Director of Enterprise Architecture

At Fried Frank, we’re a community of 800 lawyers and 500 business services professionals across New York, Washington, DC, London, Frankfurt, and Brussels. We advise leading corporations, investment funds, and financial institutions on high-stakes M&A, securities, regulatory matters, real estate, and litigation. Our culture is grounded in our core values — excellence, integrity and collaboration — and is designed to foster continuous learning, meaningful mentorship, and lasting professional growth. We are firmly committed to pro bono service and social justice, building on a proud legacy in civil rights. Our inclusive talent strategy is a core part of our broader talent management efforts and we remain steadfast in fostering a workplace where everyone has the opportunity to grow, thrive, and become their best professional and personal selves. Our business services professionals are integral to the firm’s success, driving innovation, operational excellence and exceptional client service across all areas of the firm. We offer competitive compensation and a comprehensive benefits package, including comprehensive medical coverage, retirement plans and health and wellness initiatives designed to support your personal and professional wellbeing. We welcome passionate, driven individuals to join us, and be part of a team where you’ll be supported, inspired and empowered to build an exceptional career.

Fried Frank is seeking a Director of Enterprise Architecture to define and drive the firm's technical architecture strategy across enterprise systems, data, and applications. This is a hands-on leadership role for someone equally comfortable setting a multi-year architecture vision and sitting in a design review helping a project team solve a real problem.

The firm is in the midst of several major initiatives — implementing a third-party core data platform, migrating applications to Azure, and modernizing legacy applications and databases. This role will define the target-state architecture, documentation, and design patterns that guide that work, and will partner closely with the Director of Data Strategy (data platform/lakehouse) and Director of Development (application portfolio and delivery) to ensure those initiatives are executed consistently and well. The ideal candidate moves fluidly across Enterprise, Data, and Application Architecture — able to articulate the big picture to firm leadership and then get into the technical weeds with an engineering team.

Key Responsibilities
Architecture Strategy & Governance
•    Define and maintain the firm's enterprise architecture strategy, target-state architecture, and multi-year roadmap across applications, data, and infrastructure.
•    Establish lightweight, practical governance for architecture decisions and technology investments — appropriately scaled for a mid-size professional services firm, not a heavyweight framework for its own sake.
•    Chair or run architecture/design review for major projects, providing guidance before and during implementation.

Documentation, Standards & Patterns
•    Own the firm's architecture documentation: current-state systems inventory, target-state diagrams, and a living reference architecture for common patterns (e.g., new application onboarding, Azure landing zones, integration patterns, data access patterns).
•    Define and publish coding, integration, and design standards for the .NET/C#, SQL Server, Azure, and SharePoint environment that development teams can use day to day.
•    Keep architecture documentation current as systems evolve — this is a standing responsibility, not a one-time project.

Cloud, Application & Database Modernization
•    Define target architectures and migration patterns for moving applications and databases to Azure, including legacy .NET and SharePoint applications.
•    Evaluate and recommend modernization approaches (re-platform, refactor, replace) for legacy systems, balancing risk, cost, and business disruption.
•    Stay current on Azure architecture patterns and services relevant to the firm's environment (App Service, Azure SQL, Data Factory/Synapse or Fabric, AKS, networking/landing zones) and bring that judgment to project teams.

Data Platform Architecture
•    Define the architectural standards and patterns for the firm's data-platform-as-a-service strategy, in close partnership with the Director of Data Strategy, who owns the data lakehouse platform operationally.
•    Ensure data architecture decisions account for law-firm-specific governance needs (ethical walls, information barriers, matter-level access) in coordination with the Data Strategy and Security teams.

Hands-On Technical Leadership
•    Directly support key project implementations — this is not a purely advisory role. Expect to spend meaningful time in solution design, proof-of-concept work, and troubleshooting alongside project teams, not only producing strategy documents.
•    Mentor architects, developers, and technical leads on architectural best practices.

Stakeholder Communication & Vendor Management
•    Translate architectural concepts and tradeoffs into terms firm leadership and non-technical stakeholders can act on.
•    Evaluate emerging technologies and make clear recommendations on adoption.
•    Manage relationships with external architecture/technology vendors and consultants as needed.

Qualifications
Required
•    10–15 years of progressive technology experience, including significant time in an enterprise, data, or application architecture role.
•    Demonstrated ability to work across enterprise, data, and application architecture — not siloed in one.
•    Deep, hands-on experience with the Microsoft stack: .NET/C#, SQL Server, Azure (IaaS and PaaS), and SharePoint.
•    Direct experience architecting and/or executing cloud migrations and legacy application/database modernization.
•    Proven ability to produce architecture documentation that technical teams actually use, and to communicate architecture to executive, non-technical audiences.
•    Experience balancing strategic architecture work with hands-on involvement in project delivery.
•    Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred
•    Experience in legal or professional services, or another regulated/professional environment with similar governance and confidentiality needs.
•    TOGAF certification.
•    Azure Solutions Architect Expert certification or equivalent.
•    Experience with Power BI and modern data platform/lakehouse architectures
•    Master's degree in a technology-related discipline.