Bellevue, Washington, United States
Onsite
Howden is a global insurance group with employee ownership at its heart. Together, we have pushed the boundaries of insurance. We are united by a shared passion and no-limits mindset, and our strength lies in our ability to collaborate as a powerful international team comprised of 24,000 employees spanning over 56 countries.
People join Howden for many different reasons, but they stay for the same one: our culture. It’s what sets us apart, and the reason our employees have been turning down headhunters for years. Whatever your priorities – work / life balance, career progression, sustainability, volunteering – you’ll find like-minded people driving change at Howden.
Domain Architect — Health & Benefits (H&B)
Location: United States (Hybrid/Remote options considered)
Reports to: Head of Architecture, Howden US
Employment Type: Full-time, Exempt
Who are we?
Howden is a collective – a group of talented and passionate people all around the world. Together, we have pushed the boundaries of insurance. We are united by a shared passion and no-limits mind-set, and our strength lies in our ability to collaborate as a powerful international team comprised of 20,000 employees spanning over 100 countries.
Our people are our biggest asset as well as our largest shareholder group and are everything that makes us unique; our inclusive culture, the quality service we offer our clients, and our continued growth, all come from our people-first approach. There’s no such thing as individual success. We all need to play our part, contributing our skills and experience to make a true difference. That’s Howden.
Why work at Howden?
We have always been employee-owned and driven by entrepreneurial spirit. Right from the beginning, we've focused on employing talented individuals and empowering them to make a real difference to the company, whilst building successful and fulfilling careers at the same time. Simply put, we hire talented specialists and give them what they need to make a difference for clients.
Always have, always will.
People join Howden for many different reasons, but they stay for the same one: our culture. It’s what sets us apart, and the reason our employees have been turning down disappointed head- hunters for years. Whatever your priorities – work/life balance, career progression, sustainability, volunteering – you’ll find like-minded people driving change at Howden.
What is the role?
As the Domain Architect — Health & Benefits, you will own the technology design, architecture and strategic roadmap for the H&B line of business. You will design and deliver a future-state, fully integrated, AI-enabled platform and collaboration model that supports end-to-end client and colleague journey maps for H&B. This role is both strategic and hands-on, you will define architecture standards, lead vendor selection, prototype AI/agentic solutions, and deliver reference architectures and guardrails to accelerate H&B transformation.
You will partner with business, operations, analytics, security, product and engineering teams to ensure our H&B technology stack is secure, compliant, scalable, and optimized to create differentiated client experiences and a colleague-centric workplace.
What success looks like
A clear, executable H&B technology roadmap and target architecture that maps to client and colleague journeys.
An operational Howden Intelligence blueprint for H&B: document ingestion, feature store, model registry/MLOps, knowledge graph & RAG, LLM strategy, explainability & monitoring.
Production-ready integration patterns and APIs across CRM, AMS, Benefit Admin, client & employee experience platforms.
Secure, compliant architecture designs for regulated datasets (HIPAA, GDPR, state health privacy laws) and vendor/partner integration.
Rapid delivery of prototype agentic capabilities (e.g., quote / SBC comparison, loss-run normalization, member cost prediction) with human-AI collaboration patterns and governance.
What will you be doing?
Architecture & Vision
Own the H&B domain architecture and roadmap, from strategy to tactical delivery.
Produce an end-to-end future-state architecture that maps directly to client & colleague journey maps.
Define canonical data models, integration patterns and API contracts consistent with the Digital Backbone architecture and Howden Intelligence layer.
AI & Agentic Architecture
Design agentic and human-AI collaboration architectures: RAG agents, LLM orchestration, human-in-the-loop, and approval flows.
Define MLOps & model governance, model registry, feature store, explainability, fairness checks, drift detection, and deployment patterns.
Lead prototyping of AI use cases across H&B (quote / SBC comparison, loss run standardization, member cost prediction) and convert prototypes to production blueprints.
Integration & Platform Design
Architect robust integrations between CRM (Howden Client), AMS/broking systems (Applied Epic / Plansight), Benefit Administration systems, client portals, and employee experience platforms.
Design message/event-based and API-first integration patterns using Azure Integration Services, API Management, Event Hubs or equivalent.
Design orchestration for long-running workflows and synchronous APIs for client/producer UIs.
Data & Analytics
Define how large data feeds (MarketScan, claims, pharmacy, provider data) integrate into the data lake/lakehouse (Databricks Delta) for H&B analytics.
Specify ingestion patterns, bronze/silver/gold pipelines, feature engineering pipelines and offline/online feature serving.
