Director of Domain Architecture

Occupation:Information Architecture Manager Job Description: Director of Domain ArchitectureOverview: The essential role of the Director of Domain Architecture is to provide leadership, direction, and vision in building and maintaining a highly effective team that brings a cross-disciplinary approach to solving business problems. The role is responsible for leading a team of architects focused on critical vertical domains in the organization. The team will take a top-down approach by developing current and future state diagrams and roadmaps that align with key business strategies for each domain as well as a bottom-up approach by developing solutions for initiatives driven by business and market demand. It is critical that both strategies and solutions are in alignment and adhere to enterprise architecture standards and best practices. This individual must foster a deep understanding of both the business context and technical options of any issue in order to design and promote progressive solutions. The most progressive solutions will have the quality of resolving an immediate need while building to other goals, such as reducing inefficiency, upgrading design, or delivering strategic value beyond the original request. To achieve excellence in this position, the Director of Domain Architecture must develop a deep understanding of our business, the ability to critically assess technical alternatives, and have a flexible/adaptive perspective on solving business issues. As a senior representative of the Enterprise Architecture and Planning team, the director will lead the business and architecture teams beyond immediate request and into solution strategy definition, design, selection and implementation. Additionally, this individual manages a team of professionals in a very demanding, fast-paced, and dynamic business environment. Responsibilities: • Lead, direct, and oversee staff of Domain Architects in Product, Subscriber, Supply Chain/Contact Center, and Corporate Systems domains. This involves assignment and distribution of work, mentoring, and managing the performance of your staff against departmental objectives. • Along with peers in IT and the business, provide vision and role model for team members. • Serve as a senior and primary IT contact and technical liaison for multiple functional areas and departments of the Company. • Develop and maximize an in-depth knowledge of Affinion Group systems, applications, business processes and operations. • Presents well researched and expert level solutions and proposals that align with the business, information, and technical architecture developed by the Enterprise Architecture team. The solutions must meet immediate business needs while aligning with the long-term vision for Affinion Group’s systems. • Analyzes existing systems against both IT and Company strategies, identifies options and makes well-defined recommendations. • Develop domain specific roadmaps that align with the enterprise business, information and technical architecture. • Provides leadership and support in the development of first level, conceptual functional design solutions to solve business problems and meet business requirements. Design may include documentation, graphical representations, and/or presentations to describe solution alternatives and recommendations. • Participates and facilitates functional and technical designs of systems to ensure sound decisions are being made in alignment with current and future business and IT strategies and opportunities. • Identifies and enforces reduction in duplication of processes • Identifies and proactively designs solutions to reduce non-discretionary support activities. • Using departmental and architecture guidelines and standards, initiates and achieves collaboration among various operational and IT development groups to provide recommendations to accommodate business needs and implement solutions. • Collaborates with IT delivery managers to manage scope and expectations, including facilitation of change management and documentation, and adherence to enterprise architecture and project management. • Shares business strategies and vision with IT department at large, promoting creativity and innovation. • Department projects as assigned. Requirements: • Strong conceptual thinker that can translate ideas into results. • Demonstrated ability to effectively lead, manage, and motivate teams in a demanding, fast-paced and dynamic business environment. • Bachelors Degree in computer science, MIS, or equivalent experience. • Minimum of 5 years related experience in business and systems analysis and design, and application program development. • Highly developed skills for discerning wants from needs and determining core functionality requirements. • Minimum of 2 years experience with relational databases and data structures, data modeling techniques and concepts. • Three or more years experience in personnel management. • Demonstrated ability to learn business process and operations and apply technical solutions. • Excellent analytical and problem solving skills • Ability to work effectively with a broad range of both internal and external customers. • Demonstrated ability to effectively utilize Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, and Outlook • Familiarity with Microsoft Project 2000 • Excellent written and oral communication skills • Excellent organizational and time management skills • Demonstrated ability to work both independently and within a team • Demonstrated ability to handle multiple assignments simultaneously • Self-motivated, positive, results-oriented attitude • Travel as necessary We are proud to be an EEO/AA employer M/F/D/V. We maintain a drug-free workplace and perform pre-employment substance abuse testingPlease apply at: http://affiniongroup.com/about-us/careers/current_opportunities.cfm