About this role
Major Responsibilities
Architecture and Standards (30%)
- Own enterprise integration patterns and technical standards across the application portfolio, and set the architecture decisions that span core platforms (D365, Workday, ServiceNow, Box, M365 and related systems).
- Establish and maintain standards for how applications are built, integrated, and supported, and hold delivery teams accountable to them.
- Apply a configure-before-develop standard so custom engineering is the exception rather than the default, and provide architecture guidance on new solution requests and platform changes.
- Document the integration and architecture boundaries that have historically been managed informally, so the knowledge is held by the organization rather than by individuals.
Integration and Custom Applications (25%)
- Own the integration layer across the portfolio: patterns, tooling, and the standards that keep integrations maintainable and observable.
- Set technical direction for custom application development, ensuring it follows the same architecture and standards as the rest of the portfolio.
- Partner with platform owners to design integrations that fit the broader architecture rather than solving one system at a time.
Team Leadership and Operations (15%)
- Lead and manage the teams closest to integration and custom application development, including the integration and custom apps team, the Drupal team, and the Azure platform (application hosting) engineers.
- Set priorities, manage workload, and develop team leads and engineers.
- Manage the team budget and track spend against plan.
- Support the recruitment of technical staff as the team evolves.
Cross-Functional Coordination (15%)
- Coordinate with the Head of AI and T4P Engineering on the architecture and integration boundaries between AI and engineering initiatives and the enterprise application portfolio.
- Partner with the Enterprise Applications leadership team to align architecture decisions with portfolio priorities and roadmaps.
- Coordinate with the data team, including its Director of Analytics, Architecture and Engineering, on data architecture and integration boundaries across the portfolio.
- Coordinate with GIS and Infrastructure on shared platform boundaries, including Azure, to clarify roles and responsibilities across teams.
- Work with the Director, AI Platforms and Digital Workplace on the boundaries between the digital workplace stack and the enterprise application portfolio.
Governance and Documentation (15%)
- Maintain documentation of architecture decisions, integration patterns, and technical standards.
- Ensure architecture and integration work aligns with organizational policies, data privacy requirements, and the IRC’s governance frameworks.
- Surface architecture risk and technical debt plainly, and bring open questions forward rather than presenting closed plans.
- Establish enterprise architecture into the organization's operations and governance: define architecture principles, set up a review process and decision rights for architecture choices, and embed those into how solutions are proposed, funded, and approved across the portfolio.
Required Experience and Skills
Strategy and Leadership
- 8+ years of experience in IT, enterprise applications, or architecture roles, with at least 3 years in a leadership position managing a team.
- Experience setting architecture direction and technical standards in an enterprise environment.
- Ability to translate organizational needs into clear integration patterns and architecture decisions.
- Track record of managing budgets for technology work.
Architecture and Integration
- Deep working knowledge of enterprise integration patterns, API management, and integration tooling across a multi-platform environment.
- Strong working knowledge of enterprise platforms such as ERP (D365 F&O), HCM (Workday), ITSM (ServiceNow), and collaboration platforms (M365, Box).
- Experience owning technical standards and holding delivery teams accountable to them.
- Comfort assessing build-versus-configure tradeoffs and steering work away from unnecessary custom development.
- Demonstrated experience establishing enterprise architecture governance: defining architecture principles, standing up an architecture review process, and embedding architecture decision rights into how an organization prioritizes and funds technology work.
Custom Development and Delivery
- Hands-on background in application development and integration delivery. This role is expected to work hands-on at the start, designing integrations, reviewing code, and troubleshooting failures directly, and to shift toward oversight as the team grows.
- Experience leading custom application and web teams (Drupal experience a plus).
Communication
- Strong written and verbal communication skills; able to explain architecture decisions clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.
- Comfortable surfacing open questions and risk plainly.
Preferred
- Experience in a nonprofit, international development, or humanitarian sector IT environment.
- Experience coordinating architecture boundaries across infrastructure and applications teams.
- Experience with API management platforms (e.g., Azure APIM, Apigee).
- Experience with event-driven and messaging architectures (e.g., Azure Service Bus, Kafka).
- Familiarity with cloud-native integration tooling (e.g., Azure Functions, Logic Apps, iPaaS solutions).
- Experience building on serverless and microservices patterns, not only monolithic architectures.
Organization
The following positions report into this role:
- Integration and Custom Apps Team Lead
- Drupal Team (day-to-day led by the Drupal manager)
- Azure Platform (Application Hosting) Engineers
Skills
CommunicationDataLeadership