Director, Architecture and Data

Job Description Summary

The Director, Architecture & Data leads the team that sets the guardrails and owns the foundation for how Defense & Systems architects software environments and delivers a data fabric that enables the use of AI.

The team governs the reusable patterns and boundaries that let the business move fast without fragmenting, organizes information around the business domains it serves, and maintains a single enterprise-wide capability map so that AI is delivered as a native extension of the stack rather than a parallel initiative. It is the function that governs – it sets the boundaries and guidelines the delivery process runs inside – while the data it curates is the foundation that process runs on. To make the data foundation real, the role also delivers the Defense & Systems Data Fabric, coordinating with the Data Fabric Sr Principal Technical Product Manager and the Principal Architects for Enterprise, Data, Infrastructure, and Applications.

This is a people-leadership role that balances two accountabilities: being on the cutting of technology to invent the future of flight and lifting people up to work on world class teams; without every compromising safety. The role leverages four mature business processes to deliver to customers: the AI Control Tower (ATG) stage-gate, the Data Fabric capability-maturity (TRL/CRL) overlay, FLIGHT DECK agile delivery, and the Risk Management Framework (RMF) cybersecurity authorization that clears each product to build and to operate. Success improves Safety, Quality, Delivery, and Cost by giving every team one trustworthy data foundation, one set of reusable patterns, and one governed route from idea to authorized production.

Team leadership and talent

Lead and develop the Architecture & Data team – enterprise, platform, software, and data architects plus the data engineers and product managers aligned to the Data Fabric – with clear role clarity, objectives, and standard work for each seat

Own the team’s performance and development; build a culture of ownership, flow, and continuous improvement, coaching problem-solving at the point of work

Identify and remove obstacles on behalf of the team, especially where delivery direction and supervisory authority are split across the matrix

Architecture, data, and AI governance

Own the architecture governance model: reference patterns, standards, the architecture review and decision process, and exception handling – the paved roads that keep delivery fast and coherent across product teams

Set unified architecture and AI standards, informed by TOGAF/Zachman and the NIST AI Risk Management Framework, and advise technology and AI investments

Maintain a single enterprise-wide capability map so AI can integrate into existing technology stacks

Set the data architecture and modeling standards, organized around the business domains the data serves, and govern data quality, lineage, and reusable data patterns across the organization

Data foundation and the Data Fabric

Deliver the Defense & Systems Data Fabric, carried as this role’s own top-priority objective, coordinating with the Data Fabric Sr Principal TPM, who sets policy and prioritization and directs the pod day to day

Supervise the Data Fabric engineers (Sr Staff TPM–Data, Principal Data & Information Architect, Sr Staff Data Engineer, Staff Data Engineer) in a matrixed arrangement, keeping their written objectives aligned to fabric delivery so priorities do not collide

Ensure the data foundation — the canonical ontology, catalog, and governed data products — covers the in-scope business domains and is trustworthy enough for every downstream analytic and AI use case to build on