Lead IT Architect

McKesson’s Corporate; Columbus (OH); On-site; USD 151,000 - 251,000; Full time

Job summary

McKesson seeks a Lead IT Architect to steer portfolio-level architecture across multiple products, shaping strategy for scalable, reusable platforms. You will guide decisions across engineering, product, and business teams to balance immediate delivery with long-term modernization.

The role emphasizes distributed systems, cloud-native designs, and governance across value streams, with mentorship of senior engineers and architects. Columbus, OH preferred, sponsorship unavailable.

Qualifications

• Degree or equivalent; typically 10+ years of relevant experience.
• Master's or Doctorate qualification may reduce years required.

Responsibilities

• Define architecture vision, roadmap, and strategy across products.
• Partner with product, engineering, and business leaders to align investments.
• Lead architecture discussions during PI planning and strategic planning.
• Develop and maintain the architectural runway to support objectives.
• Ensure healthcare compliance, data privacy, security, and interoperability.

Skills

Distributed systems

Cloud-native

Microservices

REST APIs

Event-driven

Enterprise integration

Architecture roadmaps

Senior leadership

Architecture standards

SAFe experience

Healthcare domain

Vendor governance

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering

Master's or Doctorate

Job description

McKesson is an impact-driven, Fortune 10 company that touches virtually every aspect of healthcare. We are known for delivering insights, products, and services that make quality care more accessible and affordable. Here, we focus on the health, happiness, and well-being of you and those we serve - we care. What you do at McKesson matters. We foster a culture where you can grow, make an impact, and are empowered to bring new ideas. Together, we thrive as we shape the future of health for patients, our communities, and our people. If you want to be part of tomorrow's health today, we want to hear from you.

The Lead IT Architect serves as the strategic architecture leader across multiple products and value streams within the Specialty technology portfolio. This role is responsible for defining and driving architecture direction, enabling scalable growth, improving platform reuse, and ensuring technical investments align with business objectives. The position works across engineering, product, and business stakeholders to establish architecture standards, support strategic planning activities, and guide technology decisions that impact multiple teams and products. The Lead IT Architect plays an active role in program increment (PI) planning, architectural runway development, and long-term technology strategy, helping teams balance immediate delivery needs with future scalability and modernization.

The ideal candidate brings deep experience in distributed systems, cloud-native architecture, portfolio-level technology governance, and healthcare technology environments. While artificial intelligence is not the primary focus of the position, candidates should be comfortable evaluating AI-enabled capabilities, supporting AI feature development, and establishing appropriate architecture guidance for AI-related solutions.

Priority will be given to candidates residing in the Columbus, OH metropolitan area. We are unable to provide sponsorship for this role, presently or in the future.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and maintain the architecture vision, roadmap, an technical strategy across multiple products and value streams.
• Partner with product, engineering, and business leaders to align technology investments with organizational priorities.
• Provide architectural leadership for cross-product initiatives, shared services, integration patterns, and platform capabilities.
• Establish and govern architecture standards, design principles, and reusable technology patterns.
• Lead architecture discussions and decision-making during strategic planning and PI planning activities.
• Develop and maintain the architectural runway required to support future business and technology objectives.
• Guide the design of distributed, cloud-native solutions utilizing APIs, event-driven architectures, microservices, and modern integration patterns.
• Drive consistency across products by identifying opportunities for platform reuse and reducing duplicated technology investments.
• Collaborate with Enterprise Architecture and shared-service organizations to ensure alignment with broader technology strategies.
• Provide architectural oversight for third-party vendors, implementation partners, and systems integrators.
• Ensure solutions support healthcare compliance, data privacy, security, and interoperability requirements.
• Mentor architects, senior engineers, and technical leaders to strengthen architecture practices and technical decision-making across the organization.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and AI-enabled capabilities, providing guidance on appropriate adoption and implementation within the portfolio.

Priority will be given to candidates residing in the Columbus, OH metropolitan area. We are unable to provide sponsorship for this role, presently or in the future.

Minimum Qualifications

• Degree or equivalent and typically requires 10+ years of relevant experience.
• Less years required if has relevant Master's or Doctorate qualifications.

