Senior Business Architect

ameriprise; Minneapolis (MN); On-site; USD 110,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Ameriprise Financial seeks a senior business architect to lead enterprise-level experience design initiatives in Minneapolis. You will bridge business strategy with delivery, coach cross-functional teams, and map customer journeys to optimize end-to-end experiences for clients and advisors.

Responsibilities include capability assessment, road-mapping, and guiding PoC/prototype work while evangelizing a customer-centric culture across IT and business partners.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent in CS, Business, or related field.
• 7–10 years of relevant experience.
• 2+ years business architecture experience; including strategy, impact analysis, solution design, delivery oversight and performance analysis.
• Highly effective verbal and written communication skills; ability to communicate with leadership.
• Advanced knowledge of modeling, simulation and analysis techniques.
• Experience leading business process improvement initiatives.

Responsibilities

• Use business architecture tools to assess areas for improvement and changes to carry out strategy.
• Map customer journeys to uncover moments of truth and guide design activities.
• Drive customer-centric culture and evangelize customer experience across IT and business.
• Lead cross-functional design teams and facilitate stakeholder workshops.
• Develop and apply knowledge of business capabilities and market requirements.

Skills

Verbal communication

Written communication

Stakeholder management

Cross-functional leadership

Voice of the customer

Business architecture

Roadmapping

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Business or related

Equivalent work experience

Tools

Modeling techniques

Business architecture tools

Job description

About Our Company

We're a diversified financial services leader with more than $1.5 trillion in assets under management, administration and advisement as of year-end 2024. Our team of 22,000 people across 19 countries, serves more than 3.5 million individual, small business and institutional clients. We are a longstanding leader in financial planning and advice, a global asset manager and an insurer. Our unwavering focus on our clients and strong financial foundation connects each of our unique businesses - Ameriprise Financial, Columbia Threadneedle Investments and RiverSource Insurance and Annuities. Here, we foster meaningful careers, invest in the future, and make a difference for clients, institutions and communities around the world.

Job Description

Create exceptional experiences for our clients and advisors, enabled through technology and rooted in our enterprise strategy. Bring a strategic, enterprise viewpoint to deliver interconnected end-to-end experiences, bridging the gap between business strategy and its successful execution, and assuring delivery of desired business outcomes.

Act as an internal coach/consultant in engaging the organization to improve customer experience by:

• Supporting improvement projects and initiatives that positively transform the end-to-end experience
• Assuring the organization integrates the voice of the customer as part of all design activities
• Assisting in the creation of a framework and customer/user journey maps to help structure efforts consistently across disciplines within the organization

Key Responsibilities

Using business architecture tools and techniques in a variety of business scenarios to assess areas for improvement and changes necessary to carry out strategy. This includes capability assessments, solution analysis, investment prioritization, and road-mapping. Using tools maps customer journeys to uncover and improve moments of truth, follow established design process for the creation of new customer experiences and change of existing ones, and execute experience design and improvement initiatives and document resolution of experience gaps across touchpoints Ensuring that projects and operations deliver on the agreed-upon business outcomes. Actively engaging in key projects as an SME or proxy product owner. Maintaining extensive knowledge of industry, technology, and end-user trends and educating both IT and the business on opportunities. Leading Proof of Concept and Prototype initiatives to demonstrate potential value. Drive a Customer-Centric Culture. Lead by example by being the advocate for the Customer Experience across the organization. Teach methodology across functional groups to unify efforts and enable understanding of how each role has an important part to play in driving total results. Facilitate interactive group sessions to build understanding, support, and engagement. Partner with key business partners to understand the internal and external environment and the business strategy, determine business needs, and develop capability road map and customer experience strategy. Effectively influence decisions and project direction at the executive level. Identify and recommend innovative technologies that drive the business forward and maintain or create a competitive advantage for the firm. Ensure that the business architecture and customer experience strategy align to and enable business goals. Leads cross-functional design teams and facilitates group discussions. Gathers input from employees about customer experiences and opportunities for improvement. Understands key drivers of VoC performance and communicates them effectively across the organization. Works as individual coach/catalyst with stakeholders as assigned to lead mindset changes through education, training, and coaching. Develop and apply expert knowledge of related business capabilities, customer and market requirements as well as enterprise and business architecture discipline. Build and maintain a strong business unit relationship, with deep expertise and insight into the business, the business strategy, and the industry. Gain knowledge and understanding of emerging technologies. Support the delivery of concept analysis work to evaluate opportunities and design solutions to support and inform domain and capability road maps.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelors degree or equivalent in Computer Science, Business, related field; or related work experience.
• 7-10 years of relevant experience required.
• 2+ years business architecture experience; including strategy, impact analysis, solution design, delivery oversight and performance analysis.
• Highly effective verbal and written communication skills; ability to effectively communicate and collaborate with varying levels of leadership.
• Advanced knowledge of modeling simulation and analysis techniques and methodologies.
• Experience leading, influencing, and managing business process improvement/optimization/re-engineering initiatives an