Director - Guidewire Architecture

Talent500 is hiring for one of its clients.

Who are we:

Core Insurance Platforms (CIP) is Zurich's global capability responsible for building, running, and evolving core insurance technology. We set a unified, scalable operating model—covering governance, standards, architecture, service delivery, and reuse—so our business units can deliver at speed and scale.

CIP is the strategic steward of Zurich's Guidewire ecosystem, aligning platform roadmaps to business strategy while driving stability, modernization, reduced supplier dependency, and long term cost efficiency.

India delivery Center is one of our global delivery and capability hub. We bring together experts in AI, engineering, analysis, quality, and architecture to deliver product & process solutions, application run services, change and transformation initiatives, and centralized platform services across both on prem and Guidewire Cloud environments. Our teams operate from multiple global delivery centers, supporting Zurich's business units worldwide.

Why you'll love working here:

• Work at enterprise scale – Build and run mission critical platforms used across countries and lines of business.
• Real engineering impact – Focus on reuse, standardization, and long-term platform health, not one-off custom work.
• Strong growth pathways – Clear career progression, mentoring, and a dedicated Guidewire academy.
• Modern ways of working – AI-first project management, engineering, maintenance & IT Ops.
• Global collaboration – Work with talented peers across geographies and disciplines.
• Ownership culture – You're trusted to make decisions, solve real problems, and see your work in action.
• If you want to build deep Guidewire expertise, work on platforms that truly matter, and grow your career in a global, forward-looking team— Zurich is the place to do it.

As a Head of Architecture - Insurance Core Suite, you will:

Architectural Governance & Strategy:

• Define and ensure adherence to enterprise architecture principles and standards for Guidewire platforms.
• Lead solution design oversight to ensure scalable, secure, and maintainable implementations.
• Rationalize technology stacks, promote component and integration reuse across business units.
• Own the lifecycle management of Guidewire components, including roadmap planning and decommissioning.
• Drive instance upgrade and migrations to Guidewire Cloud.

Cross-Functional Coordination:

• Collaborate with architects and technical leads across business units to ensure alignment and adoption of architectural standards.
• Facilitate architecture review boards and governance forums.

Compliance & Regulatory Oversight:

• Ensure contractual compliance and alignment with regulatory requirements across all Guidewire implementations.

Environment & Resource Management:

• Govern environment provisioning, usage, and capacity planning to optimize resource utilization and cost efficiency.

Performance & Service Management:

• Define and monitor SLAs for Guidewire services.
• Oversee production performance monitoring and incident response frameworks.

Security & Access Governance:

• Establish identity and access control policies across environments.
• Implement centralized audit trails and logging for compliance and operational transparency.

Qualifications Required:

• Overall, 18-20 years of experience required.
• Proven experience in enterprise architecture leadership.
• Deep expertise in Guidewire platforms & products, exposure to both retail & commercial implementations and cloud transformation.
• Strong understanding of architectural governance, compliance frameworks, and performance management.
• Exceptional communication and stakeholder management skills.
• Experience leading architectural teams and embedding teams to delivery frameworks.

AI Experience (Mandatory):

Candidates must demonstrate practical AI experience in at least two of the following three areas:

AI for Customer or Business Value:

• Proven use of AI tools or solutions to improve productivity, quality, or outcomes, or to deliver measurable value to customers or stakeholders.

AI in Day-to-Day Operations:

• Active use of AI to enhance personal or team effectiveness (e.g., productivity, development, testing, analysis, documentation, or workflow optimization).

Enterprise AI Contribution:

• Tangible involvement in enterprise AI initiatives, such as platform adoption, innovation programs, governance, enablement, or scaling AI across the organization.
• Candidates must be able to clearly articulate concrete examples and outcomes.

Candidate Data Privacy Notice:

Applicability of This Notice This job posting relates to opportunities with Zurich Digital International Private Ltd. (Zurich) and is published with the support of ANSR Inc., (ANSR) an authorized recruitment service provider engaged by Zurich for its hiring activities.

Participation in the Recruitment Process : When you apply for this role, personal data provided as part of your application (such as your name, email address, contact details, address, financial information, background information, medical history, and details of previous employers/employment) is collected for the purposes of recruitment and selection and may be reviewed by Zurich, and transferred/disclosed to Zurich's affiliates, subsidiaries, and related entities and ANSR (Transferees), solely for recruitment and selection purposes (in accordance with their respective privacy policies).

The Transferees maintain at least the same level of protection for your data as maintained by Zurich, and do not further transfer/disclose/share or publish your data.

For information on how your personal data is processed by ANSR, including your rights and how to contact the relevant data protection office.

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