Enterprise Architect

At KinderCare Education, we make it our passion to nurture a sense of discovery, joy, and wonder in every child, every day, at every one of our centers. As the nation’s leading private provider in accredited early childhood education, we’re committed to delivering the highest-quality child care and educational opportunities for families and the dedicated professionals who serve them.

We see the greatness in each child, and we believe teachers can change the world. Every day, our more than 33,000 employees create a world of learning, joy, and adventure for more than 158,000 children. Whether you’re in one of our centers or providing support from our headquarters in Portland, Oregon, being a part of the KinderCare family means that you care deeply about positively impacting the lives of children and families through the power of education.

KinderCare Education has three brands to meet the needs of busy families wherever they need us:

• We’re in neighborhoods with our KinderCare Learning Centers that offer early childhood education and care for children 6 weeks to 12 years old
• We’re at offices with KinderCare Education at Work, our suite of family-focused benefits for organizations to offer to their employees, including on-site and near-site early learning centers, Back-up Care for last-minute child care and Care Select
• And we’re at schools with our Champions before and after school programs  

 
Job Summary                                         

The KinderCare Technology team is embarking on a transformation embracing Cloud technologies and re-architecting its applications to meet the growing business needs. To that end, we are looking for the right leader to build our future technology blueprint aligned to business goals. The individual should be passionate about technology and ‘patiently impatient’ setting aggressive goals and building concensus across teams to drive adoption.

As a member of the core IT leadership, the Enterprise Cloud Architect will link the business mission, strategy, and processes of KinderCare Education to its IT strategy and service delivery model. This position will lead collaboration across both the technology and business organizations to drive common approaches, processes and expose information assets across KinderCare’s key business units. This position will be instrumental in leading KinderCare from current state to a desired cloud-based/aaS transformation of their core systems, technologies, and development/deployment processes while as inspiring overall technology driven business innovation.

Essential Functions

• Plan, manage, and drive the transition of KCE IT from current state to a cloud-enabled enterprise
• Develop business-centric technology strategies and business solution roadmaps that demonstrate IT capability to deliver solutions that align to business objectives, while staying within specified timeframe and budgetary commitment
• Lead the development of technology focused IT Component Solution Roadmaps, Reference Architectures, and High-level Designs
• Lead the creation of an Architecture Review Board to drive structure and education across teams
• Drive technology-driven business innovation to the organization
• Develop and manage policies, standards and guidelines that direct the selection, development, implementation and use of Information Technology within the enterprise
• Manage and visualize IT’s technology portfolio, review IT assets to assess health, gaps, duplications and waste; make recommendations for optimization and rationalization of the portfolio
• Manage and oversee the development of a holistic, enterprise-wide application roadmap, including corporate, business, and customer-facing applications
• Work with infrastructure and/or application engineer(s) to provide a consensus based enterprise solution that is scalable, adaptable, and in synchronization with evolving business needs
• Define the technical architecture and control framework for managing the risk to data/information privacy and IT assets through appropriate standards and security policies

Qualifications

The successful candidate for this position will have the following experiences and expertise: 

• Minimum 5 years of IT architecture leadership experience
• 8 years of hands-on engineering experience  in at least two technology domains
• Broad understanding of how that technology supports Line of Business functions to deliver business value. Ability to translate short- and long-range business strategic plans and objectives into IT architectures and designs for current and future IT solutions
• Proven experience driving technology-enabled business innovation
• Proven experience with delivering and integrating cloud-based as-a-service solutions
• Proven experience evolving an organization to cloud native development and deployment processes
• Ability to influence decisions with credibility across business functions or technologies with analysis and facts
• Collaborative, highly skilled, motivated, and results driven individual who enjoys a challenging environment and is able to work independently
• Excellent interpersonal, oral/presentation, and written communication skills in both technical and non-technical language
• Strong leadership, project, and team building skills – ability to lead teams and drive projects and initiatives by working effectively with others with a demonstrated ability to work cross-departmentally
• Demonstrated ability to collaborate with engineers, business and IT leaders, and to build and maintain excellent relations with key stakeholders
• Conceptual and analytical thinker – ability to extract, analyze and document complex business and technical requirements/strategies from customers and IT team members
• BS degree in Computer Science, MIS, or related technical field. MBA in Technology Management, or other related Master’s degree preferred

IT Skills/Certifications 

• Required 
  • Technology and infrastructure planning and design experience
  • Experience with Agile Development, DevOps (CI/CD/Automation), and integration technologies (messaging/ESB)

• Desired 
  • At least one of FEAC® CEA Black Belt, TOGAF 9.1 Level 1 & 2, The Open Group Certified Architect (CA) Program, or similar other industry-standard Enterprise Architect certification
  • At least one cloud certification e.g. AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional or similar other industry-standard cloud certification
  • PMI PMP certification or similar other industry-standard Project Management certification

KinderCare Education is an Equal Opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, national origin, age, sex, religion, disability, sexual orientation, marital status, military or veteran status, gender identity or expression, or any other basis protected by local, state, or federal law .