Head, Data & AI Platforms and Architecture

Job Posting End Date: October 23

Our Fortune 500 company is driving a digital transformation and looking for forward-thinking innovators to disrupt how our industry thinks about and uses technology. As one of the world's leading employee benefits providers, we help millions of people gain affordable access to benefits that help them protect their families, their finances and their futures.

Are you an asker of questions, a solver of problems, and a challenger of the status quo? Our mission is to provide a differentiated customer experience and exceed the expectations people have of technology at any company — not just insurers. 

We are seeking individuals to join our team of talented IT professionals who share never-ending passion and an unwavering focus on our customer experience. Team members comfortable working in an agile, fast-paced, and delivery-focused environment thrive in our environment where we value an entrepreneurial spirit and those who challenge the status-quo.

Unum is changing, and we’re excited about what’s next. Join us.

General Summary:

Head of Platforms & Architecture is the single accountable executive for the technology foundation on which Unum's data, analytics and AI ambitions are built. This leader owns the strategy, architecture, and governance of Unum's enterprise data platforms, agentic AI and AI governance platforms, and business intelligence and data marketplace platforms.
This leader must be equally credible in a deep technical design review, in a vendor negotiation with a hyperscaler or platform provider, and in front of the Executive Committee or Board describing the business value of the platform investment.

The incumbent leads a multi-disciplinary organization of data architects, AI architects, data modelers, and sets the technical standards, reference architectures and guardrails followed across all of Unum's data and AI delivery teams.

Principal Duties and Responsibilities

• Define and own the multi-year enterprise data platform strategy, including the target-state lakehouse/warehouse architecture, platform-of-record decisions, coexistence and consolidation strategy, and the migration roadmap away from legacy on-premises data warehouses, mainframe extracts, and point-to-point integrations.

• Establish and enforce reference architectures for ingestion, storage, transformation, orchestration, and serving. Set standards for data contracts, schema evolution, data product interfaces, and interoperability.

• Provide the shared frameworks, templates, CI/CD pipelines, testing harnesses and reusable components that allow business-aligned data engineering teams to deliver quickly and consistently on the platform, rather than reinventing plumbing.

• Own the platforms for master and reference data management

• Ensure the data platform meets enterprise SLAs for availability, recovery, performance, and scalability; embed security-by-design in partnership with Information Security and Enterprise Risk.

•  Own the cloud and platform consumption model; implement FinOps practices  and be accountable for unit-cost trends and total cost of ownership of the data estate.

• Lead the decommissioning of redundant data stores, ETL tools and reporting marts, quantifying and delivering run-cost savings and risk reduction.

• Ensure platform controls, evidence and documentation satisfy internal audit, model risk management, SOX ITGCs, state insurance regulators, and requirements.

• Define and deliver Unum's enterprise platform for building, deploying, orchestrating, and governing AI agents and GenAI applications — including foundation-model access, model gateways, retrieval, agent orchestration and tool-calling frameworks, memory, and human-in-the-loop controls.

• Evaluate and select agentic and AI platform capabilities across Databricks, Snowflake, Microsoft, and specialized vendors; define where each fit, how they interoperate and how the enterprise avoids fragmentation and lock-in.

• Own the end-to-end lifecycle tooling for classical ML, GenAI and agentic workloads: feature stores, experiment tracking, model registry, prompt and agent versioning, evaluation harnesses, red-teaming, deployment, monitoring for drift, hallucination, toxicity, cost, and latency.

• Build and operate the technical control plane for Responsible AI — model and agent inventory, risk tiering, approval workflows, policy enforcement, guardrails, audit logging, explainability and bias testing — aligned to Unum's AI governance framework, Model Risk Management, NAIC AI Model Bulletin expectations, Colorado SB 21-169 and similar state rules, the EU AI Act (for UK/Poland operations) and NIST AI RMF. Partner with Legal, Compliance, Privacy, Enterprise Risk, and the AI Governance Committee.

• Own the enterprise data catalog, lineage, policy, and access-governance tooling that underpins both data and AI governance, so that data owners and stewards across the business can operate governance at scale.

• Partner with business and product leaders to move agentic AI from pilot to production in priority domains ensuring each is built on the platform, is observable and is governed.

• Set standards for prompt-injection defense, data-leakage prevention, secure tool access, agent permissions and least privilege, secrets management and incident response for AI systems, in partnership with Information Security.

• Maintain executive relationships with strategic partners; stay ahead of the rapidly evolving agentic landscape and translate it into pragmatic roadmap decisions for Unum.

• Own the enterprise BI and semantic-layer platform (, including standards for certified datasets, metric definitions, performance, capacity management, embedded analytics, and self-service enablement across finance, actuarial, claims, sales, and operations.

• Stand up and scale an internal data marketplace where certified data products, semantic models, ML features and AI assets are discoverable, requestable, contract-backed and consumable with governed access — shifting the enterprise from ad hoc extracts to reusable, owned data products.

• Provide secure, governed capabilities for data sharing with brokers, employers, TPAs, reinsurers, regulators, and partners

• Lead the migration of legacy reporting  onto the modern platform, retiring duplicative reports and marts.

• Measure and drive adoption of self-service BI and marketplace assets; partner with the Data & Analytics community of practice on training and enablement.

• Serve as the enterprise's chief architect for data and AI. Own the target-state architecture spanning source systems, integration, data platform, AI platform, BI/marketplace and consuming applications, and the transition architecture to get there.

• Chair the Data & AI Architecture Review Board; define principles, patterns, standards, and exceptions processes; ensure every material data or AI initiative across Unum US, Colonial Life, Unum International and Corporate functions aligns to the target architecture or has an approved, time-boxed exception.

