VP, Architecture
Job Description:
Title: VP, Architecture
Location: Remote – USA, Canada
Reports to: Chief Technology Officer
Vacancy : Existing Vacancy
The Role:
JD Power is seeking a senior technology leader to serve as Vice President of Architecture, responsible for defining and governing the enterprise technical architecture across the company’s entire engineering organization. This role owns the architectural standards, the NorthStar technical principles, and the architecture review process that ensure consistency, quality, and sound technology decisions as JD Power scales.
JD Power is a Thoma Bravo portfolio company that has grown from $300 million to approximately $900 million in revenue through ten strategic acquisitions since 2019. The largest engineering groups—Autodata Solutions, Autovista Group, and Superior Integrated Solutions / Darwin Automotive—were built on separate technology stacks, tooling, and architectural conventions. You will be responsible for establishing a unified, federated model of architectural governance that balances team autonomy with enterprise consistency.
This is a highly visible, enterprise-level role requiring deep technical expertise across modern application, data, cloud, and platform architecture, combined with the leadership skills to direct both a small team of enterprise architects and a broader guild of architects embedded within the engineering organization. You must be equally effective at setting forward-looking technical strategy and making pragmatic, well-reasoned decisions on real initiatives. A proven track record of leading architecture functions, influencing executive and engineering decision-making, and driving standards adoption in complex, multi-entity environments is essential.
The Impact You Will Have in This Role:
As the VP of Architecture, you will be the driving force behind how JD Power designs, builds, and evolves its technology. By establishing clear architectural standards, a published set of NorthStar principles, and a disciplined architecture review process, you will raise engineering quality, reduce duplicated effort, and accelerate delivery across product lines. You will lead enterprise-level technology decisions—such as the choice of AI tooling, UI stack, customer identity and access management (CIAM), and data platform—and ensure those decisions are consistently adopted. Your leadership of the embedded architect guild will extend that consistency directly into engineering teams, making architecture a strategic enabler of growth rather than a bottleneck.
What You’ll Be Doing in This Role:
Architectural Standards & NorthStar Principles
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Own Enterprise Architecture: Consolidate the disparate architectural conventions of acquired entities into a single set of enterprise standards, reference architectures, and playbooks.
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Publish NorthStar Principles: Define, publish, and maintain the NorthStar technical principles—covering front-end frameworks, back-end services, authentication, data platform, and CI/CD—and keep them current as technology evolves.
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Drive Enterprise Technology Decisions: Lead enterprise-level technology choices (e.g., AI tooling, UI stack, CIAM, data platform) with clear rationale, and ensure consistent adoption across all engineering teams.
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Champion Consistency & Reuse: Promote shared component libraries, common patterns, and a consistent look, feel, and engineering experience across all JD Power products.
Architecture Team & Guild Leadership
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Lead the Enterprise Architecture Team: Build, mentor, and direct a small, high-caliber team of enterprise architects responsible for cross-cutting and enterprise-scope initiatives.
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Lead the Architect Guild: Lead the guild of architects embedded within engineering teams under the SVP of Engineering—setting their charter, raising their capability, and aligning their work to enterprise standards while preserving team autonomy.
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Operate a Federated Model: Establish a federated