Senior Business Architect in St Paul, Minnesota at American Engineering Testing Inc

About Us

At American Engineering Testing (AET), we believe that people are the heart of innovation. We create an environment that values teamwork, curiosity, and continuous improvement while delivering innovative engineering and consulting solutions. As a 100% employee-owned firm, we deliver comprehensive testing, analysis, and design to reduce uncertainty in construction projects and offer rewarding work, exceptional training, and career development opportunities.

Job Summary

The Senior Business Architect owns the business process design of AET's strategic plan and the partnership with IT that turns the design into working systems. This is a senior individual contributor role in the Strategy and Growth function, reporting to the VP of Strategy and Growth.

AET is executing a multi-year enterprise transformation to scale the organization, standardize how we deliver work, and build the systems, processes, and leadership capabilities that will define AET for the next decade. The VP of Strategy and Growth owns AET's strategic program. The Senior Business Architect owns how the company strategy is designed into processes, capabilities, and technology, and keeps the program on track as it is built.

The role sits at the intersection of business architecture, program execution, and cross-functional facilitation. It is the connective tissue between decisions made by the Senior Leadership Team (SLT), the functional workstreams that carry them out, and the IT teams and vendors that build the supporting systems.

The ideal candidate is analytically strong, highly organized, fluent in both business and technical language, and comfortable creating structure in ambiguity.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

Business Architecture and Design

• Own the future-state process and capability design for Road to 2030 initiatives. This is the business blueprint that IT teams and vendors build against.
• Document current-state processes and design future-state workflows, identifying where to standardize, simplify, or automate
• Set business architecture standards for initiative teams, including process-mapping conventions, requirements templates, and design documentation
• Identify where design decisions are incomplete, conflicting, or unclear, and drive them to resolution before they affect implementation
• Define the data and reporting requirements behind program KPIs so leadership can measure transformation outcomes

IT Partnership and Technology Enablement

• Serve as the primary business-side partner to IT leadership on transformation-related technology, translating business processes into actionable technology outcomes
• Co-own the business-to-technology roadmap with IT, sequencing which processes are automated, replaced, or integrated, and when
• Lead requirements elicitation through interviews, workshops, and working sessions with subject matter experts, producing detailed requirements that IT and vendors can build against
• Act as business design authority on system implementations: review and sign off on solution designs, define acceptance criteria, and confirm that what is built reflects what was required
• Flag gaps between requirements and delivered solutions early, and work with IT to resolve them before go-live
• Lead vendor evaluation end to end, including scoring criteria, demonstrations, fit-gap analysis, and a recommendation to the SLT

Program Execution

• Maintain the integrated program roadmap, initiative work plans, dependency log, and RAID log across all active Road to 2030 initiatives
• Partner with initiative leads to keep work plans current and realistic, and track progress against milestones
• Surface risks and dependencies early and escalate proactively
• Define the project management templates, standards, and operating rhythms initiative teams use to run their work
• Document design decisions, scope changes, and key outcomes throughout the program lifecycle
• Support monthly program updates, executive briefings, and Board-level materials with the VP of Strategy and Growth

Cross-Functional Facilitation

• Design and facilitate working sessions across functions, including readiness reviews, workstream integration sessions, and decision-making forums
• Coordinate the cross-initiative governance calendar, including agendas, materials, summaries, and decision tracking
• Maintain the readiness inventory and gate criteria across functional areas, validating progress with business and IT leaders
• Ensure initiative owners who depend on each other have the forums, information, and structured conversations they need to stay aligned

Required Qualifications and Education Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in business, information systems, engineering, or a related field

• 8 or more years of experience in business architecture, business analysis, transformation, or strategy execution, including significant time partnering with IT on system or process change
• Hands-on experience with at least one enterprise system implementation (ERP, project management, CRM, or similar) from requirements through go-live
• Experience leading vendor evaluations and selection
• Proficiency in process and workflow modeling and requirements documentation tools
• Preferred: experience in professional services, engineering, or project-based organizations

Preferred Skills

• You move fluidly between business and technical language. Both sides of the conversation trust you to translate accurately and without losing nuance.

• You ask the questions that surface what stakeholders actually need, not just what they say they want
• You design solutions, not just document them, and you can defend a design to business and IT leaders alike
• You run productive working sessions: you come prepared, move groups from discussion to decision, and follow through
• You hold multiple workstreams in your head and notice when something is off-track or misaligned before it becomes someone else's problem
• You write clearly, giving people exactly what they need without making them read more than necessary
• You build trust quickly across functions and levels, and get things done through influence rather than authority
• You create structure in ambiguity and adapt when priorities shift without losing momentum
• You take pride in the details, because a missed requirement or undocumented decision creates rework downstream

Pay Transparency

Base compensation is expected to be in the range of $95,000 to $130,000 per year based on skill set and experience. AET offers a comprehensive benefits package, including health benefits, insurance, Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP), long-term savings, paid time off, and professional development opportunities. The selected candidate must be authorized to work for any employer in the U.S. without requiring visa sponsorship now or in the future.

Work Environment

This job primarily operates in a professional office environment. This role routinely uses standard office equipment such as computers, phones, photocopiers, and filing cabinets. The position offers a hybrid work schedule in accordance with AET’s hybrid work policy, provided that daily responsibilities do not require onsite presence.

Physical Demands

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to talk and hear. The employee frequently is required to stand; walk; use hands or fingers, handle or feel; and reach with hands and arms. The employee is occasionally required to sit; climb or balance, and stoop, kneel, crouch, or crawl. The employee must frequently lift and/or move up to 10 pounds and occasionally lift and/or move up to 25 pounds. Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, distance vision, color vision, peripheral vision, depth perception, and ability to adjust focus.

Other Duties

Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties, or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. Duties, responsibilities, and activities may change at any time with or without notice.

Third Party Disclosure

Notice to Third Party Agencies: AET does not accept unsolicited resumes from third party recruiting firms. Absent a signed Service Agreement by AET’s Chief People Officer (CPO), AET reserves the right to pursue and hire these candidates without financial obligation to recruiters or agencies.