Securian Financial Group’s internal position title for this role is Architecture Consulting Director.
Position Summary:
The AI Enterprise Architect is a senior technical leader within Securian Financial’s Artificial Intelligence Center of Excellence (AI CoE), responsible for shaping enterprise AI architecture strategy and driving the adoption of scalable, secure, and reusable AI solutions. In this role, you will establish and lead enterprise AI architecture patterns, standards, and governance practices, ensuring alignment with long-term technology strategy and evolving business needs. You will guide architectural decisions, evaluate emerging AI technologies, and help teams maximize existing platforms and capabilities while promoting consistency, innovation, and responsible AI adoption. As a trusted architectural advisor, you will partner closely with Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Data and Analytics (eDNA), technology leaders, and delivery teams to provide consultation, directly influence strategic decisions, and accelerate AI adoption across the organization. Success in this role requires deep technical expertise, strong collaboration and communication skills, lead through influence, and the ability to bring clarity and direction to a rapidly evolving AI landscape. We are seeking a highly curious, collaborative, and self-organized senior architect who thrives in ambiguity, is passionate about emerging technologies, and enjoys driving clarity and reuse in a rapidly evolving AI landscape.
Responsibilities include but not limited to:
Establish, evolve, and drive the enterprise target-state AI platform architecture and design, providing the senior architectural direction that patterns and reference architectures build upon to keep pace with the market and Securian’s AI ambitions.
Define, document, and own a library of reusable AI solution and architecture patterns and assets, establishing a repeatable process to author, review, approve, publish, version, and retire them for enterprise-wide reuse.
Serve as the enterprise approval authority for AI patterns — reviewing proposed patterns, adjudicating deviations, and declaring when a design aligns to the target-state AI architecture.
Ensure approved patterns are consistently applied and enforced during architecture reviews, coaching delivery teams to cite applicable patterns, call out deviations, and focus review discussions on those deviations.
Define, maintain, and champion AI development and deployment standards, guardrails, and blueprint patterns for scalable and adaptable AI solutions across the enterprise.
Lead ongoing solution design and validation consultation, providing architectural leadership to AI delivery teams as they design, integrate, and deploy AI use cases using approved patterns and platforms.
Partner closely with Enterprise Architecture to co-own AI platform architecture and design, ensuring AI patterns align to enterprise architecture principles, templates, and long-term technology strategy.
Work with Enterprise Architecture to embed AI patterns into established architecture review venues and to keep AI architecture aligned with the enterprise’s purpose, vision, and guiding principles (e.g., favoring reuse of existing tools).
Advise on AI platform and tool evaluation, supporting Enterprise Architecture and technology teams in assessing platform fit, scalability, and architectural impact.
Contribute architectural perspective to buy-versus-build decisions, helping the enterprise weigh reuse and extensibility against new development or third-party procurement.
Embed responsible, ethical, and well-governed AI practices into patterns and standards, promoting a culture of trustworthy AI development and usage across the organization.
Define architecture and metadata standards for the AI solution inventory, ensuring patterns connect to a clear registry of enterprise AI assets.
Rapidly research and assess emerging AI technologies to determine maturity, enterprise…