Director, Enterprise Architecture

What's the role?:

The Director, Enterprise Architecture plays a pivotal role within HERE’s Compute Foundation organization, leading the definition and evolution of enterprise-wide architectural strategy that underpins our AI ambitions and Enterprise business goals.

This role oversees a small team of Enterprise Architects responsible for shaping coherent architectures across cloud platforms, developer enablement, corporate and employee applications as well as AI capabilities across these areas. The Director ensures that HERE’s technology landscape advances in a way that offloads complexity from engineering teams and employees, enabling them to move faster, while maintaining architectural consistency, reusability, and cost efficiency across horizontals. The EA team partners with Solution Architects, Software Architects and engineering teams who design and implement project-specific solutions using these patterns, ensuring consistency and faster execution at scale.

This role owns enterprise reference architectures, standards, and guardrails for AI capabilities across cloud platforms, developer enablement, corporate/employee applications, and shared services. The role defines and governs the end-to-end AI/GenAI lifecycle - including LLMOps/MLOps, evaluation, observability, and model/prompt/version controls - so AI systems are production-ready and measurable. It establishes guardrails for agentic systems (orchestration, tool access governance, human-in-the-loop controls, and auditability) and partners with Security, Privacy, and Data teams to ensure compliance-by-design. Success is measured by adoption, reduced technical debt, improved developer experience and delivery speed, and predictable cost efficiency for both cloud and AI workloads.

A core focus of this role is enabling HERE’s AI journey - ensuring that AI, data platforms and automation are architected, governed, and operationalized to deliver measurable improvements in productivity, reliability, and customer value for both HERE customers and internal teams.

MAIN RESPONSIBILITIES

Leadership & Organization

Lead, coach, and develop a high-performing Enterprise Architecture team aligned to HERE’s platform and product strategy

Establish Enterprise Architecture as a strategic partner to Engineering, Product Management, and Platform Engineering leadership

Contribute to the advancement of architectural and technical leadership practices across HERE R&D

Enterprise & Platform Architecture

Define and maintain enterprise architecture vision, principles, standards, and target-state roadmaps

Ensure architectural alignment across Compute Foundation services, platform components, and product-facing capabilities

Drive architectural consistency across developer platforms, shared services, APIs, and internal tooling

Support use of cloud-native, platform-oriented, and service-based architectures

Own enterprise reference architectures, standards, and guardrails for platform and AI capabilities; partner with Solution Architects and delivery teams who design and implement project-specific solutions using these patterns

AI & Data Architecture Leadership

Lead architectural strategy for AI/ML and Generative AI across HERE, including:

Data platforms and pipelines

Model integration and inference services

Model lifecycle management

Responsible AI, governance, and compliance

Define reference architectures and reusable patterns for AI-enabled workflows, agentic systems, and automation

Partner with platform engineering, security, privacy, and data teams to ensure AI systems are secure, scalable, compliant, and observable

Establish patterns for agent orchestration, tool access governance, human-in-the-loop controls, auditability, and security protections (e.g., prompt injection and data exfiltration controls) for action-taking AI systems

Define and govern the end-to-end AI/GenAI lifecycle, including LLMOps/MLOps, evaluation, observability, incident response, and model/prompt/version controls

Define enterprise patterns for retrieval and knowledge systems (RAG), including content curation, lineage, freshness, semantic access controls, and integration with systems of record.

Partner with FinOps to define cost attribution and budgets for AI workloads (token economics, model routing, usage caps), ensuring predictable unit economics at scale

Governance & Decision Making

Define the EA engagement model, decision thresholds, and governance routes to ensure architecture accelerates delivery while managing risk

Chair or actively participate in architecture review boards and technical governance forums

Guide build/buy/partner decisions for major platforms, AI capabilities, and foundational technologies

Balance speed and innovation with long-term sustainability, cost (CPM), and operational efficiency

Chair or actively participate in architecture review boards and technical governance forums

Guide build/buy/partner decisions for major platforms, AI capabilities, and foundational technologies

Balance speed and innovation with long-term sustainability, cost (CPM), and operational efficiency

Metrics, Outcomes & Continuous Improvement

Define and track key metrics such as:

Platform and service adoption

Architecture health and technical debt

AI utilization and productivity impact

Cost efficiency (CPM) and operational scalability

Drive continuous improvement initiatives to enhance developer experience, delivery speed, and platform reliability

ENVIRONMENT

Strategic leadership role influencing large, business-critical platforms and shared services

Makes decisions impacting large, strategic products or small sets of related products

Ensures decisions are cascaded through impacted engineering teams and product owners

Drives fundamental innovation that may result in entirely new products or significant changes to existing products

SCOPE

Leadership role with people management responsibilities

Manages headcount, costs of team and operating costs of associated tools/services

Accountable for architecture direction across multiple domains and platforms

Influences significant technology investments and long-term platform evolution

IMPACT DECISION MAKING

Guided by group strategy, has broad impact on the results of a major or strategic area, small sub-group, or region.

Makes and governs architectural decisions impacting multiple HERE internal services, applications and platforms

Ensures architectural decisions are cascaded to architects, engineers, and product teams and executed effectively

Drives foundational innovation that enables new AI-driven capabilities and platform differentiation

Acts as a primary architectural advocate in portfolio planning and strategic initiatives

Who are you?:

15+ years of related experience with a Bachelor’s degree; or 12+ years and a Master’s degree; or a PhD with 8+ years experience; or equivalent experience.

Leading AI transformation and evolving Enterprise Architecture into a high impact function

Defining and executing enterprise-scale architecture strategies

Strong background in cloud platforms, distributed systems, DevOps, and platform engineering

Demonstrated leadership in AI/ML and Generative AI architectures, including governance and responsible AI practices

Experience working closely with product management, engineering, security, finance, and operations

Ability to influence senior technical and business leaders through clear, pragmatic, and outcome-focused architecture

Experience operating in large-scale, global, multi-product environments

Compensation & Benefits

The expected base salary range for this position is $195,000 to $270,000 per year. Actual compensation will be based on skills, experience, and other relevant factors.

This role is also eligible for a target annual performance bonus, based on company and individual performance.

Life at HERE includes a comprehensive benefits package designed to support your health and well-being, including:

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

Retirement savings plans

Paid time off and leave programs

Additional Information

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance and the Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring, HERE will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

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Who are we?:

HERE Technologies is a location data and technology platform company. We empower our customers to achieve better outcomes – from helping a city manage its infrastructure or a business optimize its assets to guiding drivers to their destination safely.

At HERE we take it upon ourselves to be the change we wish to see. We create solutions that fuel innovation, provide opportunity and foster inclusion to improve people’s lives. If you are inspired by an open world and driven to create positive change, join us. Learn more about us. Watch Video