Vice President, Application Architecture

About this role

Job Description Summary For over forty years, HarbourVest has been home to a committed team of professionals with an entrepreneurial spirit and a desire to deliver impactful solutions to our clients and investing partners. As our global firm grows, we continue to add individuals who seek a collaborative, open-door culture that values diversity and innovative thinking.   In our collegial environment, that’s marked by low turnover and high energy, you’ll be inspired to grow and thrive. Here, you will be encouraged to build on your strengths and acquire new skills and experiences.   We are committed to fostering an environment of inclusion that promotes mutual respect among all employees. Understanding and valuing these differences optimizes the potential of both the individual and the firm.   HarbourVest is an equal opportunity employer.   This position will be a hybrid work arrangement. You will receive 18 remote workdays per quarter to use at your discretion, subject to manager approval. For example, you may choose to work in the office 4 days per week and take one remote day weekly (typically 13 weeks per quarter), leaving 5 additional remote days to be used as needed.   We are seeking a Vice President of Application Architecture to join our Platform Engineering team and provide enterprise-level technical leadership across Enterprise Architecture and Platform Engineering. We are searching for a highly respected, hands-on technology leader. They define a cohesive platform architecture, set long-term technical direction, and lead modernization efforts across the firm. This enables scale, agility, resilience, and growth.   As a Vice President of Application Architecture, you will develop the firm’s target-state architecture across applications, integration, cloud environments, and shared engineering capabilities! You will partner closely with engineering leadership, product and delivery teams, data and security stakeholders, vendors, and enterprise technology partners to define architecture strategy, establish reference architectures and standards, and guide complex modernization initiatives from concept through adoption. This role will simplify a fragmented technology landscape and improve interoperability. It will enable reusable platform capabilities. It ensures the company’s technological infrastructure can support future business expansion.   You bring deep expertise in modern application build and platform structure and apply that expertise to build scalable, secure, and durable technology patterns across the enterprise. You are fluent in architectural design patterns and modern engineering practices, including microservices, micro-frontends, event-driven systems, cloud-native development, DevOps, and modern web application engineering. You lead through influence and hands-on technical credibility, helping teams make sound architectural decisions while raising engineering quality, consistency, and ongoing structural durability within the organization.   The ideal candidate is: • Recognized technical authority with demonstrated success in defining enterprise-scale architecture strategy and influencing adoption across multiple teams, platforms, and business domains

• Strong proficiency in enterprise and solution architecture, demonstrating skill in defining target-state architectures, transition roadmaps, and pragmatic modernization strategies

• Strong experience establishing an integrated platform design and enterprise standards that improve consistency, reusability, scalability, and long-term maintainability

• Hands-on knowledge of microservices architecture, micro-frontend architecture, and event-driven design patterns in complex enterprise environments

• Fluency in architectural and software design patterns, with the ability to guide teams in selecting the right patterns, tradeoffs, and implementation approaches

• Strong experience with cloud infrastructure development and cloud-native architecture, preferably in Azure, including scalable application patterns, integration, identity, networking, observability, and resilience

• Proven grasp of DevOps principles and software delivery practices, including CI/CD, infrastructure automation, environment strategy, and release governance

• Expertise in contemporary web application development and architecture, including frameworks and technologies such as Angular, React, TypeScript, Node.js, and development focused on web-based interfaces

• Experience developing distributed systems that make use of Redis for caching, Kafka for messaging, and robust data access layer patterns

• Ability to balance strategic architecture direction with practical execution, helping teams modernize incrementally while maintaining delivery momentum

• Strong understanding of integration, interoperability, data flow, and domain boundaries across enterprise software and infrastructures

• Outstanding communication skills, demonstrated by the capacity to translate architectural strategy and technical tradeoffs into clear recommendations for engineering leaders, executives, and non-technical partners

• A collaborative, influential leadership style with a demonstrated ability to support and develop architects and engineers, build alignment, and raise technical standards across the organization  

What you will do: Set technical direction for enterprise and platform architecture within the organization. Define the target-state architectural vision. Establish standards, patterns, and reference architectures to modernize technology and enable scaling. • Define and evolve a unified platform architecture that spans application development, integration, cloud infrastructure, shared services, and enterprise engineering capabilities

• Create enterprise architecture principles, standards, reference architectures, and modernization roadmaps that align technology investments with business growth objectives

• Guide architecture decisions across product, platform, and

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