Chief Platform Architect

Morningstar, Inc.; Chicago (IL); Hybrid; USD 263,000 - 404,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401k match up to 6%

Sabbatical program

Parental leave

Job summary

Morningstar, Inc. seeks a Head of Architecture to lead the Direct Platform’s long-term technology vision, shaping product strategy and governance across cloud, data, and platform domains.

You will guide modernization, governance, and vendor relationships while partnering with Product, Engineering, Security, and Operations to accelerate delivery of high-impact business outcomes. The role demands hands-on, strategic leadership, strong stakeholder influence, and a track record of building

Qualifications

• Proven ability to influence executive stakeholders and partner across Technology, Product, Operations, Security, Data, and Business functions.
• Experience leading architecture teams and enterprise-wide technology transformation initiatives.
• Strong understanding of modern software development practices, platform engineering, DevSecOps, API-first architectures, microservices, and cloud-native technologies.

Responsibilities

• Define and maintain the target-state Direct Platform architecture aligned to business priorities, product strategy, and long-term growth objectives.
• Develop and execute multi-year architecture and modernization roadmaps that reduce technical debt and improve scalability, resiliency, and maintainability.
• Establish enterprise architecture principles, reference architectures, technology standards, and cloud strategy across applications, data, infrastructure, and platform services.
• Lead evaluation of existing systems and technologies and identify opportunities for consolidation, standardization, modernization, and cloud-native adoption.
• Serve as the final escalation point for significant architectural decisions and trade-offs balancing speed, scalability, security, and total cost of ownership.
• Establish architecture success metrics tied to business outcomes such as speed-to-market and platform reliability.

Skills

Strategic thinking

Executive stakeholder influence

Hands-on architecture

Cloud architecture

Communication to executives

Education

Advanced degree in Computer Science or Engineering

Tools

AWS

Azure

Google Cloud

Job description

Morningstar, Inc. seeks a Head of Architecture to lead the Direct Platform’s long-term technology vision, shaping product strategy and governance across cloud, data, and platform domains.

You will guide modernization, governance, and vendor relationships while partnering with Product, Engineering, Security, and Operations to accelerate delivery of high-impact business outcomes. The role demands hands-on, strategic leadership, strong stakeholder influence, and a track record of building