Principal Cybersecurity Architect / Cybersecurity Strategist
Job Level: Principal Architect (P6) Reports To: Sr. Director, Strategy, Architecture & Data Services Type: Full- time
Role Summary
The Principal Cybersecurity Architect is a senior, high-impact individual contributor responsible for defining, shaping, and driving McKesson’s enterprise-wide cybersecurity strategy and architectural direction. This role sets the long-term (3-, 5-, and 10+ year) cybersecurity vision across all business units, technologies, and security domains, ensuring a resilient, modern, and future-ready security posture. Operating at enterprise and executive level, the Principal Architect partners closely with senior technology and business leaders to assess current maturity, identify technical debt and modernization opportunities, and define the target state architecture. The role brings deep external perspective into McKesson — translating industry trends, emerging threats, and vendor innovation into pragmatic, enterprise-scale strategy. The successful candidate will act as McKesson’s strategic cybersecurity authority, influencing internal architecture and operations as well as external technology providers, while representing the organization as a trusted voice within the global cybersecurity community.
Key Responsibilities
Strategy & Enterprise Architecture Leadership
Define and govern the enterprise cybersecurity strategy, architecture vision, principles, standards, patterns, and reference architectures (e.g. Zero Trust, cloud-native, identity-centric, data-centric security).
Lead assessment of current cybersecurity maturity and define multi-year roadmaps to move the organization “from good to great.”
Identify enterprise-wide risk, technical debt, architectural gaps, and opportunities for simplification and modernization.
Drive consistency and alignment across all cybersecurity domains including IAM, network, endpoint, cloud, application, data security, threat management, resilience, and emerging technologies.
Executive Partnership & Strategic Influence
Partner closely with executive leadership (CISO, CIO/CTO, Enterprise Architecture, Risk, Legal, Data & AI leadership) to align cybersecurity strategy with business objectives and technology roadmaps.
Influence architecture, engineering, operations, PMO, and delivery teams to ensure enterprise adoption of strategic security direction.
Translate complex security and architectural concepts into clear, executive-level narratives tied to risk reduction, resilience, and business value.
Market, Vendor & Industry Leadership
Actively track evolving threat landscapes, industry trends, and emerging security technologies.
Influence and shape strategic technology provider roadmaps (e.g. cloud, identity, network, platform security vendors) to meet McKesson’s enterprise needs.
Represent McKesson externally through conferences, forums, white papers, panels, and industry initiatives; contribute thought leadership back into the cybersecurity community.
Maintain strong peer networks across enterprise cybersecurity leaders and practitioners.
Technology Foresight & Threat-Informed Strategy
Anticipate disruptive technologies and future security challenges (e.g. Zero Trust evolution, AI security, SASE, confidential computing, post-quantum cryptography).
Embed threat-informed and forward-looking security thinking into architecture and long-term planning.
Ensure strategies remain adaptable as adversary capabilities, technology platforms, and regulatory requirements evolve.
Information Protection, Ethics & Governance
Guide enterprise approaches to information protection, privacy, and ethical use of data, including classification, encryption, DLP, and privacy-by-design.
Embed security-by-design principles into platforms, products, and data initiatives, including responsible and secure AI adoption.
Strengthen security governance models, decision forums, architecture reviews, and exception handling to support enterprise-scale consistency.
Enablement & Advisory Leadership
Provide strategic architectural guidance for critical initiatives, acquisitions, modernization programs, and complex enterprise decisions.
Serve as a trusted advisor to architects, security leaders, and engineers across the organization.
Build and sustain a strong architecture community through mentorship, reusable patterns, and shared standards.
Required Skills
12+ years broad technology and security experience spanning legacy platforms through modern and emerging architectures.
Proven experience defining and driving enterprise-wide cybersecurity strategy within large, complex, multinational or Fortune‑100-scale environments.
Demonstrated ability to influence architecture and technology direction across diverse business units without formal authority.
Strong background across multiple cybersecurity domains including IAM, Zero Trust, cloud, network, application, data security, risk, and compliance.
Experience modernizing environments, reducing technical debt, and guiding large-scale architectural change.
Executive-level communication skills with the ability to simplify complex topics and build trusted senior relationships.
Recognised external industry presence (e.g. conference speaker, author, contributor, or well‑known practitioner).
Ability to translate industry trends, threat intelligence, and vendor capabilities into actionable enterprise strategy.
Preferred Skills
Enterprise architecture credentials (TOGAF or equivalent such as SABSA or Zachman).
Experience influencing or partnering directly with major technology providers and hyperscalers.
Background in healthcare, regulated industries, or large-scale global operations.
Experience supporting M&A, joint ventures, or major enterprise transformations.
Recognition at a Technical Fellow / Distinguished Architect or Engineer level within the industry.
Benefits
As part of Total Rewards, we are proud to offer a competitive compensation package that supports physical, mental, and financial well‑being. This includes a comprehensive benefits portfolio that meets the diverse needs of our employees.
Pay Range
€101,300 - €168,800
#J-18808-Ljbffr