Digital Factory - Architecture Research Manager - Assistant Director

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The Role:

The Architecture Research Manager (Assistant Director) provides forward-looking architecture research, analysis, and insights to enable strategic decision making across the Digital Factory. This role strengthens architecture maturity by synthesizing technology trends, contributing to the evolution of architecture principles, reference architectures, and standards, and communicating clearly to both leadership and practitioners.

This is a senior architecture partner role working closely with Technology, Engineering, Security, Risk, and Governance stakeholders. The role has no direct delivery ownership; success is measured by the quality of insight, alignment, reuse, standards adoption, and uplift in architecture maturity across the Digital Factory.

Key responsibilities

1) Architecture research & strategic insights

• Produce forward-looking research on emerging and relevant architecture trends (e.g., cloud-native patterns, platform engineering, integration paradigms, security architecture shifts).
• Translate research into decision-ready insights that support Digital Factory strategy, technology selection, and roadmap discussions.
• Develop options, trade-offs, and architectural recommendations that consider business value, risk, scalability, cost, and compliance implications.
• Build “point of view” materials (briefs, executive summaries, architecture insight packs) tailored to leadership and design authorities.

2) Principles, reference architectures & standards evolution

• Contribute to the evolution of architecture principles, standards, and guidelines that act as implementation guardrails and decision-making inputs.  
• Develop and maintain reference architectures and reusable patterns that drive consistency, reuse, interoperability, and security alignment.
• Ensure architectural guidance supports enterprise alignment across service lines and enables scalable, maintainable digital products.
• Partner with architecture governance stakeholders to keep standards current, usable, and well communicated.

3) Stakeholder partnership (senior advisory, no delivery ownership)

• Act as a trusted senior architecture partner to Technology, Engineering, Product, Security, Risk, and Governance, facilitating informed decisions without owning solution delivery.
• Contribute to architecture review forums by bringing research-backed viewpoints, cross-domain learnings, and reference models.
• Identify areas of inconsistency, duplication, or architecture drift and propose pragmatic improvements through patterns, standards, and knowledge enablement.

4) Architecture maturity uplift & knowledge sharing

• Strengthen architecture maturity across the Digital Factory through synthesis, communication, and enablement at both leadership and practitioner levels.
• Create and curate architecture knowledge assets (playbooks, templates, standards summaries, “how we build” guidance, decision records).
• Run knowledge-sharing sessions (e.g., architecture talks, communities of practice, brown bags) and contribute to onboarding/enablement for architects and engineers.
• Promote reuse and standardization to reduce complexity and delivery risk, aligned to the Digital Factory’s architecture strategies.

5) Continuous improvement & innovation scanning

• Maintain a structured approach to scanning, evaluating, and prioritizing architecture innovations and research topics.
• Track outcomes and adoption signals (e.g., standard usage, pattern reuse, reduction of architectural exceptions) and continuously improve architecture assets accordingly.
• Partner with stakeholders to ensure architectural insights remain actionable and tied to business outcomes.

Key Relationship / stakeholders

• Digital Factory: Technology leadership, Engineering leadership, Product/Delivery leads
• Architecture & governance: architecture review boards/design authorities, standards owners, enterprise alignment partners
• Risk & security: Security architecture, risk management, compliance governance
• Extended ecosystem: other architecture communities, vendors/partners (as needed for research inputs)

Qualifications

Required

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, or related field.
• Significant experience in architecture roles (enterprise, solution, platform, or domain architecture) with demonstrated ability to influence decisions without owning delivery.
• Strong understanding of architecture principles, standards, reference architectures, and how governance supports consistency and reuse.
• Proven ability to synthesize complex technical topics into clear, decision-ready guidance for both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Excellent stakeholder management, facilitation, and communication skills across Technology, Engineering, Security, and Governance audiences.

Preferred

• Familiarity with enterprise architecture tooling and repositories (e.g., architecture inventories, reference model libraries).
• Experience working in regulated environments and collaborating with Security/Risk/Compliance stakeholders.
• Strong knowledge of cloud architecture patterns (Azure preferred) and modern software architecture approaches.
• Experience establishing or uplifting architecture communities of practice and standards adoption.

What success looks like (examples)

• Leadership teams use research outputs to make faster, better-aligned technology decisions.
• Architecture principles/standards/reference architectures are clearer, more adopted, and demonstrably reduce duplication and inconsistency.
• Architecture maturity improves through stronger enablement, common language, and reusable patterns across teams.
• Stakeholders (Engineering/Security/Risk/Governance) view the role as a trusted senior partner for architecture insight and alignment.

What we offer you

At EY, we’ll develop you with future-focused skills and equip you with world-class experiences. We’ll empower you in a flexible environment, and fuel you and your extraordinary talents in a diverse and inclusive culture of globally connected teams. Learn more.

Are you ready to shape your future with confidence? Apply today.

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