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Senior Principal Enterprise Architect

Summary

The Senior Principal Enterprise Architect will lead enterprise-wide technology strategy and governance, focusing on building AI-driven automation for design reviews and resilience practices. This role involves partnering with senior leadership to drive modernization and ensure architectural standards across a large financial institution.

FC Global Services India LLP (First Citizens India), a part of First Citizens BancShares, Inc., a top 20 U.S. financial institution, is a global capability center (GCC) based in Bengaluru. Our India-based teams benefit from the company’s over 125-year legacy of strength and stability. First Citizens India is responsible for delivering value and managing risks for our lines of business. We are particularly proud of our strong, relationship-driven culture and our long-term approach, which are deeply ingrained in our talented workforce. This is evident across all key areas of our operations, including Technology, Enterprise Operations, Finance, Cybersecurity, Risk Management, and Credit Administration. We are seeking talented individuals to join us in our mission of providing solutions fit for our clients’ greatest ambitions.

Job Description:

Value Proposition

  • Lead the Future of AI-Driven Architecture: Build and scale AI-powered architecture governance capabilities that transform how technology decisions are reviewed, validated, and automated across the enterprise.

  • Drive Enterprise Resilience at Scale: Shape the future state of the organization's technology landscape by embedding resilience, security, and architectural best practices into every stage of the delivery lifecycle.

Job Details

Position Title: Senior Principal Enterprise Architect
Career Level: P6
Job Category: Director
Role Type: Hybrid
Job Location: Bangalore/Hybrid

About the Team

The Enterprise Architecture team is responsible for defining the technology vision, standards, and target-state architecture that enable business growth and innovation. The team partners closely with business, engineering, security, data, and infrastructure leaders to ensure technology investments are secure, scalable, resilient, and aligned to strategic priorities.

As part of this team, you will help shape enterprise-wide architecture decisions, drive modernization initiatives, and pioneer the use of AI and automation to transform architecture governance and resilience practices.

Impact (Job Summary/Why this Role Matters)

We are seeking a Senior Principal Enterprise Architect to serve as a thought leader and trusted advisor across the enterprise. This role will drive enterprise architecture strategy across business, data, application, technology, and security domains while ensuring technology investments support organizational objectives.

A key focus of the role is building AI-driven architecture governance capabilities that automate design reviews, enforce architectural standards, and provide continuous assurance through CI/CD integration. The role also plays a critical part in improving enterprise resilience by identifying availability risks, single points of failure, recovery gaps, and architectural weaknesses early in the design lifecycle.

This position will directly influence technology transformation, governance maturity, operational resilience, and long-term business outcomes across the enterprise.

Key Deliverables (Duties and Responsibilities)

  • Lead enterprise architecture strategy and governance across business, data, application, technology, integration, and security architecture domains.

  • Partner with senior technology and business leaders to align architecture decisions with organizational strategy and investment priorities.

  • Drive cloud, application, platform, and data modernization initiatives while balancing risk, value, scalability, and cost effectiveness.

  • Build AI-driven architecture governance capabilities that automate design reviews, compliance assessments, resilience scoring, and architectural conformance checks.

  • Integrate governance-as-code and architecture conformance controls into CI/CD pipelines, enabling continuous compliance and early detection of architectural drift.

  • Enhance enterprise resilience through automated assessment of availability risks, single points of failure, disaster recovery alignment, blast radius exposure, and recovery objectives.

  • Establish architecture governance forums, mentor architects, and advance enterprise architecture maturity across the organization.

  • Translate complex architecture decisions into business-focused recommendations for executive stakeholders and major investment initiatives.

Skills and Qualification (Functional and Technical Skills)

Functional Skills

  • Strategic thinking and enterprise-wide technology vision

  • Executive communication and stakeholder management

  • Architecture governance and decision-making

  • Consulting, influencing, and negotiation skills

  • Business outcome and value-driven leadership

  • Problem-solving and risk management

  • Cross-functional collaboration and relationship management

  • Change leadership and organizational influence

Technical Skills

  • Enterprise Architecture frameworks (TOGAF, ArchiMate, Zachman)

  • AI/LLM-based systems, agentic AI design, orchestration, and governance

  • Architecture governance-as-code and policy-as-code

  • Cloud architecture and modernization

  • Application, integration, data, and security architecture

  • CI/CD pipeline integration and automated compliance controls

  • Software engineering and code analysis

  • Enterprise resilience engineering, high availability, disaster recovery, RTO/RPO

  • ITSM, architecture tooling, and governance platforms

  • Security risk assessment and vulnerability management

Qualifications

  • 18+ years of technology experience with significant enterprise architecture leadership experience.

  • Hands-on experience building AI-driven or agentic AI solutions.

  • Proven experience implementing governance-as-code and automated architecture controls.

  • Strong understanding of resilience engineering and large-scale enterprise technology environments.

  • Experience working with senior business and technology executives.

  • Experience in regulated industries such as financial services is preferred.

  • Relevant certifications such as TOGAF and cloud architecture certifications are preferred.

Leadership Qualities (For People Leaders)

  • Acts as a recognized thought leader across enterprise architecture disciplines.

  • Demonstrates strategic vision while remaining hands-on and execution focused.

  • Drives innovation through AI, automation, and modernization initiatives.

  • Builds alignment and consensus across business and technology stakeholders.

  • Mentors and develops architecture talent while elevating architecture practices across the enterprise.

  • Takes ownership of complex enterprise-wide challenges and drives measurable outcomes.

Relationships & Collaboration

This role partners closely with:

  • Senior business and technology executives

  • Enterprise, solution, data, security, and platform architects

  • Engineering and application development teams

  • Infrastructure, cloud, and operations teams

  • Cybersecurity and risk management teams

  • Product, program, and portfolio leadership

  • Governance, compliance, and regulatory stakeholders

The role requires extensive collaboration across the enterprise to drive architectural direction, modernization initiatives, resilience programs, and AI-based governance capabilities.

Accessibility Needs

We are committed to providing an inclusive and accessible hiring process. If you require accommodations at any stage (e.g., application, interviews, onboarding), please let us know, and we will work with you to ensure a seamless experience.

Equal Employment Opportunity

FC Global Services India LLP (First Citizens India) is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer. We are committed to fostering an inclusive and accessible environment and prohibit all forms of discrimination on the basis of gender, religion, caste, disability, sexual orientation, economic status or any other characteristics protected by the law. We strive to foster a safe and respectful environment in which all individuals are treated with respect and dignity. Our EEO policy ensures fairness throughout the employee life cycle.

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