The posting
As an employee-owned company, DMA prioritizes employees. Low turnover rates and tenured teams are living proof:
- 2026 Great Places to Work Certified
- Employee stock ownership program eligibility begins on day one of employment (ESOP contribution is targeted at 6% of your annual compensation)
- Company paid parental leave
- Generous time off package
- Multiple benefit plans, eligibility begins on day one of employment
- Culturally focused on work/life balance, and the overall wellness of our employees
This is a hybrid position with an expectation to be in our Fort Wayne, IN or Indianapolis, IN office a minimum of two days per week. This position does not qualify for relocation assistance.
Must be authorized to work in the U.S. without the need for employment-based visa sponsorship now or in the future. This position does not qualify for employment-based sponsorship.
Position Summary
The Lead Engineer, Enterprise Architecture is a senior, hands-on architecture leader responsible for establishing DMA’s future-state technology architecture and ensuring that significant business and technology initiatives are intentionally aligned with the company’s strategy, enterprise capabilities, and long-term technology direction. The role leads a small architecture team and operates as a player-coach: setting enterprise direction, shaping complex solutions before delivery begins, and personally contributing to high-impact solution design.
This role partners with business leaders, IT leadership, security, data, systems, engineering, delivery teams, and vendors to translate business needs into practical solution options. It establishes architecture standards and governance, guides build-versus-buy decisions, identifies cross-system dependencies and risks, and helps DMA move from an organically grown environment toward a coherent target state.
The position also provides architecture leadership for emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence. Innovation is pursued selectively to advance business outcomes and the approved enterprise architecture, rather than as a separate objective.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities
- Define and maintain DMA’s current-state, future-state, and transition architecture, including enterprise standards, principles, reference architectures, and reusable solution patterns.
- Partner closely with business leaders and stakeholders to understand strategic objectives, business capabilities, operational challenges, and emerging needs, translating them into practical technology strategies and solution approaches.
- Engage early in business initiatives to help shape requirements, evaluate alternatives, identify dependencies, and ensure proposed solutions address the underlying business need before significant investment or development begins.
- Ensure major technology initiatives align with DMA’s business strategy, enterprise capabilities, security requirements, data strategy, platform direction, and long-term technology roadmap.
- Lead solution architecture for significant business and technology requests, developing solution options, conceptual architectures, trade-offs, risks, dependencies, and implementation recommendations.
- Facilitate architecture and solution-design discussions across business stakeholders, engineering, data, security, systems, delivery teams, and external vendors to drive well-informed decisions.
- Establish and lead architecture governance, including solution reviews, architecture standards, design decisions, exceptions, dependencies, and technical risk management.
- Lead build-versus-buy evaluations and assess third-party solutions for business fit, enterprise alignment, integration, security, data considerations, scalability, supportability, and long-term maintainability.
- Provide architecture leadership for AI-enabled solutions, including generative AI, intelligent agents, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), document intelligence, automation, Microsoft Copilot, and other emerging technologies.
- Help establish architectural standards and governance for AI solutions, partnering with security, data, systems, legal/compliance, and business stakeholders to ensure solutions are appropriately designed, governed, and operationalized.
- Partner with engineering leads and delivery teams to validate technical feasibility and translate approved architectures into implementable designs while maintaining alignment with the broader enterprise direction.
- Identify opportunities to reduce architectural fragmentation, redundant capabilities, technical debt, unnecessary complexity, and inconsistent technology patterns across DMA’s environment.
- Support technology investment and portfolio decisions by identifying opportunities for enterprise reuse, shared capabilities, platform consolidation, modernization, and strategic technology adoption.
- Lead, mentor, and develop a team of 2 - 3 technical professionals while remaining personally engaged in high-impact enterprise and solution architecture work.
- Communicate architecture direction, solution recommendations, investment implications, risks, and trade-offs clearly to executives, business leaders, and technical teams, building organizational alignment around key technology decisions.
- Perform other duties as assigned.
Education and Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related field; equivalent relevant experience will be considered.
- 10+ years of progressive experience in solution architecture, enterprise architecture, software engineering, systems design, platform architecture, or related disciplines.
- Demonstrated experience leading enterprise or solution architecture for complex, cross-functional initiatives involving multiple systems, data sources, integrations, vendors, and business functions.
- Demonstrated ability to establish target-state architectures, architecture standards, governance processes, reference patterns, and multi-year roadmaps.
- Experience translating ambiguous business needs into structured options, architecture recommendations, and decision-ready materials.
- Experience evaluating build-versus-buy alternatives, third-party platforms, vendor solutions, and total lifecycle implications.
- Strong working knowledge of cloud architecture, APIs and integration patterns, identity and access management, data platforms, security principles, system lifecycle management, and modern software delivery.
- Practical experience solutioning AI-enabled capabilities, including generative AI, retrieval-augmented generation, intelligent agents, automation, and enterprise knowledge solutions.
- Experience with Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365; experience with Microsoft Copilot, Copilot Studio, Azure AI services, or comparable enterprise AI platforms is strongly preferred.
- Experience leading, coaching, or formally managing architects, senior engineers, or other technical professionals.
- Strong executive communication, facilitation, negotiation, and decision-framing skills with the ability to influence across organizational boundaries.
- Ability to communicate architecture through capability models, roadmaps, diagrams, decision records, standards, and executive presentations.
- Experience in professional services, tax, financial services, or another information-intensive and regulated environment is a plus.
The Company is an equal employment opportunity employer and is committed to providing equal employment opportunities to its applicants and employees. The Company does not discriminate in employment opportunities or practices on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, national origin, citizenship, age, disability, veteran status, genetic information, or any other category covered by applicable federal, state, or local law. This equal employment opportunity policy applies to all employment policies, procedures, and practices, including but not limited to hiring, promotion, compensation, training, benefits, work assignments, discipline, termination, and all other terms and conditions of employment.
It is DMA's policy to make reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities. If you have a disability and either need assistance applying online or need to request an accommodation during any part of the application process, please contact our Human Resources team at [email protected] or 800-309-2110 and choosing selection 6.
