Chief Technical Architect at The George Washington University

I. JOB OVERVIEW

Job Description Summary:

GW Information Technology (GWIT) is a trusted partner, enabling the delivery of world class education, research, and clinical care by providing an efficient, scalable, and secure digital experience to GW faculty, students, and staff. We are committed to cultivating a team culture that values diversity, inclusion, respect, and collaboration and invests in each team member to grow in their technology and career skills.

Job Overview

The Chief Technical Architect proactively and holistically leads and supports GWIT activities that guide developing and managing technical and infrastructure solutions. These solutions enable the organization’s future-state business capabilities and drive the organization’s targeted business outcomes. The Chief Technical Architect will establish and maintain documentation of the GWIT infrastructure to enable a clear understanding of the existing systems and solutions, including system integrations, network configurations, data flows, data centers, and system configurations for both on-premises systems and cloud-based systems.

Reporting to the Vice Provost for Libraries and Information Technology (CIO), the Chief Technical Architect will provide the leadership, facilitation, analysis, and design tasks required to develop the GW enterprise’s technical and infrastructure architecture. They are responsible for creating deliverables that help develop target-state guidance (standards, guidelines, individual parts, platforms, and configurations) for evolving the technical infrastructure across the university, enabling strategy, and delivering targeted business and research outcomes.

The responsibilities include:

The Chief Technical Architect will demonstrate competencies across three key dimensions:

Derives Future-State Technology Architecture

• Works with GWIT peers (e.g., enterprise, research, data, networks, solutions and security architects) to analyze university-wide needs (business strategy and trends), as well as change requirements for systems outside of GWIT’s purview, to derive the future-state technology architecture. This includes defining the requirements, principles and models that guide technology decisions.
• Leads the analysis of the current technology environment to detect critical deficiencies, legacy and technical debt, and recommends solutions for improvement. In addition, leads the analysis of technology industry and market trends to determine their potential impact on the university as well as on the comprehensive university technology architecture.
• Coaches, mentors and collaborates with technical subject matter experts and peers to develop a technology architecture that enables and drives new capabilities and operating models.
• Drives digital innovation by leveraging innovative technologies and approaches to renovate, extend, and transform the existing core technology base and IT landscape.
• Defines high-level migration plans to address the gaps between the future and current state, in sync with the IT budgeting or other capital planning processes.

Analyzes and Evaluates Technology

• Understands technology trends and the practical application of existing, new, and emerging technologies to enable new and evolving business and operating models.
• Guides technology investment decisions based on analysis and evaluation to drive targeted outcomes while ensuring nonfunctional requirements are met.
• Helps define metrics to measure and demonstrate enterprise technology value.
• Assists with designing the governance, assurance and standards activities associated with ensuring enterprise technology architecture compliance of projects and products.
• Oversees and facilitates the research, evaluation, and selection of hardware and software technology and product standards, as well as the design of standard configurations to meet operational and research needs.
• Identifies the organizational impact (for example, on skills, processes, structures and culture) and financial impact of the technology architecture.
• Understands, advocates and augments the business and IT strategies. Is prepared to explain the universities architecture as it aligns with the universities core missions and strategies.

Leads and Collaborates to Deliver Business Outcomes

• Leads technology change to deliver business outcomes while also virtually leveraging subject matter experts from any other needed technical area.
• Oversees, or consults on, technology implementation and modification activities (for example, projects and products), particularly for new or shared infrastructure solutions.
• Consults on application or infrastructure development projects to harmonize systems or infrastructure with the current technology architecture and identify when it is necessary to modify the technology architecture to accommodate immediate or future project needs.
• Creates and delivers architecture for working, production-ready IT services that can be easily leveraged by agile teams.
• Works closely with the product managers, product owners and peers to enable infrastructure agility, scalability and resilience to support required product needs throughout product life cycles.
• Collaborates with campus-wide constituents, other team members, project teams and staff in various IT functional areas as needed to fulfill the responsibilities described above.
• Documents necessary enterprise technology architecture design and analysis work, possibly including project postmortem documentation and metric collection.

