Senior Analyst, Enterprise Architecture

Job description

Job Description

Zendesk, a rapidly expanding cloud-based software company, uses SaaS applications to bolster its business operations.

As we grow, we're experiencing increased complexity and the necessity to expand our systems and solutions.

We're in search of a Senior Analyst for Enterprise Architecture, proficient in governing our application landscape, steering the design of our integrated solutions, and enabling Zendesk to efficiently achieve its strategic goals through application rationalization and consolidation.

As an individual contributor, you will partner with business, engineering, and IT teams to comprehend the current setup, pinpoint areas for enhancement, and delineate and roadmap strategies in coordination with Zendesk business partners.

Your work will help create standards across Zendesk on how to best tease out problems, determine whether it is a process or system issue, evaluate technologies, and choose the best solution for Zendesk.

You'll contribute to a desired future state that underpins Zendesk's growth and strategic objectives.

Guiding, influencing, and partnering with Business & IT at all levels is at the forefront of your role, along with fostering technical capabilities to best support our delivery teams. 

Keeping abreast with emerging technologies and how we use our current technologies is important.

Your role involves making evidence-based, pragmatic recommendations on their relevance to our business.

You will take the lead in steering and facilitating our Enterprise Architecture Review Board, where you are  responsible for driving consensus over our application landscape by continuously refining our decision-making processes to effectively assess the need for new solutions. 

What You’ll Be Doing:

• Lead the evaluation, design, and analysis of enterprise-wide solutions, tackling the business's most complex problems.

• Create capability models, perform technology assessments, develop current and future state diagrams, and formulate solution best practices to incorporate into their strategic plans

• Build bridges between IT and business by liaising with stakeholders, influencing and fostering relationships, and driving cross-team initiatives. 

• Act as the face of the Enterprise Architecture Review Board, partnering with the business to assess the addition of new solutions to Zendesk.

• Oversee software request ticket queues and make informed decisions on all software requests 

• Develop dashboards to track application counts, ownership, and expenditure, and share these insights with leadership.

• Serve as a Saas knowledge hub, understanding the use cases, integration patterns, and capabilities of all enterprise-level software

• Continuously mature the Enterprise Architecture program to adapt to Zendesk's evolving needs.

• Create an application rationalization model and drive initiatives to reduce software spend by identifying and eliminating redundant applications.

• Regularly review and apply emerging industry trends, practices, and technologies to business engagements.

• Advise on integration strategies, platforms, and application infrastructure to implement efficient solutions and realize business value.

• Act as a liaison between technical teams and business audiences during solution development.

• Establish and enforce architectural standards for compliance across teams.

Required Experience:

• Bachelor’s or master’s degree in Computer Science, Information Management, Economics or comparable.

• 4+ years of technology deployment and IT architecture experience.

• 2+ years of experience working with Enterprise Architecture tools

• Experience and familiarity with enterprise architecture concepts and method

Preferred experience & skill set

• Comfortably explain new concepts to technical and non-technical audiences

• Develop and maintain enterprise architecture artifacts like Business Capability Maps, Business Process Flows, Current/Future State Architecture, core concepts, and key decisions.

• Deliver high-level or in-depth recommendations to senior executives.

• Demonstrate an interest in leading change through enterprise architecture principles

• Excel at converting business objectives into technical specs and driving tech changes.

• Proactively build and influence relationships with key leaders.

• Possess superior problem-solving, communication, and analysis abilities.

• Show an interest in exploring and adopting cutting-edge technologies.

• Can learn quickly and effectively juggle multiple priorities at once.

• Exude self-motivation and efficiency in a fast-paced setting with tight deadlines.

• Listen attentively and collaborate positively with stakeholders.

• Have experience in Lean-Agile principles and development methodologies

Where We Work
Zendesk is not your average tech company.

We have all the stuff you’d expect - competitive pay, benefits, appealing offices, snacks, and more.

We also have a culture deeply dedicated to enabling conversations and providing appreciative support.

We help our staff keep work-life balance, from flexible hours to remote work, to the most dynamic parental leave plans on the market.

Our Social Impact team is actively engaged in our community and enables us to invest thousands of hours with local community groups each year.

We invest in diversity and inclusion so that our team reflects the diversity of the world around us.

We have a whole crew dedicated to ensuring our workplace experience is top notch and welcoming for all.

Required Skill Profession