Vice President - Senior Lead Architect

Fairygodboss; Tampa (FL); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health care coverage

Retirement plan

On-site wellness centers

Job summary

JPMorganChase is seeking a Senior Architecture Operations & Governance Lead to own the architecture governance process for Merchant Services Acquiring. You will run architecture review boards, track decisions, and ensure standards alignment across product and engineering teams.

You will leverage AI capabilities in governance with careful data handling and an emphasis on transparency. The role requires 5+ years in architecture governance within a large technology organization, plus strong

Qualifications

• Formal training or certification on architecture concepts and 5+ years applied experience.
• Experience in architecture governance and operations in a complex technology organization — running review forums, decision tracking, standards and guardrails, and exception handling.
• Strong understanding of architecture artifacts and workflows — target state architecture, NFRs, integration patterns, ADRs.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end architecture governance process for Merchant Services Acquiring — intake, triage, artifacts, routing, closure.
• Plan and run architecture review boards and forums with agendas, pre-reads, minutes and decisions.
• Maintain auditable decision records (ADRs, standards, outcomes) for discoverability and reuse.
• Improve architecture standards and guardrails with templates, reference architectures and NFR checklists.
• Manage exception/waiver workflows with tracking of approvals, expiry and remediation.
• Review architecture submissions for completeness (NFRs, dependencies, resiliency, security).
• Collaborate with domain architects to promote reuse of patterns and decisions across teams.
• Provide lightweight status and metrics on governance throughput for leadership.

Skills

Architecture governance

Stakeholder management

Executive communication

Ambiguity management

Jira

Confluence

AI tools

Education

Formal training or certification on architecture concepts

Tools

Jira

Confluence

AI tools

Job description

If you are excited about shaping the future of technology and driving significant business impact in financial services, we are looking for people just like you. Join our team and help us develop game-changing, high-quality solutions.

As a Senior Architecture Operations & Governance Lead at JPMorganChase within the Commercial & Investment Bank Payments and Merchant Services, you are an integral part of a team that works to develop high-quality architecture solutions for various software applications and platform products. You drive significant business impact and help shape the target state architecture through your capabilities in multiple architecture domains. In this role, you serve as the operational backbone of architecture governance for Merchant Services Acquiring - owning intake, review boards, decision records, standards and guardrails, and exception management to ensure that decisions are timely, documented, and traceable. You will reduce operational overhead on architects, improve consistency and transparency, and enable the broader product and engineering organization to move with confidence.

Job responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end architecture governance process for Merchant Services Acquiring - including request intake, triage, required artifact definition, routing to the right architects and forums, and tracking all items through to closure
• Plan and run architecture review boards and forums, managing agendas, pre-reads, facilitation, minutes and decisions, actions, and follow-ups to ensure reviews are predictable, prepared, and produce high-quality outcomes
• Maintain a clean, auditable decision record - including Architecture Decision Records (ADRs), key architectural decisions, standards alignment, and outcomes - so that decisions are easy to discover, reused across teams, and traceable to clear owners and rationale
• Maintain and continuously improve architecture standards and guardrails, including templates, reference architectures, patterns, and non-functional requirement (NFR) checklists, to drive consistency and quality across teams
• Run exception and waiver workflows - ensuring rationale, approvals, expiry and renewal, and remediation plans are tracked and visible - and identify recurring gaps to drive systemic improvements across NFRs, integration patterns, and security considerations
• Review architecture submissions for completeness and quality - including NFRs, dependencies, resiliency, and security and data considerations - and coordinate remediation with solution teams
• Partner with domain architects to improve architecture content quality and promote reuse of patterns and decisions across product and engineering teams
• Provide clear, lightweight status and metrics on governance throughput - including volume, cycle time, aging, and exception themes - ensuring leadership and stakeholders can easily find what was decided, why, and by whom
• Influence across product and engineering without formal authority to drive timely decisions, reduce coordination overhead on architects, and improve overall governance consistency and transparency
• Leverage enterprise-authorized AI capabilities within the work environment to accelerate architecture analysis and governance workflows, with human-in-the-loop validation and appropriate handling of sensitive data

Required qualifications, capabilities, and skills

• Formal training or certification on architecture concepts and 5+ years applied experience
• Demonstrated experience in architecture governance and operations in a complex technology organization - including running review forums, decision tracking, standards and guardrails management, and exception handling
• Strong understanding of architecture artifacts and workflows - including target state architecture, NFRs, integration patterns, and Architecture Decision Records - you don't have to be the domain architect, but you must be architecture-fluent
• Proven ability to drive closure and influence across multiple stakeholders, including senior engineers, architects, product managers, and program managers, without formal authority
• Excellent stakeholder management, facilitation, and executive-ready written and verbal communication skills
• Strong organizational rigor with demonstrated ability to manage backlogs, actions, owners, deadlines, and traceability across concurrent workstreams
• Demonstrated experience applying enterprise-authorized AI capabilities within architecture and engineering workflows, with strong validation habits and awareness of data sensitivity
• Ability to tackle operational and governance problems independently with little to no oversight
• Tooling familiarity - including Jira, Confluence, AI tools, or similar - and ability to build lightweight dashboards and governance metrics

Preferred qualifications, capabilities, and skills

• Prior hands-on architecture experience in solution or enterprise architecture, technical leadership, or platform and integration architecture
• Background in payments, merchant services, acquiring, or regulated financial services environments
• Familiarity with risk, compliance, and control frameworks and experience managing exception and waiver processes within those contexts
• Experience building or maturing architecture governance programs within large-scale, complex technology organizations
• Demonstrated ability to reduce operational overhead on technical teams while improving governance consistency, transparency, and decision quality

ABOUT US

JPMorganChase, one of the oldest financial institutions, offers innovative financial solutions to millions of consumers, small businesses and many of the world's most prominent corporate, institutional and government clients under the J.P. Morgan and Chase brands. Our history spans over 200 years and today we are a leader in investment banking, consumer and small business banking, commercial banking, financial transaction processing and asset management.

We offer a competitive total rewards package including base salary determined based on the role, experience, skill set and location. Those in eligible roles may receive commission-based pay and/or discretionary incentive compensation, paid in the form of cash and/or forfeitable equity, awarded in recognition of individual achievements and contributions. We also offer a range of benefits and programs to meet employee needs, based on eligibility. These benefits include comprehensive health care coverage, on-site health and wellness centers, a retirement savings plan, backup childcare, tuition reimbursement, mental health support, financial coaching and more. Additional details about total compensation and benefits will be provided during the hiring process.

We recognize that our people are our strength and the diverse talents they bring to our global workforce are directly linked to our success. We are an equal opportunity employer and place a high value on diversity and inclusion at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of any protected attribute, including race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital or veteran status, pregnancy or disability, or any other basis protected under applicable law. We also make reasonable accommodations for applicants' and employees' religious practices and beliefs, as well as mental health or physical disability needs. Visit our FAQs for more information about requesting an accommodation.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. is an Equal Opportunity Employer, including Disability/Veterans

ABOUT THE TEAM

J.P. Morgan's Commercial & Investment Bank is a global leader across banking, markets, securities services and payments. Corporations, governments and institutions throughout the world entrust us with their business in more than 100 countries. The Commercial & Investment Bank provides strategic advice, raises capital, manages risk and extends liquidity in markets around the world.