Senior Esri Enterprise Systems Architect / Administrator

Kimley-Horn; Cary (NC); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

2-to-1 company match on 401(k)

Comprehensive health coverage

Flexible scheduling

Student loan matching

Tuition reimbursement

New Parent Leave

Job summary

Kimley-Horn is seeking a Senior Esri Enterprise Systems Architect/Administrator in Cary, NC to lead the ArcGIS Enterprise environment for a 10,000+ organization. The role emphasizes architecture, governance, migrations, and AI-enabled geospatial workflows.

It is an in-office position with location-based compensation and team mentoring responsibilities. The candidate will drive platform strategy, oversee data lifecycle, backup/DR, and security integrations while collaborating with a skilled

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent in Geography/Geospatial Science/CS
• 8+ years of Esri ArcGIS Enterprise administration with full lifecycle migrations
• Deep experience administering ArcGIS Enterprise components at enterprise scale
• Strong PostgreSQL and SQL Server enterprise geodatabase management
• Experience with ArcGIS Enterprise backup methods and DR validation
• Scripting in Python/ArcPy for automation and governance
• Understanding of agentic AI/LLM tools in geospatial workflows
• Excellent problem-solving at architecture level

Responsibilities

• Own the architecture and long-term roadmap for ArcGIS Enterprise environment
• Design data lifecycle and archival strategy for portal content
• Manage geodatabase performance and storage for large datasets
• Establish data governance standards and validation processes
• Coordinate backup/DR strategy and recovery validation
• Ensure patching and security coverage with vendors
• Develop runbooks and documentation for knowledge sharing
• Evaluate monitoring tooling and platform health metrics
• Drive continuous geospatial infrastructure improvements
• Serve as senior escalation point for complex production issues
• Mentor other geospatial administrators
• Support agentic AI governance within geospatial workflows

Skills

ArcGIS Enterprise

Python/ArcPy

Leadership

Data governance

Problem solving

Education

Bachelor's degree in Geography/Geospatial Science/CS

Tools

ArcGIS Server

Portal

Notebook Server

ArcGIS Monitor

Data Store

PostgreSQL

SQL Server

Azure

Job description

Overview

Kimley-Horn, one of Fortune Magazine's "100 Best Companies to Work For," is looking for a Senior Esri Enterprise Systems Architect/Administrator to join the team in our Cary, North Carolina (NC) office. While the preferred location for this role is Cary, NC, qualified candidates in other Kimley-Horn office locationsmay be considered. Compensation is location dependent. Salary ranges for other locations may vary based on geographic market, experience, qualifications, and other job-related factors. This is an in-office position.

Responsibilities

This role is responsible for the architecture, lifecycle, and long-term health of our ArcGIS Enterprise environment. A large server deployment supporting ArcGIS Enterprise, ArcGIS Online, and ArcGIS Pro across a 10,000+ person organization. The ideal candidate has deep hands-on Enterprise administration experience, has led major infrastructure changes before, and wants to shape platform strategy — including the responsible integration of agentic AI into geospatial workflows — while mentoring the broader Geospatial Platform Services team.

• Own the architecture and long-term technical roadmap for the organization's ArcGIS Enterprise environment, including planning and leading infrastructure migrations across the large server deployment
• Design and implement a data lifecycle and archival strategy for Portal content, balancing storage growth against usage patterns and dependencies on active web maps and apps
• Own PostgreSQL and Microsoft SQL server-based enterprise geodatabase performance at scale, including tuning, index strategy, and storage reclamation for high-volume, imagery-heavy databases.
• Establish data governance standards (geometry validation, attribute hygiene, versioning/replication hygiene) to prevent bad or oversized data from degrading platform performance or complicating migrations
• Partner with team on backup/DR strategy (WebGISDR, BackupMyOrg, custom scripting), and validate recovery processes through the infrastructure transition
• Coordinate with third-party patching/security vendors to ensure OS-level patching and application-specific configuration don't fall through coverage gaps
• Partner with team members in database tuning, Admin API scripting, and migration execution
• Develop and maintain runbooks, standards, and documentation so platform knowledge isn't concentrated in any single person
• Evaluate monitoring tooling and metrics (ArcGIS Monitor and infrastructure-level monitoring) to ensure accuracy through the infrastructure transition and correlate content-level growth with server-level health
• Drive continuous improvement initiatives across geospatial infrastructure, workflows, and team technical capability
• Serve as the senior technical escalation point for the most complex production issues, migration blockers, or ambiguous data problems

