IT Director, Data & AI Architecture
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Oct 24, 2026. First seen by Alion on Aug 27, 2026. Abbott scores A on the Alion truth index.
JOB DESCRIPTION:
About Abbott
Abbott is a global healthcare leader that helps people live more fully at all stages of life. Our portfolio of life-changing technologies spans diagnostics, medical devices, nutrition, and branded generic medicines. With 115,000 colleagues serving people in more than 160 countries, Abbott is committed to advancing healthcare through innovation, data, and technology.
The Opportunity
Reporting to the Director of Information Management, Data & Analytics, this person will play a critical role in defining and delivering Abbott's enterprise data and AI architecture vision. This leader will architect scalable, secure, and AI-ready data platforms, enable advanced analytics and AI use cases, and establish the technical standards that support Abbott's transition to a modern data ecosystem.
The IT Director, Data and AI Architecture serves as Abbott's principal technical authority for enterprise data architecture, cloud data platforms, AI-ready ecosystems, and modern data engineering. This individual is expected to operateas the senior-most data architecture leader, guiding architectural strategy, reviewing solution designs, mentoring architects and engineers, and driving key technology decisions across Abbott's enterprise data landscape.
This leader will establishthe technical blueprint for Abbott's next-generation data platforms, ensuring scalable, secure, high-performing, and AI-ready architectures that accelerate analytics, automation, and artificial intelligence initiatives across the enterprise.
This person serves as a technical authority for Enterprise Data Architecture and AI programs, providing guidance, governance, and decision-making support across the organization. We are seeking someone with the ability to define, challenge, and influence architectural standards, strategies, and technology roadmaps.
Functions as a senior hands-on technical leader and trusted advisor, rather than a people manager. Acts as the primary go-to expert for complex architectural decisions and technology challenges. Drives and influences key technology and architecture decisions to ensure alignment with business objectives, scalability, and innovation goals.
What You'll Work On
Technical Architecture Leadership
Lead architecture reviews for major data and analytics initiatives.
Serve as a trusted technical advisor to engineering, architecture, and business leaders onenterprise data strategy and architecture decisions.
Define reference architecturesand implementation standards for Snowflake, Databricks, Microsoft Fabric, Azure Data Services, and related cloud technologies.
Drive architectural decisions related to data lakehousedesign, medallion architectures, semantic layers, metadata services, data observability, vector databases, and enterprise AI platforms.
Define enterprise information architecture, canonical data models, domain ownership boundaries, and data product standards that support interoperability, scalability, and AI consumption.
Review and challenge engineering designs to ensure scalability, resiliency, performance, maintainability, and cost optimization.
Partner directly with engineering teams to solve complex technical architecture challenges and accelerate delivery of strategic initiatives.
Chair architecture review boards and provide final architecture recommendations for critical data, analytics, and AI investments.
Maintain hands-on awareness of modern data engineering, cloud, analytics, and AI technologies.
Design enterprise-scale lakehousearchitectures utilizing Databricks, Delta Lake, Apache Iceberg, Snowflake, and cloud-native storage platforms.
Data Engineering & Platform Architecture
Define architecture standards for data ingestion, transformation, orchestration, observability, DataOps, CI/CD, and platform automation.
Establish patterns supporting structured, semi-structured, streaming, and unstructured data workloads.
Define enterprise integration standardsleveragingAPIs, event-driven architectures, messaging platforms, and real-time data processing.
Guideimplementation of Infrastructure as Code (IaC), platform engineering, containerization, and automated deployment practices.
Partner with infrastructure and platform teams to optimizeperformance, reliability, scalability, and cost management across enterprise data platforms.
Data Products & Information Architecture
Define enterprise standards for data products, data contracts, metadata management, discoverability, interoperability, and lifecycle management.
Drive implementation of Data Mesh and federated data ownership principles across Abbott business domains.
Establish architecture patterns that enable reusable, trusted, and scalable data assets.
Partner with business and technology leaders to translate strategic priorities into scalable enterprise information architectures.
