VP, Enterprise Architecture & Applications

Summit School Services companies share a strong commitment to provide the highest level of transportation safety, quality transportation, outstanding customer service and positive employee relations. Our corporate headquarters, located in Warrenville, Illinois, houses the administrative and corporate support functions for the organization. Our 250+ local customer service centers (CSCs) are supported by regional operations teams located throughout North America.

We are seeking a highly experienced and strategic Enterprise Architect & Application Management person to lead the design and evolution of our application and data architecture. This role is critical to ensure our technology platforms are scalable, secure, cost-effective, and aligned with business strategy and value-creation initiatives. The ideal candidate will partner with IT leadership and business stakeholders to define architectural standards, guide modernization efforts, manage core applications and teams within the application landscape, and enable data-driven decision-making across the enterprise.

Responsibilities & Duties

• Define and maintain enterprise application and data architecture standards, principles, and roadmaps aligned with business strategy.

• Lead application architecture design across custom, SaaS, and COTS platforms, ensuring interoperability and scalability.

• Own data architecture strategy, including data models, integration patterns, master data management, and analytics enablement.

• Oversee and guide third-party vendors providing application development and integration services, ensuring architectural compliance, delivery quality, and cost-effective use of external resources.

• Act as the architectural authority for system integrators and development partners, reviewing designs, enforcing standards, and mitigating technical and delivery risk.

• Guide application rationalization, modernization, and cloud migration initiatives to reduce complexity and cost.

• Partner with business leaders, product owners, and delivery teams to translate business requirements into scalable architectural and application solutions.

• Establish integration standards using APIs, event-driven architecture, and ETL/ELT patterns.

• Ensure architectural alignment with security, compliance, and data governance requirements.

• Provide architectural oversight and design reviews for major initiatives and vendor solutions.

• Support M&A activities including IT due diligence, target-state architecture design, and post-acquisition integration.

• Produce clear, executive-ready documentation and diagrams to communicate architecture decisions and trade-offs.

• Work with senior managers to determine business-specific project/program requirements

• Lead software development teams and oversee the design, layout, testing, and adjustment stages of new and innovative applications

• Illustrate software prototypes and incorporate positive user experiences

• Mentor app developers as well as provide technical assistance to end-users

• Lead efforts to perform diagnostic testing and debug processes as needed

• Integrate, maintain, update, and migrate applications

• Document the development/design process, methods, and standards

• Create, implement and manage technical documentation standards by incorporating current trends in application architecture into application development initiatives.

• Lead Innovation in the organization by being a knowledge leader & keeping up with industry trends

• Communicate with leadership teams on a regular basis

• Maintain positive relationships with key business groups and external technology companies

• Collaborate with internal and external stakeholders to coordinate dependencies between teams, understand business use cases, goals and requirements for evaluations, experiments, proof of concepts and pilots

• Translate business needs into associated technical requirements, and understand the solutions which will incorporate these requirements

• Lead one or more teams responsible for design and execution of large-scale transformation projects and emerging technology initiatives

• Ensure meeting of timelines and requirements to execute evaluations, experiments, proof of concepts and other activities

• Ensure activities align with the overall project timeline and key milestones, and integrate into Summit’s overall transformation strategy

• Learn constantly and dive into new areas with unfamiliar technologies

• Reports status, tracks issues and provides regular updates to mgmt. on projects/system enhancement efforts

• Provide/Report IT KPI Metrics on a regular basis

• Manages vendor relationships with respect to operations as required

• Assigns and schedules resources for project/program implementation.

• Create strategies for risk mitigation and contingency planning.

• Oversee and ensure all audit tasks are completed, per published schedule

• Plans and schedules operational deliverables, goals, milestones.

• Leads, directs and oversees development teams and manages conflicts within group.

• Performs team assessments, evaluations and reviews.

• Efficiently identifies and solves project/operational issues.

• Demonstrates leadership to define project requirements and identify project risk.

• Oversees/manages technical, project and operational documentation.

• Responsible for assuring users are provided efficient and timely support on a 7x24 basis

• Isolates problem trends and ensures that troubleshooting efforts are completed for recurring problems until permanent solutions are found

• Ensures that daily, weekly, and monthly statistics, status reports, and graphical reporting aids are completed and continually modified to meet the needs of the department

• Provides leadership by projecting a positive attitude

• Accurately communicates pertinent information. Assists in the development and

• implementation of quality improvement programs for assigned department(s)

• Interfaces with users of Information Technology, employing a high degree of tact

• and diplomacy to promote a positive image of the department.

• Resolves problem situations in a professional manner. Accurately communicates pertinent

• information to create a work environment that lends itself to the best interests of

• departmental personnel and customer service

• Performs duties in a cost-effective manner to avoid waste of resources without

• jeopardizing quality of care and service

• Maintains competency and enhances professional growth and development

• through continuing education and conferences

• Accountable for meeting systems operational Service Level

• Agreements established by Sr. IT Mgmt.

• Management skills are required to successfully perform the planning, directing,

• reporting and administrative responsibilities of this position

• Demonstrated management, ownership and decision making skills concerning Information Systems policies, processes and procedures, with a proved track record of completing tasks and/or project within budget and on schedule

• Ability to manage multiple high priority initiatives in a fast paced highly technical environment

• Remains on-call during off-peak hours to respond to support service issues

• Strong organizational, presentation, and customer service skills

• Other duties as assigned

$215,000 - $225,000

Qualifications

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field; advanced degree preferred.

• 8+ years of senior level experience in Directing Application Development, IT architecture, including application or data architecture roles.

• Strong experience designing and governing application architectures across SaaS, custom, and cloud platforms.

• Deep understanding of data architecture concepts including relational and non-relational databases, data modeling, and analytics platforms.

• Experience with integration technologies such as APIs, iPaaS, messaging, and ETL/ELT tools.

• Hands-on knowledge of cloud platforms (Azure, AWS, or GCP) and modern architectural patterns.

• Ability to balance strategic vision with pragmatic execution in a fast-paced SMB environment.

• Strong communication skills with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.

• Proven ability to influence without authority and collaborate across IT and business teams.

• Experience supporting M&A, application rationalization, or modernization initiatives preferred.

• Demonstrated knowledge in software application design, modeling, implementation, and deployment

• Proven and shown expertise architecting and directing the development of at least one enterprise software

• Ability to efficiently acquire new techniques and share information across a group through seminars, mentorship, coaching, and code reviews

• Experience with scheduling, budgeting and management of IT resources

• Any equivalent combination of education, experience and training that

• provides the required knowledge, skills, and abilities

• Additional certifications are considered a plus

• Travel requirement of up to 15–20% as needed.

• Strong sense of ownership, accountability, and pride in delivering architectures that enable business growth and efficiency.

Summit School Services has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with its policies and values, including sexual exploitation and abuse, harassment, abuse of authority, and discrimination. Summit School Services is committed to promoting the protection and safeguarding of all children and passengers.

We offer medical, dental, vision, basic life insurance coverage, holiday pay, and PTO accrual. Additionally, employees are able to enroll in a retirement savings plan.

At Summit School Services our goal is to be a diverse workforce that is representative of the communities we serve. All employment decisions are based on business needs, job requirements and individual qualifications, without regard to race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy (including childbirth, lactation and related medical conditions), national origin, age, physical and mental disability, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, genetic information (including characteristics and testing), military and veteran status, and any other characteristic protected by applicable law.

Summit School Services LLC’s independent subsidiaries and affiliates are an equal employment opportunity (EEO) employer

The pay rate range, along with most all of the other terms and conditions of employment, vary between different sites, geographical markets, customer/ contractual terms and positions.