Critical Skills

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field, or equivalent combination of education and experience.
• 12+ years of experience in architecture, software engineering, or senior technical leadership roles.
• 8+ years of experience working within software development organizations and modern delivery environments.
• 3+ years of experience defining architecture strategy across multiple products, platforms, programs, or value streams.
• Experience establishing and governing architecture standards adopted by independent product or engineering teams.
• Demonstrated success designing and delivering large-scale distributed systems and cloud-native solutions.
• Experience with microservices, RESTful APIs, event-driven architectures, and enterprise integration patterns.
• Experience developing architecture roadmaps and managing architectural dependencies across multiple teams.
• Experience presenting technology strategies, recommendations, and tradeoffs to senior leadership.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience within healthcare, pharmacy, payer, provider, or other regulated technology environments.
• Experience participating in large-scale planning activities and translating business strategy into technology roadmaps.
• Experience designing systems that manage regulated or sensitive data.
• Working knowledge of healthcare interoperability and compliance standards, including FHIR and HIPAA.
• Demonstrated ability to influence technical decisions across teams without direct management authority.
• Experience working within SAFe or other scaled agile frameworks.
• Knowledge of NCPDP standards and healthcare interoperability ecosystems.
• Experience creating shared platforms or reusable enterprise capabilities used across multiple product teams.
• Experience overseeing architecture deliverables from vendors, consulting partners, or systems integrators.
• Familiarity with AI-enabled product features, AI-assisted development tools, and governance considerations related to AI adoption.
• Experience mentoring architects and developing architecture communities of practice.

What Success Looks Like

Within the first 12 months, the successful candidate will:

• Establish a clear architecture vision and roadmap across supported products and value streams.
• Improve alignment and consistency of architectural decisions across teams.
• Increase adoption of reusable platforms, shared services, and architectural standards.
• Reduce technical duplication and improve long-term scalability across the portfolio.
• Create stronger alignment between strategic business priorities, PI planning activities, and technology investments.
• Serve as a trusted architecture advisor to engineering, product, and business leadership.
• Introduce practical guidance for evaluating and implementing AI-enabled capabilities where they create measurable business value.

Why This Role Is Unique

This is not a product-level solution architecture role. The Lead IT Architect operates at the portfolio level, influencing architecture direction across multiple products and value streams. The role combines strategic planning, architecture governance, technology leadership, and business alignment, giving the successful candidate an opportunity to shape the future technology direction of a critical healthcare platform while working closely with senior leaders across the organization.

We are proud to offer a competitive compensation package at McKesson as part of our Total Rewards. This is determined by several factors, including performance, experience and skills, equity, regular job market evaluations, and geographical markets. The pay range shown below is aligned with McKesson's pay philosophy, and pay will always be compliant with any applicable regulations. In addition to base pay, other compensation, such as an annual bonus or long-term incentive opportunities may be offered.

Our Base Pay Range for this position $150,800 - $251,300

McKesson is an Equal Opportunity Employer

McKesson provides equal employment opportunities to applicants and employees, without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, disability, age, genetic information, or any other legally protected category.

For additional information on McKesson's full Equal Employment Opportunity policies, visit our Equal Employment Opportunity page.

McKesson is committed to being an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer and offers opportunities to all job seekers including job seekers with disabilities.

If you need a reasonable accommodation to assist with your job search or application for employment, please contact us by sending an email to (United States) [e-mail] or (Canada) [e-mail]. Resumes or CVs submitted to this email box will not be accepted.

Join us at McKesson! CoverMyMeds, part of McKesson Corporation, is a fast-growing healthcare technology company. Our solutions help patients get the medicine they need to live healthy lives by seamlessly connecting the healthcare network to improve medication access. People come to work at CoverMyMeds to make a difference, helping to improve the lives of healthcare professionals and patients every day. We hire ambitious people and make it a priority to invest in them by providing opportunities to grow their careers and connections within the community. On-site culinary team, flexible hours and paid benefits? Yeah, we have those too. But don't take our word for it. We've been recognized as a "Best Place to Work" by Glassdoor, a "Best Company to Work For" by FORTUNE, and our employees have great things to say, too.