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

The expected base salary range for this position is $194,000 to $278,000 per year. Actual compensation will be based on factors such as skills and experience. This position is also eligible for an annual performance bonus, which is subject to company and individual performance. 

Life at HERE comes with generous benefits to support your health and overall wellness. Benefits available to US-based HERE employees include health (Medical/Dental/Vision) insurance, retirement savings plans, paid time off & leave policies.   

As part of HERE Technologies employment process, candidates will be required to successfully complete a background verification process. Offers of employment and any related claims are subject to the successful completion of a background verification. Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance and the Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring, HERE will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records. 

HERE is an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to race, color, age, gender identity, sexual orientation, marital status, parental status, religion, sex, national origin, disability, veteran status, and other legally protected characteristics.  

Under Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and VEVRAA, we have developed an affirmative action program (AAP) for individuals with disabilities and protected veterans. Portions of the AAP are available for review by applicants and employees through our People Team. 

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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