AI & Advanced Analytics Architecture
Architect AI-ready data ecosystems supporting machine learning, predictive analytics, Generative AI, agentic AI, and advanced analytics workloads.
Design reference architecturesfor Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), semantic search, vector databases, knowledge repositories, and enterprise AI platforms.
Define enterprise approaches for embeddings, vector storage, semantic retrieval, knowledge management, and AI-ready data foundations.
Establish LLMOpsand MLOpsstandards for model deployment, monitoring, observability, governance, and lifecycle management.
Define architectural standards for feature stores, training datasets, metadata, lineage, and model operationalization.
Evaluate emerging AI technologies and translate them into practical enterprise adoption roadmaps.
Lead AI architecture assessments and provide technical recommendations for strategic AI investments.
Data Governance & Trust by Design
Partner with Data Governance and Information Management teams to ensure architectural alignment with metadata, lineage, master data, data quality, privacy, security, and regulatory requirements.
Define architectural controls that enable trusted, auditable, and governedenterprise data.
Promote "trust by design" principles throughout Abbott's data and AI ecosystem.
Required Qualifications
Master's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field.
10+ years of experience in enterprise data architecture, cloud data platform architecture, or large-scale analytics architecture.
5+ years designing and implementing modern cloud-native data platforms and implementing enterprise-scale technology architectures and solutions.
Minimum 10 years of overall professional experience in technology, with a strong background in enterprise architecture and solution design.
Minimum 3 years at the Director level or in a comparable senior individual contributor leadership role.
Demonstrated expertise in technical architecture leadership, including establishing architectural direction and driving strategic technology initiatives.
Deep hands-on expertisewith Snowflake, Databricks, Microsoft Fabric, Azure Data Services, or equivalent modern data platforms.
Proven experience designing and implementing large-scale lakehousearchitectures.
Proven experience architecting AI-ready data ecosystems supporting machine learning, Generative AI, vector retrieval, semantic search, and RAG architectures.
Deep understanding of Data Mesh, Data Fabric, Data Products, domain-driven design, and modern information architecture principles.
Experience with enterprise integration patterns, APIs, event-driven architectures, Kafka, streaming platforms, and real-time data processing.
Experience defining data architecture standards covering metadata, lineage, master data management, and data quality.
Experience leading architecture reviews and providing technical oversight for strategic enterprise initiatives.
Strong communicationskills with demonstratedability to influence senior executives, architects, engineers, and business stakeholders.
Preferred Qualifications
Experience serving as a Chief Data Architect, Lead Data Architect, Enterprise Data Architect, Principal Architect, or similar senior architecture leadership role.
Experience within healthcare, medical devices, life sciences, pharmaceuticals, or regulated manufacturing environments.
Hands-on expertisewith Databricks, Snowflake, Microsoft Fabric, Azure, Kubernetes, Apache Airflow, Delta Lake, Apache Iceberg, Kafka, and related cloud-native technologies.
Experience with vector databases, knowledge graphs, semantic search platforms, and enterprise AI platforms.
Relevant certifications in Cloud Architecture, Data Engineering, AI Engineering, Enterprise Architecture, or related disciplines.
What Success Looks Like- Within the first 12 months, this leader will:
Establish Abbott's target-state enterprise Data & AI Architecture and modernization roadmap.
Define enterprise standards for data products, lakehousearchitecture, AI-ready datasets, integration, and platform design.
Accelerate modernization of legacy data environments while maintainingoperational stability.
Increase adoption of reusable, trusted, and scalable enterprise data assets.
Enable scalable AI, analytics, and automation capabilities that directly support business outcomes.
Improve interoperability, architectural consistency, data quality, and platform performance across Abbott's global ecosystem.
Be recognized by engineering and architecture teams as Abbott's technical authority for enterprise data architecture and AI-ready platforms.
The base pay for this position is
$149,300.00 - $298,700.00In specific locations, the pay range may vary from the range posted.