Principal Architect - Information Technology

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Description
- External

Job overview and responsibilities

This position will drive technological innovation in conversational AI and autonomous systems, shaping United's future as we advance our digital transformation. As a technical leader, you will have exceptional engineering expertise, strong communication skills, and a deep understanding of AI agent architectures, LLM integration patterns, and production-grade system design.

Technical Leadership and Innovation

• Design and implement production-grade AI agentic workflows using modern frameworks and industry best practices
• Develop sophisticated conversational AI solutions that integrate seamlessly with United's retail systems and customer-facing channels across web, mobile, and voice
• Build scalable, reliable AI agent architectures that support complex customer journeys and deliver measurable business outcomes
• Establish engineering standards, patterns, and best practices for AI agent development across the organization
• Drive continuous improvement of AI system performance, reliability, and customer experience outcomes
• Evaluate emerging AI technologies and frameworks, making strategic recommendations for adoption

Collaboration and Stakeholder Management

• Engage and collaborate with product managers, data scientists, business stakeholders, and engineering teams to translate business requirements into technical solutions
• Partner with Digital Technology, Customer Support & Advocacy, and Customer Experience organizations to align AI initiatives with strategic business objectives
• Share knowledge and mentor engineers, contributing to the growth of United's AI engineering capabilities
• Provide technical guidance and thought leadership on AI agent design patterns, prompt engineering, and LLM integration strategies
• Foster open communication within cross-functional teams to ensure alignment and successful delivery of AI-powered customer experiences

System Design and Architecture

• Design cloud-native AI solutions leveraging AWS services and modern microservices architectures
• Implement robust API integrations connecting AI agents with United's retail, inventory, and customer data systems
• Ensure compliance with security protocols, data governance standards, and engineering best practices throughout the development lifecycle
• Build observability and monitoring capabilities to track AI system performance and customer experience metrics
• Collaborate with architecture teams to ensure AI solutions follow enterprise standards and scale effectively

Qualifications
- External

What's needed to succeed (Minimum Qualifications):

• Bachelor's degree
• Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field preferred
• 5+ years of software engineering experience with strong Python development expertise
• Proven experience designing and deploying production AI/ML systems at scale
• Deep understanding of AI agent architectures, prompt engineering, and LLM integration patterns
• Strong knowledge of API design, microservices architecture, and cloud platforms (AWS preferred)
• Experience with modern software development practices including CI/CD, testing, and observability
• Outstanding communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to effectively engage stakeholders at all levels
• Excellent problem-solving skills and ability to work effectively in cross-functional teams
• Ability to effectively use software architecture design tools such as Lucid to create detailed technical architecture diagrams
• A mindset…