• Own the enterprise conceptual and logical data models for insurance domains (party, group/employer, product, policy/certificate, coverage, enrollment, billing, claim, absence/leave, provider, agent/broker, financial) and the modeling standards used across teams.

• Partner with the Enterprise Architecture, Application, and Integration teams so that core administration modernization (policy admin, claims, billing), digital and API programs and the data/AI platforms evolve coherently.

• Continuously evaluate emerging technologies and vendors, run structured proofs-of-concept, and make disciplined build/buy/partner recommendations with clear business cases.

• Lead, inspire and develop a multi-disciplinary organization of enterprise and data architects, AI architects, data modelers through a team of AVP/Director-level leaders.

• Design and evolve the operating model for platforms and architecture — including the balance between central platform teams and federated, business-aligned delivery teams; the role of architects embedded in domains; and the interfaces with Data Governance, Data Science, Information Security and Infrastructure.

• Own the talent strategy for scarce, high-demand skills. Build career paths and skills frameworks, upskill the existing workforce from legacy ETL/warehouse skills to modern platform and AI skills, and attract external talent in a competitive market.

• Instill practices of platform-as-a-product thinking, DevOps/DataOps/MLOps automation, documentation, blameless post-mortems, inner-sourcing and measurable reliability; hold leaders accountable for engineering quality and delivery predictability.

• Set clear goals and accountabilities, conduct rigorous talent reviews, coach leaders, and build succession depth for all critical roles including the incumbent's own.

• Manage strategic platform vendors, global system integrators, and managed-service providers — contract structure, commercial terms, performance, and the appropriate mix of employee, partner, and offshore/nearshore capacity.

• Foster an inclusive, psychologically safe environment consistent with Unum's values, drive engagement and retention outcomes for the organization.

• Serve as a member of the Data, Analytics & AI leadership team and a trusted advisor to the CIO, CDAO, business unit presidents and functional heads on data and AI capability decisions.

• Translate complex technical strategy into clear business narratives and investment cases for the Executive Committee, Board Technology / Risk committees and the Enterprise Investment Council.

• Own the platform portion of the enterprise data and AI investment portfolio; deliver committed business value, cost savings, and risk reduction outcomes.

• Represent Unum externally with industry bodies (LIMRA/LOMA, ACORD, insurance data consortia), analyst firms and peer networks; enhance Unum's employer brand in the data and AI community.

• Perform other duties as assigned.

 

Job Specifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Engineering, Information Systems, Mathematics, or a related field; master’s degree preferred.

• 15+ years of progressive experience in data, analytics and technology, including 8+ years leading large, multi-disciplinary technology organizations and 5+ years at a senior level (AVP or above) in an enterprise of comparable scale and complexity.

• Demonstrated, hands-on-credible expertise in at least two of the three major enterprise data platform ecosystems - Databricks, Snowflake, Microsoft (- including having led an enterprise-scale implementation, migration or consolidation.

• Proven experience delivering GenAI and/or agentic AI capabilities to production in a regulated enterprise, including the MLOps / LLMOps tooling, evaluation, monitoring, and governance controls required to operate them safely.

• Deep understanding of enterprise, data, and AI architecture — conceptual/logical data modeling, integration patterns, lakehouse and warehouse design, event and API architectures, semantic layers, and the architectural implications of LLMs and autonomous agents.

• Experience establishing and operating AI governance and Responsible AI frameworks and technical controls, and working with Model Risk Management, Legal and Compliance functions.

• Track record of leading organizations of 10+ people including architects and modelers, through multiple layers of management, and of transforming workforce skills from legacy to modern platforms.

• Financial acumen: experience owning multi-million-dollar technology budgets, cloud FinOps, vendor negotiation and business-case development with measurable value delivery.

• Exceptional executive communication — able to articulate technical strategy to Boards, executives, regulators, and engineers with equal fluency.

 

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in insurance or financial services, ideally group benefits, life, disability, absence management, or supplemental health; familiarity with insurance data domains and regulatory landscape (NAIC, state DOIs, HIPAA, GLBA, NYDFS Part 500, SOX, GDPR, UK FCA/PRA).

• Experience with data governance and catalog platforms and with MDM platforms.

• Experience with enterprise BI platforms  at scale and with standing up internal data marketplaces or data-product operating models.

• Familiarity with emerging agentic standards and patterns  and with the AI offerings of Microsoft, Databricks, Snowflake and leading model providers.

• Experience modernizing from mainframe / on-premises warehouse environments to cloud platforms in a large, long-tenured enterprise.

• Relevant certifications  are a plus but not a substitute for demonstrated delivery.
• Experience with global or multi-country technology organizations and offshore/nearshore delivery models.

#LI-VJ1

~IN1

Our company is built on helping individuals and families, and this starts with our employees. We want employees to maintain a positive balance, which is why we provide access to the benefits and resources they need to invest in themselves. From our onsite fitness facilities and generous paid time off to employee professional development programs, we are committed to helping employees live and work their best – both inside and outside the office.

Unum is an equal opportunity employer, considering all qualified applicants and employees for hiring, placement, and advancement, without regard to a person's race, color, religion, national origin, age, genetic information, military status, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, disability, or protected veteran status.

The base salary range for applicants for this position is listed below. Unless actual salary is indicated above in the job description, actual pay will be based on skill, geographical location and experience.

$163,700.00-$336,000.00

Additionally, Unum offers a portfolio of benefits and rewards that are competitive and comprehensive including healthcare benefits (health, vision, dental), insurance benefits (short & long-term disability), performance-based incentive plans, paid time off, and a 401(k) retirement plan with an employer match up to 5% and an additional 4.5% contribution whether you contribute to the plan or not.  All benefits are subject to the terms and conditions of individual Plans.

Company:

Unum