Description:
Be part of a growing, successful company in an exciting and challenging field. Border States is 100% employee-owned, which means you’re empowered to make decisions, find solutions and receive rewards for your hard work.
This position will be located in: Fargo, ND or remotely any state in the US.
Application Deadline: Posted Until Filled
Please note that the position may be filled before or after the listed application deadline. Applications will only be accepted while the posting remains active.
The Senior Enterprise Architect is the senior cross-domain architect for Border States. This leader shapes enterprise architecture strategy, governs major standards, and ensures that technology investments align to a durable enterprise target state. The role oversees architecture for ERP modernization and clean core guardrails, enterprise integration and event/API patterns, master data and analytics consistency, cross platform roadmap coherence, and technology portfolio rationalization. The Enterprise Architect is accountable for enterprise coherence and enables execution through practical guardrails, clear decision processes, and strong partnership with business and technology leaders. The role engages directly with initiatives and delivery teams, emphasizing enablement over gatekeeping by making sound architectural decisions easier through practical patterns, early engagement, and coaching rather than late stage review or centralized approval.
Essential Functions
- Partners with business and technology leaders to define enterprise architecture direction and ensure major initiatives reinforce business process performance, platform coherence, and long term scalability.
- Defines and operates enterprise architecture standards, guardrails, and exception processes in coordination with the VP of Digital Transformation, CIO, Security, and domain leaders.
- Provides thought leadership in modern architecture principles, technology modernization, and enterprise wide architectural coherence.
- Evaluates SaaS platforms, vendors, and major solution designs for capability fit, integration complexity, identity and data implications, scalability, total cost of ownership, and long term portfolio alignment.
- Develops and maintains architecture artifacts—including logical, business, integration, and functional diagrams—to support engineering, applications, and security teams.
- Defines enterprise transition roadmaps for ERP, integration, data, analytics, and adjacent platforms, emphasizing clean core principles, technical debt reduction, and delivery sequencing.
- Leads architecture reviews and recommendations for major initiatives, platform changes, new technologies, and cross domain designs, ensuring alignment with approved guardrails.
- Advises senior leaders on tradeoffs involving reuse, scalability, complexity, risk, technical debt, and long term enterprise fit.
- Translates current state capabilities into future state architecture and roadmap decisions in partnership with business, process, and domain leaders.
- Establishes and governs ERP architecture guardrails for SAP modernization, including clean core principles, extensibility boundaries, and integration constraints.
- Defines and governs enterprise integration standards, including API first patterns, event driven architecture, canonical data principles, observability, resilience, and lifecycle management.
- Defines enterprise standards for master data ownership, stewardship models, domain boundaries, and governance mechanisms, and supports trustworthy analytics, certified KPIs, and semantic consistency.
- Operates a fast, documented architecture decision and exception process and ensures governance remains lightweight, pragmatic, and delivery focused.
- Defines architecture criteria for application portfolio rationalization, integration simplification, and technical debt visibility, and influences build/buy/reuse decisions through a business capability and enterprise value lens.
- Leads a federated architecture operating model and Architecture CoE, raising architecture quality across domains through early engagement, coaching, and cross functional alignment.
Non-essential Functions
- Identifies and implements process improvement ideas to reduce the overall time and/or cost of operations.
- Provides leadership that inspires peer respect, team building, continuous learning, and self-improvement.
- Maintains business continuity and disaster recovery test documentation.
- Participates, creates, contributes and/or facilitates ongoing training for application functionality / best practice / lunch and learn topics related training.
- Performs other duties as assigned by supervisor or designate.
- 4 Year STEM Degree or equivalent work experience required.
- 12+ years of progressive experience across enterprise architecture, solution architecture, or platform architecture, including significant cross-domain responsibility.
- Demonstrated experience shaping enterprise architecture decisions across ERP, integration, applications, and data.
- Proven success guiding ERP modernization or large enterprise platform transformation in a complex operating environment.
- Strong experience with modern integration patterns, including APIs, event-driven architecture, service reuse, observability, and lifecycle management.
- Strong fluency in data architecture, master data governance concepts, and analytics enablement.
- Demonstrated ability to define architecture standards and decision processes that accelerate delivery rather than slow it down.
- Strong business acumen and the ability to connect architecture decisions to operating model, risk, cost, and growth outcomes.
- Experience in wholesale distribution, industrial distribution, manufacturing distribution, or another branch-heavy, inventory-intensive, multi-site business.
- Experience with SAP S/4HANA environments and clean-core governance.
- Experience working in a federated architecture model with domain architects or embedded architecture leadership.
- Experience with post-merger integration patterns, portfolio rationalization, or enterprise platform simplification.
- Familiarity with formal architecture frameworks and structured architecture description methods; practical outcomes matter more than certification alone.
- Executive-level communication skills and proven influence without relying solely on hierarchy.
- Strong interpersonal skills and the ability to build trusted relationships across technical and business teams.
- Excellent customer service skills include being courteous, responsive, accurate and competent and engaged.
- Strong planning, organization, and prioritization skills.
- Ability to communicate effectively with technical and non-technical audiences across a variety of settings.
- Ability to work independently and collaboratively to achieve shared goals.
- Ability to gain consensus, make decisions, and take ownership of outcomes.
- Strong analytical skills and the ability to quickly understand the drivers of a business process.
- Demonstrated leadership ability and strong teamwork orientation.
- Ability to work seamlessly across geographical, functional, and cultural boundaries.
- Self-starter with a proactive, solutions-oriented mindset.
Ability to develop and maintain effective working relationships with customers, vendors, and other partners while representing the company’s reputation.
