and simplify what already exists.
This is a hands-on architecture leadership role, not a pure strategy seat: the successful candidate will personally evaluate vendors and proofs of concept, set enforceable engineering and data standards, and be fluent enough in modern AI, cloud, and integration patterns to challenge vendors and internal teams alike.
Key Responsibilities
Architecture Strategy & CTO Alignment
• Serve as the primary architectural counterpart to the CTO organization, ensuring DEX technology decisions are consistent with enterprise architecture standards, security posture, and long-term platform direction.
• Own the DEX reference architecture spanning HCM, talent, learning, payroll, timekeeping, and employee service platforms, and keep it current as the portfolio evolves.
• Prevent siloed or one-off technology decisions by acting as the connective layer between HR capability owners, program delivery leads, and enterprise IT/security.
• Translate multi-year DEX roadmap priorities into an architectural point of view that program and product teams can execute against.
Buy vs. Build Governance
• Define and operationalize a repeatable, rigorous buy-vs-build decision framework, and act as the final architectural gate before new vendor engagements or build efforts are approved.
• Apply and evolve DEX's core decision tenets on every evaluation:
• Frugality — require a durable, minimum 3-year value window before any new spend is approved.
• Build preference — default to building or configuring within existing platforms where feasible; shortcuts such as RPA are acceptable only when adopted intentionally, not as a substitute for a real fix.
• No orphaned technology — evaluate the total cost of ownership and adoption path so tools are not abandoned shortly after purchase.
• Fix-before-build — confirm that existing capability has genuinely been exhausted or is structurally broken before approving net-new investment.
• Establish and run structured, low-cost proof-of-concept (POC) governance for the growing volume of AI and point-solution vendor pitches, including data-access review, success criteria, and defined exit conditions before any POC is greenlit.
• Own vendor and platform evaluation scorecards, and present buy-vs-build recommendations with clear tradeoffs to DEX and CTO leadership.
AI & Agentic Systems Architecture
• Set architectural and governance standards for agentic AI and automation initiatives across the DEX portfolio, including model/vendor selection, data access, and security review.
• Partner with the AI Center of Excellence to evaluate emerging agentic frameworks and orchestration patterns, and to establish a consistent evaluation standard for third-party AI platform selection.
• Ensure AI and automation investments are held to the same frugality and durability tenets as any other technology decision — proof of sustained value, not novelty.
• Guide teams on where AI/agentic approaches genuinely reduce Tier 1 support burden and manual overhead versus where they add fragility or vendor lock-in.
Agile Delivery & Operating Framework
• Embed architectural checkpoints into the organization's Agile/SAFe delivery cadence so architecture review does not become a bottleneck but remains a genuine gate.
• Partner with the Program Director and Technical PM organization on long-lifecycle deployments (e.g., timekeeping, payroll) to ensure architectural decisions are made early enough to avoid costly rework.
• Contribute to sprint/PI-level governance rhythms, roadmap prioritization, and quarterly business reviews from an architectural risk and feasibility lens.
Landscape Stabilization & Fix-First Priority
• Lead a global landscape audit of broken and fragmented systems (e.g., non-working kiosks, fragmented pay and time vendors) and translate findings into a prioritized stabilization plan.
• Ensure patching, stabilization, and reliability work is sequenced and resourced ahead of net-new capability investment, consistent with the fix-existing-first principle.
• Define technical debt and platform health metrics that keep stabilization visible alongside new initiatives in portfolio reviews.
Requirements
Function: Engineering
Experience Level: Mid-Senior Level