Perform other related duties as assigned. The omission of specific duties does not preclude the supervisor from assigning duties that are logically related to the position.

Minimum Qualifications:

Qualified candidates will hold a Bachelor’s degree in an appropriate area of specialization plus 10 years of relevant professional experience, or, a Master’s degree or higher in a relevant area of study plus 8 years of relevant professional experience. Degree must be conferred by the start date of the position. Degree requirements may be substituted with an equivalent combination of education, training and experience.

Additional Required Licenses/Certifications/Posting Specific Minimum Qualifications:

Preferred Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, information technology, system analysis, related study, or equivalent experience.
• Preferred minimum five years of design and implementation experience in IT, with deep knowledge in a minimum of two of the following (or similar) technical disciplines: infrastructure and network design, application development, application programming interfaces (APIs), middleware, servers and storage, database management and operations, clustering technologies, virtualization, research computing, cloud technologies, and Active Directory and protocols.
• Exposure to diverse technical configurations, technologies, and processing environments.
• Understanding of product management and capability to support teams by providing advice and guidance on opportunities, impact, and risks, taking account of technical and architectural debt.
• Excellent interpersonal skills in areas such as teamwork, facilitation, and negotiation
• Strong leadership skills.
• Excellent analytical and technical skills.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Excellent planning and organizational skills.
• Knowledge of many, if not most, components of an enterprise technology architecture.
• Knowledge of IT service management (ITSM) and Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL).
• Knowledge of different modeling languages (such as UML and ArchiMate).
• Knowledge of IT standards and controls.
• Understanding of information principles and processes.
• Understanding of financial models and budgeting.
• Understanding of network and security architecture.
• Understanding system development life cycle methodologies (waterfall, spiral, agile software development, rapid prototyping, incremental, synchronize and stabilize, and DevOps).
• Ability to understand the long-term (“big picture”) and short-term perspectives of situations and how they relate to achieving targeted outcomes.
• Ability to estimate the financial impact of technology alternatives.
• Ability to apply multiple technical solutions to enable future-state capabilities that, in turn, drive targeted outcomes.
• Ability to quickly comprehend the functions and capabilities of existing, new and emerging technologies that enable and drive new designs and models.
• Demonstrated ability to work well with others and be respected as a leader.
• Trusted and respected as a thought leader who can challenge current thinking, and influence and persuade campus and IT leaders as well as IT technical teams.
• Technology neutral: remains unbiased toward any specific technology or vendor choice, and is more interested in results than personal preferences.
• Displays intellectual curiosity and integrity.
• Motivated and driven by achieving long-term business outcomes.
• Ability to balance the long-term (big picture) and short-term implications of individual decisions.
• Ability to work effectively in a team environment and participate in cross-functional teams.

Hiring Range

$139,068.40 - $194,625.29

GW Staff Approach to Pay

Healthcare Benefits

GW offers a comprehensive benefit package that includes medical, dental, vision, life & disability insurance, time off & leave, retirement savings, tuition, well-being and various voluntary benefits. For program details and eligibility, please visit

II. JOB DETAILS

Campus Location:

Ashburn, Virginia

College/School/Department:

GW IT

Family

Information Technology

Sub-Family

Multiple Functions, Information Technology

Stream

Individual Contributor

Level

Level 5

Full-Time/Part-Time:

Full-Time

Hours Per Week:

40

Work Schedule:

8:00 am - 5:00 pm

Will this job require the employee to work on site?

Yes

Employee Onsite Status

Hybrid

Telework:

Yes

Required Background Check:

Criminal History Screening, Education/Degree/Certifications Verification, Social Security Number Trace, and Sex Offender Registry Search

Special Instructions to Applicants:

Employer will not sponsor for employment Visa status

Internal Applicants Only?

No

Posting Number:

S013297

Job Open Date:

09/04/2024

Job Close Date:

If temporary, grant funded or limited term appointment, position funded until:

Background Screening

Successful Completion of a Background Screening will be required as a condition of hire.

EEO Statement:

The university is an Equal Employment Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer that does not unlawfully discriminate in any of its programs or activities on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or on any other basis prohibited by applicable law.