Principal Analyst, Enterprise Architecture

Principal Analyst, Enterprise Architecture

The Principal Analyst, Enterprise Architecture provides strategic leadership to ensure technology investments, transformation initiatives, and architectural decisions are aligned with Smurfit Westrock's business objectives, operating model, and long-term technology strategy. The role serves as a trusted advisor to business and IT leaders, helping the organization reduce complexity, manage risk, accelerate transformation, and maximize the value of technology investments.

How you will impact Smurfit Westrock:

The Principal Analyst, Enterprise Architecture plays a critical role in helping Smurfit Westrock realize greater value from its technology investments by ensuring technology strategy, architecture, and delivery are aligned with business objectives. The role drives enterprise-wide consistency, reduces complexity, and enables informed decision-making across business and IT organizations.

By establishing architectural standards, governance processes, and target-state roadmaps, the Principal Analyst, Enterprise Architecture helps prevent duplicate investments, manage technology risk, and promote the reuse of enterprise capabilities. The role provides leadership for major transformation initiatives, ensuring programs deliver business value while advancing the organization's long-term technology strategy.

Key outcomes include:

• Improved alignment between business strategy and technology investments.
• More effective governance and decision-making for enterprise-impacting initiatives.
• Reduced technology complexity, redundancy, and technical debt.
• Successful delivery of strategic transformation programs and modernization efforts.
• Increased visibility into business capabilities, applications, technologies, and dependencies through enterprise architecture practices and tools.
• Stronger data, integration, and AI foundations that support innovation and operational efficiency.
• Greater collaboration and alignment across business units, regions, and technology teams.

What you need to succeed:

• Bachelor's degree in Information Systems, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related discipline; advanced degree preferred.
• Extensive experience in enterprise architecture, solution architecture, technology strategy, or related leadership roles.
• Demonstrated experience leading enterprise-scale transformation, governance, and architecture initiatives.
• Strong executive communication, stakeholder management, and cross-functional leadership skills.
• Defining target-state architectures, roadmaps, standards, and architectural guardrails.
• Experience assessing and rationalizing application portfolios to reduce complexity, duplication, technical debt, cost, and risk while promoting reuse of enterprise capabilities.
• Providing governance and oversight through enterprise processes such as Architecture Boards.
• Supporting major transformation initiatives, including ERP modernization, enterprise platform initiatives, data strategy, AI enablement, and business integration efforts.
• Experience using business capabilities, processes, applications, information, and technology to connect business strategy with technology investment decisions.
• Experience maintaining enterprise architecture repositories, capability models, technology standards, application portfolios, integrations, and dependencies using tools such as HOPEX or similar EA platforms.
• Broad knowledge across applications, cloud, infrastructure, security, data, integration, AI, and emerging technologies, with the ability to evaluate cross-domain architectural trade-offs.
• Ability to evaluate technology decisions based on business value, investment priorities, total cost of ownership, risk, scalability, and long-term strategic fit.
• Demonstrated ability to build consensus, facilitate complex decisions, and influence business and technology leaders across functions, regions, and technology domains without relying on direct authority.
• TOGAF, cloud architecture, or other relevant architecture certifications preferred but not required.

What we offer:

• Corporate culture based on loyalty, integrity, & respect.
• Comprehensive training with numerous learning and development opportunities.
• An attractive salary reflecting skills, competencies, and potential.
• A career with a global packaging company where Sustainability, Safety and Inclusion are business drivers and foundational elements of the daily work.

Smurfit Westrock (NYSE:SW) is the go-to leader and partner of choice in sustainable packaging. We are dedicated to creating efficient and scalable paper and packaging solutions to help solve complex packaging challenges. Guided by our values of safety, loyalty, integrity and respect, we are committed to delivering meaningful value for shareholders, customers, employees and the communities where we operate.

Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, protected veteran status or other characteristics protected by state or federal law.