Lead Technology Architect

The Director, Technology Architecture is a senior technical leadership role within the Architecture Practice responsible for owning one or more architecture domains across the full HWC-BDA technology portfolio. The Architecture Practice governs standards, patterns, and compliance across two distinct businesses and multiple delivery streams, with a mandate to ensure that every technology decision made in those streams is made to a consistent and defensible standard. This role leads governance and continuous improvement within an assigned domain, sets the technical bar for how decisions are made and reviewed, and partners with delivery teams to ensure that every system built or modified meets that bar. The primary domain of focus for this hire is Quality Assurance and Test Engineering, though the role is designed to serve wherever senior architectural depth is needed as the practice grows. The right candidate brings deep technical expertise, a track record of driving adoption of standards across teams they do not directly manage, and the executive communication skills to make governance work credible and visible to business leadership.

Key Responsibilities

• Own governance and standards for one or more assigned architecture domains across the HWC-BDA technology portfolio. Define the policies, patterns, review gates, and compliance requirements that govern all technology work in those domains, and ensure they are applied consistently across delivery teams.

• Lead architecture and design reviews within the assigned domain, serving as the senior technical escalation point for design decisions that exceed what delivery teams can resolve independently. Provide clear, documented direction that helps teams move forward rather than stall.

• Define and maintain the quality and test engineering standards for the organization -- including automated test coverage thresholds, CI/CD gate requirements, defect severity classification, UAT governance, regression test suite standards, and performance and load testing requirements for shared platforms.

• Partner with delivery leaders and engineering teams to embed domain standards into the software development lifecycle. Governance must be applied at the point of design; this role ensures that happens through tooling, review processes, and close partnership with the teams doing the work.

• Drive continuous improvement across the domain practice. Assess current state against industry benchmarks, identify gaps in coverage, tooling, or process maturity, and build a roadmap to close them. Translate that roadmap into action.

• Contribute to enterprise-level strategic feasibility work: evaluate non-product technology initiatives, requests from senior business leadership, and architecture questions that require senior technical judgment before entering the delivery backlog. This work is high-visibility and low-volume by design.

• Represent the Architecture Practice in cross-functional forums, vendor evaluations, regulatory assessments, and enterprise technology governance bodies. The role operates at the intersection of technology and the business, and requires comfort in both settings.

• Define the metrics and reporting framework that make domain health visible to technology leadership and business stakeholders. Coverage rates, gate compliance, defect escape rates, and compliance findings should be tracked, trended, and reported on a regular cadence.

• Build and sustain a domain practice that scales across a distributed, geographically diverse engineering organization. That means documented standards, training materials, assessment frameworks, and a review model that enables delivery teams to operate with autonomy without producing fragmented outcomes.

• Extensive senior experience in software engineering or technology architecture, with deep expertise in one or more architecture disciplines: quality assurance and test engineering, software architecture, data architecture, security architecture, or AI and ML governance.

• Proven track record governing technical standards across multiple delivery teams or product lines, with measurable impact on quality, reliability, or compliance outcomes. Influence through standards and process, not headcount.

• Experience designing and operating test automation frameworks, CI/CD quality gates, or quality engineering programs at scale in a production software environment. Hands-on background is a prerequisite for credibility in this role.

• Strong background in regulated technology environments (SOC2, HIPAA, SOX, or comparable frameworks) and the ability to translate regulatory requirements into actionable engineering standards that delivery teams can follow.

• Experience serving multiple delivery teams from a shared practice or platform function, including SLA management, prioritization, and contention resolution across teams with competing timelines.

• Demonstrated ability to drive adoption of technical standards across engineering teams that did not author those standards -- through documentation, tooling, training, and review processes rather than authority alone.

• Excellent executive communication skills. The ability to make technical governance work visible, credible, and worth investing in for a business-facing leadership audience is a core requirement of this role.

• Experience in US healthcare, benefits, insurance, or financial services technology is a strong plus; the ability to learn and operate in a regulated domain quickly is a requirement.

Leadership Competencies

• Technical Domain Expertise and Standards Ownership

• Governance Without Direct Authority Over Delivery Teams

• Continuous Improvement and Practice Maturity

• Cross-Functional Influence and Stakeholder Engagement

• Executive Communication and Business Acumen

• Technical Mentorship and Craft Elevation

Key Success Measures

• Domain governance standards published, adopted, and measurable within 90 days of hire.

• Automated test coverage and CI gate compliance metrics defined, baselined, and visible to delivery leadership within 60 days.

• Architecture review process operating consistently across all delivery streams within the assigned domain within 90 days.

• Measurable improvement in domain quality metrics -- defect escape rate, compliance findings, or coverage -- within 12 months.

• Delivery team satisfaction with architecture practice support, evidenced by regular feedback and reduced escalation volume.

• Standards documentation and training available to all engineering teams, with adoption measurable through delivery team compliance rather than just publication.

This position will remain posted for a minimum of three business days from the date posted or until sufficient/appropriate candidate slate has been identified.

Compensation and Benefits 

Benefits information for this position are being included in accordance with requirements of various state/local pay transparency legislation. Please note that salaries may vary for different individuals in the same role based on several factors, including but not limited to location of the role, individual competencies, education/professional certifications, qualifications/experience, performance in the role and potential for revenue generation (Producer roles only).

Compensation 

The salary compensation range being offered for this role is $160,000 to $210,000.

This role is also eligible for an annual short-term incentive bonus. 

Company Benefits:

WTW provides a competitive benefit package which includes the following (eligibility requirements apply):

• Health and Welfare Benefits: Medical (including prescription coverage), Dental, Vision, Health Savings Account, Commuter Account, Health Care and Dependent Care Flexible Spending Accounts, Group Accident, Group Critical Illness, Life Insurance, AD&D, Group Legal, Identify Theft Protection, Wellbeing Program and Work/Life Resources (including Employee Assistance Program)

• Leave Benefits: Paid Holidays, Annual Paid Time Off (includes paid state/local paid leave where required), Short-Term Disability, Long-Term Disability, Other Leaves (e.g., Bereavement, FMLA, ADA, Jury Duty, Military Leave, and Parental and Adoption Leave), Paid Time Off

• Retirement Benefits: Contributory Pension Plan and Savings Plan (401k). All Level 38 and more senior roles may also be eligible for non-qualified Deferred Compensation and Deferred Savings Plans

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance and Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

EOE, including disability/vets