2VP, Information Architecture (Business Insurance)

Solid reputation, passionate people and endless opportunities.

That's Travelers. Our superior financial strength and consistent record of strong operating returns mean security for our customers - and opportunities for our employees. You will find Travelers to be full of energy and a workplace in which you truly can make a difference.

NOTE: This position may be filled as a Sr. Director level depending upon the level of the candidate's experience. The position is available in Hartford, CT; Hunt Valley, MD or St. Paul, MN.

SUMMARY:

The Business Insurance (BI) 2VP, Information Architect has a set of responsibilities that is both broad in scope and strategic in focus. In this innovative and influential senior leadership position the 2VP will report directly to the BI 2VP, Architect while also partnering closely with the various information leads in the business. The 2VP will be responsible for creating and managing BI's information architecture & technology vision/strategy and ensuring that it is aligned with the corporate business strategy. This individual should be a forward thinker and understand the realities of a complex operating environment. They will be an information architect & technology expert with a broad knowledge base as well as a business leader who can deliver, execute and work easily with a variety of constituents. This is a BI wide role. The 2VP will need to develop a strong understanding of the needs of various lines of business as well as the Travelers security, application, information, and infrastructure organizations. This individual, including their team will facilitate order and purpose to the organization's use of information & technology and help develop capabilities that move the enterprise towards its goals. The 2VP will drive the creation of transition plans, frameworks, and reference architectures that lead the way to the future. They will detail the steps and coordination required across the company to minimize risk and maximize capabilities and efficiency.
The 2VP will develop and maintain the information architecture for BI, the objective being to enable knowledge worker productivity, improved customer experience, and business decisions through the provision of accurate, timely, and consistent information. This information can be structured or unstructured, internal or external to the organization. The role works with the other architecture disciplines, technology brokers, business partners, and external service providers, to ensure new capabilities comply with the information architecture.

The individual will have broad information and system architecture knowledge and experience. They will provide overall direction, life cycle management and leadership for all information architecture and technology. The individual performs the lead role in the identification, analysis, evaluation, life cycle management and adoption of information technologies. The 2VP works closely with Travelers other information functions and provides guidance to ensure coordination with their activities involving technology choices.

The 2VP responsibilities include the creation of solution architectures and then shepherding them through the various architecture governance processes to ensure they are aligned with the strategic direction, utilize approved technology standards, and follow the appropriate guiding principles. In the creation of the solution architectures, the team will need to collaborate with the security, development, and engineering teams to take into account feasibility, funding, and competencies. In the creation of the information architectures, the team will need to collaborate with the Business Intelligence groups both at the Business Insurance and Enterprise levels.

The will have direct responsibility for a team of several senior architects as well as playing a collaborative leadership role with the LOB architects and their teams. This person will serve as the 'glue' to ensure that BI has a single BI-wide information architecture strategy. This individual will assist efforts to develop and manage the architectural governance process and work with the LOB Architects and BI 2VP, Architect to make recommendations to the IT Senior Leadership team. Within the architecture responsibilities, this role covers various technical and functional spaces, including: master data management, ETL, information analytics, Big Data, business intelligence, and metadata management. The 2VP will also ensure that emerging technology trends are represented in all information strategies.

The will take immediate responsibility for establishing the practice and methods for an information architecture organization in BI. This will include the definition of the roles and recruitment of internal and external resources into these roles.

PRIMARY DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:
-Partner with the business to create a 3-5 year BI information vision and strategy for information and associated shared solutions to support key business strategies and requirements by determining the optimal enterprise information architecture.
-Define the BI information target architectures and strategic direction through understanding business drivers and demonstrating expert knowledge and mastery in a broad spectrum of complex technologies. Research and identify best practice methods and emerging technologies, evaluating their applicability and feasibility to our organization. Research, analyze, determine information capabilities and propose technology solution alternatives that address specific business needs and product/service strategies across Lines of Business.
- Partner with our customers and service providers in identifying critical architectural and information gaps and deficiencies in the information environment and recommend solutions to solve business problems and the information direction.
- Assess and build team; define roles and responsibilities; influence and shape outlook and attitudes.
- Evaluate organizational structure and determine competency gaps, core strengths and plan for optimization and/or augmentation.
- Collaborate with business and enterprise architects to understand the implications of respective architectures on information architecture and maximize the value of information across the organization.
- Support business and IT capabilities for managing and integrating unstructured information across media platforms ie, wikis, blogs, instant messaging, etc. and traditional sources such as e-mail and SharePoint.
- Maintain a holistic view of information assets by creating and maintaining blueprints that illustrate how information is stored, processed, and accessed.
- Provide consultative leadership on information projects focusing on planning, development and implementation of strategic information technology directives.
- Manage and coach a team of information architects to ensure achievement of Architecture Services and individual goals. This includes the capability to influence the practices of Information Architecture in a federated environment providing enterprise direction and the ability to meet LOB needs.
- Assist IT investment planning, architecture governance and partner management;

REQUIRED EXPERIENCE/EDUCATION
- Successful record as a senior leader with experience building and leading an enterprise information architecture discipline in a large matrixed enterprise, preferably with global/virtual team experience.
- Expert in information architecture development, information policy formation, information asset management, information modelling, unstructured information analysis, information taxonomy creation, Business Intelligence & analytics.
- Fully competent in information systems design, information insight generation, information visualization, data warehousing, and data mining.
- Working knowledge in business domain analysis and business process modelling,
- Proven understanding of the Enterprise Business, Security, Application and Technical Architectures as this role will be responsible for collaboration and management of the strategic development of the enterprise architectures
- Proven track record of translating organizational strategy into actionable technology solutions that drive operational excellence while enabling synergistic growth and organizational scale.
- Bachelors Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering or Information Technology is preferred or other degree with significant related IT and leadership experience.
- Experience in multi-line insurance and/or financial services industry a plus.
- Experience working with a structure architecture methodology; TOGAF preferred.

OTHER:

Strategy & Planning
- Participate as a Member of the Senior Architecture team in governance processes of the organization's architecture and infrastructure.

Collaboration & Influence
- Guidance that spans the enterprise and partnerships reaching beyond its walls; ability to operate effectively in matrixed organization.

Team Leadership
- Develops high performing teams, recognizing individual contributions, cultural factors and organizational context; motivates team members to action and accountability; actively anticipates and resolves conflicts by pursuing mutually agreeable solutions.

Building and Leveraging Relationships
- Readily connects with others and proactively solicit their views before making key decisions; builds effective support to move the agenda forward and rapidly gains the respect and trust of team members and colleagues.

Driving Results
- Demonstrated ability to translate an organization's mission into an overall IT Infrastructure Strategy focused on meeting customer needs as the basis for actionable, measurable plans.

Travelers is an equal opportunity employer. We actively promote a drug-free workplace.

Job Category: Information Systems