Executive Director, Enterprise Architecture

We’re building a world of health around every individual — shaping a more connected, convenient and compassionate health experience. At CVS Health®, you’ll be surrounded by passionate colleagues who care deeply, innovate with purpose, hold ourselves accountable and prioritize safety and quality in everything we do. Join us and be part of something bigger – helping to simplify health care one person, one family and one community at a time.

Position Summary

The Executive Director, Enterprise Architecture provides strategic technical leadership across the enterprise, defining and governing the architectural direction for platforms, applications, cloud infrastructure, and AI capabilities. This role partners with senior technology and business leaders to align architecture decisions with organizational strategy, drive modernization initiatives, and ensure the enterprise technology portfolio is secure, scalable, and cost-effective.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Architecture Leadership

• Define and maintain the enterprise architecture vision, principles, reference architectures, and technology roadmap in alignment with business strategy.
• Lead architecture governance — establishing review boards, standards, and decision frameworks that accelerate delivery without compromising quality or security.
• Drive cloud infrastructure strategy across primary and secondary cloud providers, including cost optimization, workload placement, and multi-cloud positioning.
• Own the enterprise technology radar — evaluating emerging technologies (AI/ML platforms, cloud-native services, data platforms) and making directional recommendations to senior leadership.

Application Portfolio and Security

• Lead application portfolio rationalization using risk-tiered frameworks — prioritizing business-critical systems for hardening, modernization, or retirement.
• Partner with security and compliance teams to embed architecture-level controls across the portfolio, reducing blast radius for high-severity vulnerabilities.
• Establish patterns for API governance, service mesh, identity, and zero-trust architecture across the enterprise.

Executive Communication and Stakeholder Engagement

• Translate complex architectural trade-offs into clear, outcome-oriented narratives for Aetna Technology Leadership.
• Represent architecture in budget and investment discussions — framing technology spend in concrete dollar terms tied to risk reduction, capability enablement, and operational efficiency.
• Build and maintain relationships with strategic technology vendors and partners.

Team Leadership

• Build, lead, and mentor a small but highly influential architecture team including Principal Engineers and Solution Architects.
• Foster a culture of architectural thinking across engineering — coaching teams on design reviews, trade-off analysis, and system-level reasoning.
• Manage hiring pipeline and team development to ensure coverage across key domain areas.

Qualifications

Required

• 15+ years of progressive experience in technology, with at least 5 years in senior architecture or engineering leadership roles.
• Deep expertise in enterprise and solution architecture across cloud platforms (AWS required; Azure or GCP familiarity preferred).
• Demonstrated experience leading architecture governance, platform strategy, and technology portfolio management at scale.
• Track record of partnering with senior business and technology leaders to drive strategic outcomes.
• Strong understanding of application security, compliance frameworks, and risk-based prioritization.
• Experience building and scaling architecture teams.

Preferred

• Experience in healthcare, health insurance, or similarly regulated industries.
• Hands-on background with AI/ML platform architecture, including model evaluation, multi-model orchestration, and responsible AI practices.
• Familiarity with enterprise cost management, FinOps, and aligning architecture decisions to budget and P&L impact.

Pay Range

The typical pay range for this role is:

This pay range represents the base hourly rate or base annual full-time salary for all positions in the job grade within which this position falls.  The actual base salary offer will depend on a variety of factors including experience, education, geography and other relevant factors.  This position is eligible for a CVS Health bonus, commission or short-term incentive program in addition to the base pay range listed above.  This position also includes an award target in the company’s equity award program. 
 

Our people fuel our future. Our teams reflect the customers, patients, members and communities we serve and we are committed to fostering a workplace where every colleague feels valued and that they belong.

Great benefits for great people

We take pride in offering a comprehensive and competitive mix of pay and benefits that reflects our commitment to our colleagues and their families.

Additional details about available benefits are provided during the application process and on Benefits Moments.

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with all federal, state and local laws.