Senior Architect

Thrivent is looking for a Sr Architect to join the Mainframe and Production Control team. The Senior IT Architect is a trusted advisor, influencer and thought leader whose IT expertise and business knowledge combines to translate business objectives into technology-enabled solutions that deliver the capabilities needed to achieve business results. Influences technology strategy and advises senior leaders based on knowledge and perspective. Applies business, industry and technical knowledge (across multiple assets, domains, platforms, technologies, vendors, etc.) to lead the delivery of innovative solutions. Provides leadership to appropriately support and maintain technology capabilities. Collaborates across domains to understand business, information and system implications. Comfortable dealing with ambiguity while solves complex problems, drives innovation and strives for continuous improvement. Focuses on the broader Thrivent Enterprise while collaborating with leaders, verbally and in writing, to align business and technical concepts in an understandable way. Mentors, trains and coaches staff.

The Sr. IT Architect is responsible for defining the architecture for large scale projects and programs. The Sr IT Architect is also responsible for driving adoption and continuous improvement of architecture standards and best practices.

Job Duties and Responsibilities

General

• Provide general domain expertise on mainframe engineering and middleware (CICS, DB2, MQ, IMS).
• COBOL and Java (on Z/OS Linux) experience is required
• Provide L3 guidance/work with our infrastructure managed service provider to implement upgrades, introduce new functionality, optimize existing middleware-to-application interfacing, and everything in between.
• Be the architectural intermediary between our Engineers and platform.
• Assist with root cause analysis/problem determination efforts.
• Evangelize the platform internally, working with and helping Engineering stakeholders improve their applications.
• Drive POCs for various modernization efforts like Devops on Mainframe, championing productivity tools like Zowe.
• Oversee and direct efforts to identify information and technology solutions that enable business needs and strategies.
• Apply business knowledge and experience to effective advise others on technology as an enabler.
• Lead efforts to analyze IT industry and market trends and determine potential impacts.
• Develop concepts and constructs necessary to create technology-enabled business systems.
• Influence technology direction.
• Provides thought leadership and execution to large complex efforts.
• Utilize breadth of technical understanding and dive deep when necessary.
• Consult on and manage initiatives to ensure alignment across multiple business and IT areas.
• Proactively mitigate risks across multiple assets, information domains, technologies and platforms.
• Provide leadership, mentoring and technical guidance to others to drive initiatives.
• Facilitate communications that involve obtaining cooperation and agreement on issues that may be complex or controversial.
• Utilize negotiation and persuasion to come to agreement and to effectively form partnerships.
• Act as a change agent to continuously improve and move the organization forward.
• Accountable to provide leadership to successfully deliver the right results on initiatives in a timely and effective manner.
• Direct the work of others to lead initiatives that cross multiple assets, technologies, platforms, departments and vendors.
• Ability to work within a diverse team of skillsets and experience levels to deliver results.

Specific Strategy and Alignment

• Lead the definition of conceptual and logical architecture specifications (e.g., data architecture, application architecture, technical architecture) for the enterprise.
• Lead, drive, and align the definition of architecture standards that are aligned with business goals, IT strategy and enterprise architecture visions.
• Ensure that architecture decisions are consistent between departments and leverage opportunities for common approaches.

Communication / Collaboration

• Serve as an architecture conduit for external requests, and provide education on enterprise architecture directions and goals.
• Effectively manage organizational impacts of architecture.
• Direct and lead enterprise architectural efforts, utilizing cross-functional knowledge (strategy, change management and business process management).
• Provide architecture direction and guidance to other project architects and technical staff

Architecture Development

• Lead effort to analyze IT industry and market trends and determine potential impact upon enterprise.
• Lead effort to identify and analyze enterprise business drivers to derive enterprise business, information, technical, and solution architecture requirements.
• Lead effort to work with the business users, enterprise architect and application engineers to develop the overall architecture approach and application for all levels of a solution.
• Assist in the development of architectural best practices and standards.
• Provide leadership and technical guidance to Architects.

Architecture Implementation

• Lead effort to implement overall architecture approach for all layers of a solution.
• Lead effort to ensure that enterprise architecture standards, policies, and procedures are enacted uniformly across application development projects and programs.
• Review the deliverables throughout the development cycle to ensure quality and traceability to requirements and adherence to all quality management plans and standards.

Architecture Analysis and Consultation

• Lead effort to review and provide input on proposals from an architectural perspective, including feasibility, practicality, technical viability, and consistency.
• Assess and recommend infrastructure and application solutions for upgrades to meet business needs.
• Architecture Support
• Develop strong knowledge base in particular domain.
• Lead effort to support lines of business, and support staff and technology areas who are implementing projects that impact the architecture.

Required Job Qualifications

• Experience with industry standard technologies, tools and methods including Service Oriented Architecture, EAI, and Application Servers, frameworks, mainframe and databases.
• Demonstrated leadership on large scale projects impacting strategic priorities
• 10+ years working with mainframe middleware (CICS, DB2, MQ) in both sysplex and monoplex configuring.
• 5+ years of core z/OS and major subsystem experience (JES, WLM, job schedulers (Zeke), RACF, etc.)
• 5+ years of COBOL experience
• Experience with building/exposing APIs around mainframe data and related tools
• Experiencing working with application Engineers and mapping their application needs to infrastructure solutions
• Curious to learn the latest & try new things to drive various POCs.

Other Critical Factors

• Thought Leadership: Understands the business, provides insights, and translates business objectives into technical plans and processes. Understands the end-to-end process. Anticipates situations and applies conceptual thinking to resolve complex problems using sound judgment and decisions making.
• People Leadership: Strong verbal and written communication skills with the ability to translate business need into technical requirements. Building strong relationships; collaborating and influencing others within IT and across the organization. Leads, mentors and coaches others.
• Results Leadership: Applies industry, organizational and broad technical knowledge to drive future results. Prioritizes balancing long and short-term needs.
• Personal Leadership: Demonstrates ability to work in ambiguity. Is passionate with a willingness to take a risk or stand and appropriately challenging others. Is a trusted business advisor.

Pay TransparencyThrivent’s long-term growth depends on attracting, rewarding, and retaining people who are committed to helping others thrive with purpose. We accomplish this by offering a wide variety of market competitive compensation programs to attract, reward, and retain top talent. The applicable salary or hourly wage range for this full-time role is $136,721.00 - $184,976.00 per year, which factors in various geographic regions. The base pay actually offered will be determined by a variety of factors including, but not limited to, location, relevant experience, skills, and knowledge, business needs, market demand, and other factors Thrivent deems important.Thrivent is unique in our commitment to helping people to be wise with money and live balanced and generous lives. That extends to our benefits.The following benefits may be offered: various bonuses (including, for example, annual or long-term incentives); medical, dental, and vision insurance; health savings account; flexible spending account; 401k; pension; life and accidental death and dismemberment insurance; disability insurance; supplemental protection insurance; 20 days of Paid Time Off each year; Sick and Safe Time; 10 paid company holidays; Volunteer Time Off; paid parental leave; EAP; well-being benefits, and other employee benefits. Eligibility for receipt of these benefits is subject to the applicable plan/policy documents. Thrivent’s plans/policies are subject to change at any time at Thrivent’s discretion.

Thrivent provides Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) without regard to race, religion, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, pregnancy, national origin, age, disability, marital status, citizenship status, military or veteran status, genetic information, or any otherstatus protected by applicable local, state, or federal law. This policy applies to all employees and job applicants.

Thrivent is committed to providing reasonable accommodation to individuals with disabilities. If you need a reasonable accommodation, please let us know by sending an email to [email protected] or call 800-847-4836 and request Human Resources.