- Enterprise thinking across business capabilities, processes, applications, data, and platforms.
- Ability to simplify complexity and frame tradeoffs clearly for executives.
- Comfort setting guardrails without introducing unnecessary bureaucracy.
- Strong judgment in balancing speed, standardization, and long-term scalability.
- Credibility with domain leaders, architects, engineering teams, and business stakeholders.
Frequency at which you would carry/lift in a typical day:
Occasionally 0 – 33% Frequently 34 – 66% Continuously: 67 – 100%
- Lift from Waist:
- < than 10 lbs. - Not at all
- 10 to 25 lbs. - Not at all
- 26 to 50 lbs. - Not at all
- 51 to 75 lbs. - Not at all
- 75 to 100 lbs. - Not at all
- 100+ lbs. - Not at all
- Lift from Floor:
- < than 10 lbs. - Frequently
- 10 to 25 lbs. - Occasionally
- 26 to 50 lbs. - Occasionally
- 51 to 75 lbs. - Not at all
- 75 to 100 lbs. - Not at all
- 100+ lbs. - Not at all
- Carried for Distance:
- < than 10 lbs. - Not at all
- 10 to 25 lbs. - Not at all
- 26 to 50 lbs. - Not at all
- 51 to 75 lbs. - Not at all
- 75 to 100 lbs. - Not at all
- 100+ lbs. - Not at all
Frequency at which you would do the following in a typical day:
- Sitting (a continuous period of being seated) - Continuously
- Standing (for sustained periods of time) - Frequently
- Walking (moving about on foot to accomplish tasks) - Frequently
- Bending/stooping (downward and forward) - Occasionally
- Crawling (moving about on hands and knees or hands and feet) - Not at all
- Climbing/Walking Stairs (ascending or descending) - Occasionally
- Reaching (extending arms in any direction) - Frequently
- Crouching/squatting (bending the body downward and forward by bending leg and spine) - Occasionally
- Kneeling (bending legs at knee to come to rest on knee(s)) - Occasionally
- Balancing (maintaining body equilibrium to prevent falling) - Occasionally
- Repetitive motion (substantial movement (motions) or the wrists, hands, and/or fingers) - Continuously
- Pivoting (movement in any direction with one foot, keeping the other in contact with the floor) - Occasionally
- Pushing/Pulling (using upper extremities to press against or draw or tug) - Occasionally
- Grasping (Applying pressure to an object with the fingers and palm) - Continuously
- Fingering (picking, pinching, typing; working with primarily fingers and not whole hand) - Continuously
- Talking (expressing or exchanging ideas by means of the spoken word) - Frequently
- Driving (the control and operation of a motor vehicle) - Occasionally
- Desk work (work usually performed at a desk) - Continuously
- Use of a computer - Continuously
- Use of a telephone - Frequently
- Hearing (Perceiving the nature of sounds at normal speaking levels) - Continuously
- Exposure (to adverse weather & temperature conditions) - Not at all
- Travel (travel needed to perform job duties) - Occasionally
This job description is a summary of the job duties and responsibilities and is not intended to cover all possible job duties and is subject to change at the employer’s discretion. Employees must be able to perform the essential job duties and satisfy job requirements either with or without a reasonable accommodation.Salary range is $169,000.00 - $230,000.00 based on experience.
Our History
Border States is a leader in the electrical supply distribution industry with approximately 130 locations in 31 states. Our employee-owners are second to none in delivering top-notch customer service and in demonstrating extra-ordinary people skills. We are one of the largest independent electrical distributors in the United States providing products and services to the construction, industrial and utility industries. Border States has a competitive benefit package and is a 100 percent employee-owned company. Employee-ownership is a significant part of our culture and our success stems from the dedication of our employee-owners. We practice open-book management and our employee-owners are empowered with clearly defined levels of authority to be innovative and decisive, allowing us to respond quickly to the needs of customers. Employee-owners understand their roles in the success of the company and care about customers’ needs, which drives our focus on adding value to everything we do. We recognize that not all customers are the same and each has specific requirements. Our employee-owners understand these diverse needs and have the commitment, resourcefulness and flexibility to outperform all others.
Values
As a Border States employee-owner, you’re responsible for living our mission, service philosophy and service standards.
Our Purpose
We believe unstoppable businesses shouldn't go it alone. We are owners - of relationships, of outcomes, of every moment these unstoppable businesses need to deliver.
Service Philosophy
We earn customer loyalty and confidence by caring about their needs and adding value to everything we do.
Service Standards
Border States employee-owners are competent, accurate, responsive, and engaged .
Your career
Join an experienced team at one of the largest electrical distributors in the United States. What are you waiting for?
Border States has a competitive benefits package which includes but is not limited to:
Health, Dental and Vision Benefits
Accident, Critical Illness, Hospital Indemnity
FSA & HSA
Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP)
Disability Benefits
401(k) Retirement Plan
Life Insurance
Employee Assistance Program
Paid Holidays
Paid Volunteer Time
Personal Leave time and more!
Border States provides bonuses to their employee-owners upon the achievement of branch and company goals.
Equal Opportunity For All
It’s not just the law. It’s something we’ve believed in since our founding. We value the diversity of all of our employee-owners and will always be an equal opportunity employer.
Drug Free/Smoke Free workplace
Employment may be contingent on the offered candidate successfully passing one or more of the following pre-employment screenings:
- Criminal background check (required for all positions)
- Motor Vehicle Record (MVR) check (required for positions involving driving)
- Drug testing
The MVR check and drug testing vary by role and will be communicated to the offered candidate during the onboarding process and as applicable.