Agentic AI & Geospatial Data Responsibilities

Evaluate and pilot agentic AI tools (e.g., Esri's AI assistants, custom agents built against the ArcGIS Admin/REST APIs, or LLM-based automation) for geospatial data governance tasks such as archive candidate identification, metadata tagging, and anomaly detection in datasets

Define guardrails and human-in-the-loop checkpoints for any agentic workflows that can modify, archive, or delete geospatial data, ensuring agents operate within documented data governance standards

Assess data readiness and structure (schema quality, metadata completeness, geometry validity) needed for geospatial data to be reliably consumed by AI agents or used in retrieval-augmented workflows

Develop or oversee scripts/integrations that allow agentic tools to safely query platform health, usage, and content metadata via the ArcGIS Admin API, without granting agents unchecked write access to production systems

Stay current on emerging agentic AI capabilities in the Esri ecosystem and broader geospatial industry, and recommend where they can responsibly reduce manual toil (e.g., content inventory reporting, patch verification, log triage) versus where human judgment must remain primary

Partner with security and IT governance stakeholders to ensure any AI agent access to geospatial data complies with organizational security and data privacy standards

Qualifications

The following are the required qualifications for this role:

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience in Geography, Geospatial Science, Computer Science, or a related field
• Minimum of 8 years of experience in Esri ArcGIS Enterprise administration, including at least one full-lifecycle infrastructure migration led (not just supported) end-to-end
• Deep experience administering all ArcGIS Enterprise components (Server, Portal, Notebook Server, ArcGIS Monitor, Data Store) at a multi-server, enterprise scale
• Strong PostgreSQL administration expertise, including vacuum internals, performance tuning, and troubleshooting at scale — sufficient to teach and review, not just execute
• Experience with ArcGIS Enterprise backup methodologies (WebGISDR, BackupMyOrg, custom scripting) and disaster recovery validation
• Experience with Microsoft Azure cloud environments, including planning/executing infrastructure migrations
• Experience with SQL Server and enterprise geodatabase management (versioning, replication, archiving-enabled feature classes)
• Demonstrated experience mentoring or training other geospatial administrators
• Strong scripting ability (Python/ArcPy) for automation, reporting, and governance enforcement via the ArcGIS Admin API
• Foundational understanding of how agentic AI/LLM-based tools interact with structured and spatial data, and the risks involved in granting them system or data access
• Excellent problem-solving skills with the ability to diagnose issues at the architecture level, not just the symptom level

Desired Skills

• Esri certification (Enterprise Administration Professional, Enterprise System Design Professional, or Enterprise Geodata Management Professional)
• Experience building data governance or archiving programs from scratch in a geospatial or enterprise data context
• Familiarity with monitoring platforms beyond ArcGIS Monitor (Datadog, Splunk, Nagios, or similar)

Why Kimley-Horn?

At Kimley-Horn, we do things differently. People, clients, and employees are at the forefront of who we are. Clients know we prioritize achieving their goals and growing their success. Employees know our culture and approach to business are built on a desire to provide an environment for everyone to flourish. Our commitment to quality is only as good as the people behind it— that’s why we welcome and develop passionate, hardworking, and proactive employees. We take pride in how our employee retention, robust benefits package, and company values have led to Kimley-Horn’s placement on the Fortune “100 Best Companies to Work” list for 19 years!

Key Benefits at Kimley-Horn

• Exceptional Retirement Plan: 2-to1- company match on up to 4% of eligible compensation (salary + bonus) and additional profit-sharing contribution.
• Comprehensive Health Coverage: Low-cost medical, dental, and vision insurance options.
• Time Off: Personal leave, flexible scheduling, floating holidays, and half-day Fridays.
• Financial Wellness: Student loan matching in our 401(k), and performance-based bonuses.
• Professional Development: Tuition reimbursement and extensive internal training programs.
• Family-Friendly Benefits: New Parent Leave, family building benefits, and childcare resources.