Service Management Platform Architect

VERSANT (Nasdaq: VSNT) is an industry-changing media and entertainment business and home to trusted brands that shape culture, inform audiences, and build lasting connections. It operates across four core markets: political news and opinion, business news and personal finance, golf, and sports and genre entertainment. These markets are served through a powerful portfolio of iconic and innovative brands, including CNBC, MS NOW, USA Network, Golf Channel, Oxygen, E!, SYFY, and Versant's sports division USA Sports, along with complementary digital assets including Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, GolfNow and GolfPass. The Architect, Service Management Platform is the enterprise owner and senior technical authority for the company’s Service Management platform (including, but not limited to, Service-Now). Reporting to the VP of Infrastructure, this role is responsible for platform architecture, governance, enterprise integrations, and the leadership of the Service Management development team. This leader will define and execute the long-term vision for building a strategic enterprise workflow and automation platform, ensuring scalability, security, reliability, and alignment with business priorities across all environments (Dev, QA, Prod). Responsibilities Platform Architecture & Strategy Own the overall architecture, roadmap, and lifecycle management of the Service Management platform. Establish architectural standards, design principles, and development best practices. Ensure platform scalability, maintainability, performance, and long-term sustainability. Evaluate new modules and capabilities aligned to enterprise strategy. Serve as the final authority on platform design decisions and technical direction. Enterprise Integrations & Automation Define and lead integration strategy between Service Management Platform and enterprise systems, including HR platforms, financial systems, identity tools, and other core business applications. Architect API-driven and event-based integrations ensuring reliability and data integrity. Design and oversee end-to-end process automation and workflow orchestration. Drive automation initiatives to reduce manual processes and improve operational efficiency. Leverage collaboration platforms such as Slack as workflow interfaces for approvals, notifications, and operational interactions (strongly preferred experience). Development Team Leadership Lead, mentor, and manage a team of developers and administrators. Oversee backlog prioritization, sprint planning, and delivery execution. Ensure adherence to architectural standards and quality controls. Establish documentation, testing, and release management discipline across Dev, QA, and Production environments. Support talent development and capability building within the team. CMDB & Change Management Governance Design and govern a robust CMDB framework with clear ownership and lifecycle standards. Ensure data accuracy, alignment with infrastructure systems, and ongoing data stewardship. Establish and mature change management processes and workflows. Support audit readiness and compliance requirements. Platform Operations & Governance Ensure stable day-to-day platform operations and performance optimization. Oversee upgrades, patches, instance strategy, and technical debt management. Establish role-based access controls and security governance standards. Define KPIs and performance metrics to measure platform effectiveness and value realization. Manage vendor relationship and licensing strategy. Stakeholder & Executive Engagement Serve as the company’s top SME for Service-Now and other Service Management Platforms and trusted advisor to senior leadership. Partner with Infrastructure, Security, HR, Finance, and other business leaders to translate needs into scalable platform solutions. Provide executive reporting on roadmap progress, integration strategy, and platform health. Promote enterprise adoption, standardization, and process maturity. Extensive experience architecting and leading ServiceNow or similar platforms in a complex enterprise environment. Strong experience integrating ServiceNow or other similar platforms with HR systems, financial platforms, identity providers, and other core enterprise applications. Deep expertise in workflow automation, orchestration, and API-based integrations. Experience leveraging Slack or similar collaboration tools as workflow interfaces strongly preferred. Demonstrated experience managing and developing high-performing technical teams. Strong knowledge of ITSM processes, CMDB governance, and change management frameworks. Experience managing multi-environment development lifecycles (Dev/QA/Prod). Strong executive communication and cross-functional leadership skills. As part of our selection process, external candidates may be required to attend an in-person interview with a VERSANT Media employee at one of our locations prior to a hiring decision. VERSANT Media's policy is to provide equal employment opportunities to all applicants and employees without regard to race, color, religion, creed, gender, gender identity or expression, age, national origin or ancestry, citizenship, disability, sexual orientation, marital status, pregnancy, veteran status, membership in the uniformed services, genetic information, or any other basis protected by applicable law. If you are a qualified individual with a disability or a disabled veteran and require support throughout the application and/or recruitment process as a result of your disability, you have the right to request a reasonable accommodation. You can submit your request to [email protected] . VERSANT Media is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices. We include a good faith pay range for each position to comply with applicable state and local pay transparency laws and to promote equity across our organization. Actual compensation will be based on factors such as the candidate's skills, qualifications, experience, and location and may include additional forms of compensation and benefits such as health insurance, retirement plans, paid time off, etc. VERSANT Media is not accepting unsolicited assistance from search firms for this employment opportunity. All resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at VERSANT via-email, the Internet, or in any form and/or method without a valid written Statement of Work in place for this position from VERSANT's Talent Acquisition team will be deemed the sole property of VERSANT. No fee will be paid in the event the candidate is hired by VERSANT as a result of the referral or through other means.