Job Description:

At Bank of America, we are guided by a common purpose to help make financial lives better through the power of every connection. We do this by driving Responsible Growth and delivering for our clients, teammates, communities and shareholders every day.

Being a Great Place to Work and providing a culture of caring is core to how we drive Responsible Growth. We are intentional about fostering an inclusive workplace where every teammate has the opportunity to succeed, build a career and contribute to our shared success. This includes attracting and developing exceptional talent, recognizing and rewarding performance, and supporting our teammates’ physical, emotional, and financial wellness through affordable, competitive and flexible benefits.

We value the unique perspectives individuals bring from all backgrounds and career paths - whether shaped by military service, community college education, or a wide range of work and life experiences. These journeys foster resilience, leadership and innovation, strengthening our workforce and positively impact the communities we serve.

Bank of America is committed to an in-office culture that supports collaboration, engagement, and career development. Our approach includes clear in-office expectations, while providing an appropriate level of flexibility based on role-specific responsibilities and business needs.

At Bank of America, you can build a successful career with opportunities to learn, grow, and make an impact. Join us!

This job is responsible for defining an architectural vision and solution that supports the strategic outcomes of the Business' Products and Services. Key responsibilities include defining the target operating environment, designing for client resiliency, assisting with solution design, and defining non-functional requirements. Job expectations include working with stakeholders and service providers aligned to the Business' strategic objectives, evaluating the impact of strategic design decisions, and contributing to the architecture roadmap.

Responsibilities:

• Works across the business, operations and technology to create the solution intent and architectural vision for complex solutions and prioritize functional and non-functional requirements into a technology backlog to enable the technology roadmap and functionality to support evolving capabilities and services
• Contributes to the creation of the architecture roadmap of defined domains (Business, Application, Data, and Technology) in support of the product roadmap and the development of best practices including standardized templates
• Clarifies the architecture, assists with system design to support implementation, and provides solution options to resolve any architectural impediments
• Facilitates solution driven discussions, leads the design of complex architectures, and finds creative solutions through knowledge of domain, practical experiments, and proof of concepts while ensuring architecture is flexible, modular, and adaptable
• Educates team members on the technology practices, standardization strategies, and best practices to create innovative solutions
• Supports the team as needed to select the technology stack required for solutions and helps select preferred technology products
• Performs design and code reviews to ensure all non-functional requirements are sufficiently met (for example, security, performance, maintainability, scalability, usability, and reliability)

• Define and maintain architecture strategies and roadmaps for perimeter security, internet-facing workloads, partner and third-party connectivity, API exposure, remote access, DMZ modernization, and cloud ingress and egress.
• Create and govern target-state architectures, reference architectures, reusable design patterns, technology standards, and non-functional requirements.
• Lead the architecture of secure, resilient, scalable, and observable solutions for internet, partner, third-party, cloud, and hybrid connectivity.
• Advance Zero Trust capabilities, including least privilege, continuous verification, identity-aware access, segmentation, micro-segmentation, and secure service-to-service communication.
• Evaluate solution designs, document architectural decisions and trade-offs, identify risks, and recommend practical mitigation strategies.
• Provide technical leadership across complex, cross-functional initiatives without direct people-management responsibility.
• Mentor architects and engineers, promote consistent architecture practices, and raise the technical capability of the broader organization.
• Partner with product managers and stakeholders to translate business and security objectives into prioritized architecture outcomes and roadmaps.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and recommend adoption, standardization, modernization, or retirement based on enterprise value and risk.
• Communicate complex architecture decisions clearly to technical teams, executives, risk partners, and other stakeholders.

This is an individual-contributor role with no direct reports. The role provides opportunities to demonstrate enterprise leadership, mentoring, stakeholder influence, and organizational accountability that can support future consideration for people-management responsibilities.

Position Summary

The Senior Architect - External Networks is an individual contributor responsible for defining the strategic architecture direction for enterprise perimeter services, external connectivity, and modern demilitarized zone (DMZ) environments.

This architect establishes architectural vision, target-state designs, reference patterns, and technology roadmaps that enable the secure exposure of applications, services, APIs, and infrastructure across internet, partner, third-party, cloud, and hybrid connectivity channels. The role advances Zero Trust principles, modern security architectures, and cloud-aligned networking patterns while balancing security, resiliency, scalability, operational excellence, and business agility.

The position serves as a senior technical authority and collaborates closely with engineering, cybersecurity, infrastructure, cloud, application development, product management, risk, and operations teams. The architect leads solution and design discussions through technical influence, provides guidance to other architects and engineers, and helps ensure enterprise solutions align with business objectives, regulatory requirements, architecture standards, and the evolving threat landscape.

Technical Expertise

• Enterprise network and network security architecture.
• Modern DMZ design, perimeter security services, and external connectivity architectures.
• Zero Trust Architecture, identity-aware access, segmentation, and micro-segmentation.
• Cloud networking and security across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
• Security controls for internet-facing applications, APIs, and partner or third-party connectivity.
• Resilient infrastructure design, observability, and non-functional requirements.
• Architecture governance, technology roadmaps, reference architectures, standards, and design patterns.

Enterprise Leadership

• Proven ability to lead through influence and establish alignment across senior technical and business stakeholders.
• Strong strategic planning, critical-thinking, decision-making, and written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to translate complex technical concepts, risks, and trade-offs into clear business outcomes.
• Experience mentoring architects and engineers and advancing consistent technical practices.
• Ability to operate as a senior individual contributor while demonstrating readiness for broader leadership opportunities.

Required Qualifications

• 15+ years of progressive experience in network engineering, network security, infrastructure architecture, or a related field.
• 10+ years of experience designing enterprise-scale network and security architectures.
• Demonstrated experience serving as a senior or lead architect for complex, cross-functional technology initiatives.

Desired Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, Cybersecurity, or a related discipline, or equivalent experience.
• Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Cybersecurity, Information Systems, Business Administration, or a related discipline.
• Experience in financial services or another highly regulated industry.
• Experience serving as a lead architect for large-scale architecture transformation programs.
• Expertise with cloud-native security architectures across Azure, AWS, and/or GCP.
• Experience with container networking, service mesh security, software-defined networking, and infrastructure automation.
• Experience supporting large-scale internet, partner, third-party, and API ecosystems.
• Experience with security architecture for digital channels, cloud-native platforms, and emerging technologies.
• Demonstrated success mentoring senior technical professionals and building alignment across architecture and engineering teams.
• Demonstrated interest and potential to grow into future people-leadership responsibilities.

Preferred Certifications

• CISSP
• CCIE (Enterprise Infrastructure or Security)
• CCDE
• AWS Certified Security - Specialty
• Microsoft Certified: Azure Security Engineer Associate
• Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert
• TOGAF
• SABSA
• GIAC security certification

Shift:

1st shift (United States of America)

Hours Per Week: 

40

Pay Transparency details

US - NJ - Jersey City - 101 Hudson St - 101 Hudson (NJ2101)

Pay and benefits information

Pay range

$140,500.00 - $205,000.00 annualized salary, offers to be determined based on experience, education and skill set.

Discretionary incentive eligible

This role is eligible to participate in the annual discretionary plan. Employees are eligible for an annual discretionary award based on their overall individual performance results and behaviors, the performance and contributions of their line of business and/or group; and the overall success of the Company.

Benefits

This role is currently benefits eligible. We provide industry-leading benefits, access to paid time off, resources and support to our employees so they can make a genuine impact and contribute to the sustainable growth of our business and the communities we serve.