IT Principal Architect - Retail - Hybrid

The IT Principal Architect - Retail provides end-to-end enterprise architecture leadership for the retail organization across merchandising, item, pricing, promotion, store operations, inventory, digital commerce, data, integration, security, and enabling technology capabilities.

The role translates retail strategy into business capability models, target-state architectures, investment roadmaps, and governable transition plans. The architect aligns initiatives such as Enterprise Advantage modernization with the broader retail target state, clarifies domain and system-of-record boundaries, simplifies the application and integration landscape, and ensures portfolio decisions collectively advance enterprise outcomes.

* This a Hybrid Position, requiring 2 days a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays, on-site in Edina, MN*

• Lead the enterprise architecture strategy and target-state roadmap for merchandising, pricing, inventory, vendor, promotion, store operations, and related retail capabilities, ensuring alignment with business objectives and transformation priorities.
• Partner with executive leadership, product, business, and technology stakeholders to translate strategic goals into enterprise capabilities, technology investments, and architectural direction that drive measurable business outcomes.
• Define and govern the retail application portfolio strategy, including modernization, consolidation, replacement, and retirement of platforms, while minimizing complexity, risk, and technical debt.
• Establish enterprise architecture principles, standards, reference models, and governance processes that promote consistency, scalability, resilience, security, and operational excellence across the retail ecosystem.
• Lead current-state and target-state architecture development, ensuring clear traceability between business capabilities, processes, applications, data, integrations, and technology platforms.
• Drive enterprise integration and ecosystem modernization strategies by defining reusable patterns, service boundaries, data exchanges, and scalable integration approaches that support future growth and agility.
• Provide enterprise data architecture leadership by establishing data ownership, system-of-record boundaries, information governance standards, and alignment between operational, analytical, and AI-enabled business needs.
• Develop and oversee phased transformation, migration, and decommissioning roadmaps that enable seamless transition from legacy platforms to future-state capabilities while minimizing business disruption.
• Ensure enterprise solutions meet critical non-functional requirements, including security, availability, performance, resiliency, recoverability, observability, compliance, and operational sustainability.
• Serve as the senior architecture authority across business and technology functions, facilitating key decisions, managing architectural risk, mentoring architecture talent, and ensuring solution delivery remains aligned to enterprise strategy and long-term business objectives.
• Performs other duties as assigned.

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, information systems, engineering, business technology, or a related discipline, or equivalent relevant experience.
• Preferred:
  Relevant architecture certification, such as TOGAF, cloud architecture certification, or equivalent demonstrated experience.

• Significant experience in enterprise, platform, domain, or solution architecture roles within large, highly integrated environments
• Demonstrated ownership of target-state architecture for a major platform modernization, ERP transformation, or legacy replacement.
• Experience developing domain architectures, capability models, platform roadmaps, and transition architectures.
• Strong architecture experience across applications, integration, data, security, infrastructure, and operations.
• Demonstrated ability to define architecture while requirements and future-state assumptions are evolving.
• Experience with batch, file, API, messaging, EDI, and event-driven integration patterns.
• Experience planning phased migrations, coexistence, cutovers, and legacy decommissioning.
• Experience defining measurable non-functional requirements and operational-readiness criteria.
• Experience with architecture governance, Architecture Review Boards, Design Authority processes, HLDs, and ADRs.

• Experience with grocery, retail, wholesale distribution, merchandising, or supply-chain…