Technology Operations Enterprise Data Strategy Jobs in Chicago, IL

Ahold Delhaize USA, a division of global food retailer Ahold Delhaize, is part of the U.S. family of brands, which also includes five leading omnichannel grocery brands – Food Lion, Giant Food, The GIANT Company, Hannaford and Stop & Shop. Ahold Delhaize USA associates support the brands with a wide range of services, including Finance, Legal, Sustainability, Commercial, Digital and E-commerce, Technology and more.

This role is responsible for establishing the architectural vision, strategy, and IT roadmap for Ahold Delhaize USA. The focus is on ensuring technological consistency, optimizing costs, and enhancing productivity. By collaborating closely with business and IT leaders, the Director ensures that IT solutions align with business objectives, promoting a cohesive approach to achieving strategic goals.

The Enterprise Data Architect Director will visualize and design the enterprise data management framework that aligns with the enterprise strategy and business architecture. This role will harmonize, standardize, and streamline enterprise data architecture with a clear focus on data governance, data migration, data transformation and data enrichment, reference architectures, patterns, and decision‑making frameworks that guide architectural practices across the organization.

The Director operates with a high degree of autonomy while following a structured accountability framework. This role also entails influencing the organization’s architecture strategy and engaging with senior management to align governance and business objectives. Strong problem‑solving skills and the capability to leverage both established and emerging technologies are essential for success in this position.

Leadership:

• Inspire and guide architecture, solution delivery, and IT service teams to develop a service‑driven culture that fosters high productivity.
• Establish a community of architectural excellence within Ahold Delhaize USA, embedding architectural thinking as a core way of working.
• Actively challenge the status quo and propose solutions to enhance business performance and efficiency.

Professional Standards, Policies, and Ways of Working:

• Contribute to the development and implementation of global standards, principles, and reference models for application, data, security, and infrastructure architecture.
• Ensure compliance with architecture principles, monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs) across business domains.

IT Strategy and Roadmap:

• Define and manage the IT strategy, roadmap, and transition plan in alignment with business and financial goals.
• Translate business requirements into technology requirements including data streams, integrations, transformations, databases, and data warehouses.
• Define data architecture framework, standards, principles, including modeling, metadata, security, reference data, and master data.
• Visualize and design the organization’s enterprise data management framework.
• Support the development of architecture roadmaps and facilitate the transition of IT landscapes toward target states.
• Work with enterprise platform architects to ensure solutions align with the overall IT strategy and principles.

Risk, Compliance & Security:

• Ensure that all architecture solutions comply with security, privacy, and regulatory requirements.
• Embed compliance principles into architecture governance and the solution design process.

Innovation & New Technology:

• Stay abreast of emerging technology trends and integrate them into the IT roadmap.
• Lead the work with third‑party vendors to align their innovation roadmaps with the organization’s strategy.

Enterprise Architecture Operation:

• Support the transition from legacy systems to future‑state architecture, maximizing value and ensuring appropriate planning for decommissioning redundant solutions.
• Maintain relationships with senior business leaders to ensure alignment of architecture decisions with business objectives.

Financial Management:

• Align architectural decisions with financial budgets, ensuring that total cost of ownership (TCO) is controlled and minimized.
• Ensure technical debt is managed, informing the software lifecycle process including Gartner TIME and 6Rs.

• Proven experience in enterprise architecture and governance.
• Strong experience in defining Data Strategy and Data Architecture roadmap.
• Strong experience in Enterprise Data Architecture, data platforms, data strategy consulting, or equivalent data management experience.
• Experience with integrating SAP data into data platforms, data structure and deployment; including but not limited to the MDG.
• Experience with cloud‑based platforms like Azure Data Stack (Azure SQL, Data Factory, Analysis Services, Databricks, Azure DevOps, Azure EventHubs, etc.).
• Experience developing data management systems including logical and physical data modeling, relational and data warehouse database design, and design and development of system‑wide metadata.
• Experience working with structured, unstructured and/or semi‑structured data and conducting analysis.
• Experience with both relational and distributed database design and management in cloud‑based environments.
• Experience with designing logical and physical data models.
• Strong communication and leadership skills with experience influencing departmental and senior business stakeholders.
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in computer science, Information Systems, or a related field.
• TOGAF certification is a plus.

Preferred Qualifications:

• MSc Computer Science/Information Management, Post graduate degree is preferred.
• Experience in architecting a Data Mesh is preferred.
• Experience with Data & SAP Integration.
• Experience in defining or building Event‑Driven microservices architecture.
• Agile Methodology and/or Scrum.
• ArchiMate Modeling, BiZZdesign.
• Experience with agentic AI, machine learning.
• TOGAF certification is a plus.
• 17+ years of relevant work experience; 3+ years leading teams and/or projects.

ME/NC/PA/SC Salary Range: $139,120 - $208,680

IL/MA/MD/NY Salary Range: $160,000 - $240,000

Actual compensation offered to a candidate may vary based on their unique qualifications and experience, internal equity, and market conditions. Final compensation decisions will be made in accordance with company policies and applicable laws.