Security, Compliance & Governance
Design secure architectures for regulated data: data residency, encryption (at rest/in transit), key management (Key Vault), identity (Entra ID/AAD), RBAC, audit trails and logging.
Ensure architecture meets SOC2/ISO27001 / HIPAA / GDPR / state laws and supports compliance reviews and audits.
Define governance for partner data (Unity Catalog, Delta Sharing), data anonymization, and access controls for LLM usage.
Leadership & Delivery
Lead vendor evaluations and vendor-ecosystem decisions (buy vs build), create procurement artefacts and drive commercial/technical evaluations.
Work cross-functionally with Product, Consulting, Data Science, Security and Engineering to deliver architecture into roadmaps.
Create architecture patterns, runbooks, reference implementations and acceptance criteria for engineering teams.
Mentor and guide engineers, data scientists and solution architects in the H&B domain.
Communicate complex technical decisions to CXO stakeholders and business leaders in business terms
What are we looking for?
Qualifications:
Minimum qualifications
15+ years in enterprise/solutions architecture or technology leadership, preferably with experience in benefits, health, insurance, HR tech or healthcare.
Proven experience designing cloud-native architectures (Azure strongly preferred; experience with Databricks) and with Data Lake/Lakehouse patterns.
Deep knowledge of integrations: APIs, event streaming (Event Hubs/Kafka), API Management.
Demonstrable experience with LLM architecture, RAG designs, vector DBs, knowledge graphs, and agent orchestration.
Strong background in designing secure systems for regulated industries (HIPAA, SOC2, ISO27001, GDPR) and applying compliance controls.
Track record of vendor evaluation and integration of best-of-breed SaaS platforms and custom systems.
Excellent communicator and stakeholder influencer with experience presenting to executive leadership.
Strong engineering judgement and ability to lead greenfield programs while establishing sustainable engineering practices.
Behavioral & leadership
Strategic thinker with an entrepreneurial, product-driven mindset.
Comfortable in ambiguity and able to translate business journeys into executable technical strategies.
Strong collaborator: able to work with consulting, product, data science, security and engineering teams.
Hands-on: able to prototype, review code/design and accelerate delivery when needed.
Desirable
Experience with Regulated Health Data (MarketScan or similar), benefit administration systems, Avante/Certilytics, Zywave or BenAdmin vendors.
Prior exposure to implementing Unity Catalog / Databricks serverless or similar privacy-preserving technologies.
Deliverables & Accountabilities
H&B Target Architecture & Roadmap, with a staged delivery plan.
End-to-end client & colleague journey maps mapped to technology and governance requirements.
Howden Intelligence blueprint for H&B (ingestion → feature store → MLOps → RAG → agents).
Standards & integration patterns (API contracts, event topics) and a set of reference implementations.
Security & compliance architecture, including partner data governance.
Vendor selection recommendations and architecture governance model.
Measurable KPIs and success metrics for platform adoption and business outcomes.
Compensation and Benefits
The expected base salary range for this role is $225,000 - $275,000, depending on experience and location. This role is classified as exempt under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).
In addition to a competitive base salary, employees are eligible to receive a discretionary bonus. Howden also offers a variety of benefits and programs, subject to eligibility, including:
Medical, dental, and vision insurance, including healthcare savings and reimbursement accounts
401(k) retirement plan
Flexible Paid Time Off and paid parental leave
Life and Disability insurance
Our sustainability promise
We’re on a life-long journey to become an ever-more sustainable group. It's a commitment to taking care of our people and the world we live in, to doing good business, and to making a positive impact wherever we can. Our governance processes, company policies, and review systems are all geared towards our goal of making a positive impact in the world. You can read more about our sustainability work here.
A career that you define. At Howden, we value diversity – there is no one Howden type. Instead, we’re looking for individuals who share the same values as us:
Our successes have all come from someone brave enough to try something new
We support each other in the small everyday moments and the bigger challenges
We are determined to make a positive difference at work and beyond
We're committed to providing reasonable accommodations at Howden to ensure that our positions align well with your needs. Besides the usual adjustments such as software, IT, and office setups, we can also accommodate other changes such as flexible hours* or hybrid working*.
If you're excited by this role but have some doubts about whether it’s the right fit for you, send us your application – if your profile fits the role’s criteria, we will be in touch to assist in helping to get you set up with any reasonable adjustments you may require.
*Not all positions can accommodate changes to working hours or locations. Reach out to your Recruitment Partner if you want to know more.
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