Cloud Architecture Lead: Incubation & Platform Strategy

Wellmark, Inc.; Iowa (LA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield seeks an enterprise architect to lead incubation of data center and platform architectures in a regulated environment. You will guide discovery, prove concepts, and transition to production-ready services.

You will partner with engineering, security, operations, and product teams; drive architecture governance, reference patterns, and roadmaps; mentor architects and align initiatives with business strategy.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in IT with 7+ years in architecture.
• Formal leadership experience; strong relationship management across teams.

Responsibilities

• Lead with disciplined innovation; coach architects through experiments and hypothesis testing.
• Build and govern a data center architecture incubation practice with clear stage gates.
• Guide evaluation of hybrid cloud, platform, and security approaches while ensuring enterprise alignment.
• Oversee development of reference architectures, patterns, and operational readiness criteria.
• Create reliable transitions from incubation to enterprise capability with sponsors and stakeholders.
• Incubate data and integration capabilities at the platform level and evaluate API-first approaches.
• Maintain an active pipeline of experiments and share outcomes to accelerate learning.
• Manage incubation resources, budgeting, vendor participation, and reporting.
• Other duties as assigned.

Skills

Architecture leadership

Cloud & hybrid cloud

Data center modernization

Incubation & experimentation

Education

Bachelor's degree in computer science or related field

Tools

TOGAF

AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional

Azure Solutions Architect Expert

Job description

Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield seeks an enterprise architect to lead incubation of data center and platform architectures in a regulated environment. You will guide discovery, prove concepts, and transition to production-ready services.

You will partner with engineering, security, operations, and product teams; drive architecture governance, reference patterns, and roadmaps; mentor architects and align initiatives with business strategy.