VP IT Governance - Architecture & Service Management

Overview

VP IT Governance, Architecture & Service Management leads the governance, architecture, delivery, and service management disciplines that determine how technology work is requested, approved, designed, tested, released, supported, and recovered. Reporting to the Chief Information Officer, this role is a primary partner in shaping enterprise technology strategy and is accountable for translating that strategy into standards, roadmaps, and prioritized work. The position leads Enterprise Architecture and the IT Project Management Office and owns change management, incident and problem management, IT disaster recovery, quality assurance and testing, and business requirements intake. The role sets the standards, controls, and performance measures that ensure technology investments deliver measurable business value, regulatory compliance, and exceptional member outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Supports the CIO in shaping enterprise technology strategy and translates it into executable roadmaps, governance decisions, and a prioritized portfolio aligned with the Credit Union's goals and member experience priorities.
• Acts as the CIO’s designee in technology governance forums and owns IT policies, standards, and decision rights, reporting governance, risk, and service performance to executive leadership.
• Owns IT risk management, compliance, audit coordination, and regulatory readiness, ensuring assigned personnel perform their duties in compliance with NCUA and other applicable rules and regulations.
• Documents, communicates, and enforces operational execution standards across critical IT functions.
• Provides market trends, stakeholder impacts, risks, tradeoffs, and recommendations for CIO review.
• Leads the Enterprise Architecture function, owning application, integration, data, and cloud architecture standards, reference patterns, and the target state architecture roadmap.
• Defines non-functional requirements for scalability, performance, security, and resiliency, and drives architectural consistency and technical debt reduction across the portfolio.
• Owns enterprise IT change management, including the change advisory board, change risk assessment, approval standards, release calendars, and post-implementation review.
• Owns incident management and problem resolution, serving as governance lead during major incidents by directing severity classification, escalation, cross-team coordination, executive and member communication, root cause analysis, and corrective actions through to closure.
• Establishes service level agreements, operational performance metrics, and IT service reporting that measure the availability, responsiveness, and quality of technology services.
• Drives process automation, workflow simplification, and continuous improvement across IT, including enterprise knowledge and documentation standards, using employee and member feedback to guide priorities.
• Owns IT budget planning, forecasting, and financial governance, partnering with Finance and Executive Leadership on business cases, cost-benefit analysis, value realization, and portfolio optimization.
• Leads the IT Project Management Office and enterprise program delivery, ensuring technology projects are properly scoped, aligned to business strategy, and delivered on time, within budget, and to quality expectations.
• Establishes disciplined business requirements gathering, intake, and prioritization, ensuring documented requirements, acceptance criteria, and stakeholder alignment before work is approved for delivery.
• Drives portfolio transparency and execution excellence, including status reporting, risk and issue management, resource planning, and enterprise release coordination.
• Owns the enterprise quality assurance function, setting testing standards, entry and exit criteria, defect management practices, and release readiness sign-off for all technology changes.
• Directs test strategy and test script development, execution, and validation across functional, regression, integration, and user acceptance testing, with results documented and traceable to business requirements.
• Institutionalizes pre-mortem and post-mortem practices for major projects, conversions, and incidents, capturing risks in advance, lessons learned afterward, and tracking the resulting improvements to completion.
• Leads technology innovation and emerging technology evaluation, partnering with business leaders on discovery and design thinking to identify technology-enabled opportunities, and governing structured proofs of concept for new capabilities such as artificial intelligence and automation.
• Manages technology vendor and partner relationships, including service level performance and third-party risk, to ensure maximum benefit for the Credit Union and its members.
• Performs business resumption planning for assigned departments, validates plan adequacy, and fosters cooperation and collaboration within the department and across business partners.

Qualifications

Education

• Minimum: 4 Year / Bachelors Degree
• Must have a Bachelor's degree in Business Information Technology or Management
• Preferred: Graduate Degree
• Master's Degree in Business or Technology and experience in a financial institution

Experience

• 10 or more years of experience leading IT governance, enterprise architecture, IT service management, program or project delivery, quality assurance, or business analysis functions, including experience in a regulated financial services environment or directly related experience.

Knowledge, Skills & Ability

• Proven track record of establishing IT governance and service management disciplines, including change, incident, and problem management, with working knowledge of ITIL and COBIT in a production environment.
• Hands-on experience owning an enterprise service management platform such as ServiceNow, including workflow and service catalog design, configuration management database accuracy, integrations, and service reporting.
• Demonstrated ability to lead an enterprise architecture practice across application, integration, data, and cloud domains, including architecture standards, target state roadmaps, chairing an architecture review board, and reducing technical debt; familiarity with TOGAF or a comparable framework.
• Strong command of portfolio and program management across waterfall, Agile, and hybrid delivery methods, including intake, prioritization, resource and capacity planning, dependency management, and executive status reporting.
• Demonstrated experience leading quality assurance and business analysis disciplines, including test strategy and execution, defect lifecycle management, release readiness decisions, requirements elicitation, acceptance criteria, and traceability from business need through benefit realization.
• Ability to define and manage service level agreements, operational metrics, and scorecards, and to use data to drive measurable improvement in system stability, delivery cycle time, and service quality.
• Strong background in financial services technology, governance, and regulatory environments, including NCUA Part 748, the FFIEC Information Technology Examination Handbook, GLBA, and PCI DSS, with experience coordinating internal and external audits and regulatory examinations.
• Working knowledge of core banking, digital banking, lending, and payments platforms and the risks, controls, and testing required for major conversions, along with experience managing technology vendors, service level negotiation, performance, and third-party risk.
• Financial acumen sufficient to build credible business cases, manage a multimillion-dollar technology budget, and demonstrate value realization, paired with excellent written and verbal communication skills and the ability to present to the Executive Team, Board of Directors, and Supervisory Committee.
• Proven people leader who builds, develops, and retains high-performing teams, sets clear accountability, and influences outcomes without direct authority, while exhibiting curiosity, adaptability, and a commitment to lifelong learning, including applying emerging technologies such as AI to drive efficiency and continuous improvement.

 

Disclaimer

Equal Opportunity Employer/Veterans/Disabled

Pay Range

USD $174,302.31 - USD $278,883.69 /Yr.

Base Pay

Compensation: 174302.31 to 278883.69 (USD)