Principal Architect

Principal Architect — Enterprise Architecture & AI

This is a high-impact architecture role for someone who thinks in systems, speaks in trade-offs, and has genuine hands-on experience designing for the age of AI.

As Principal Architect, you'll set the technical direction for how we build, integrate, and evolve complex software systems — spanning cloud-native services, data-backed applications, and AI-powered workflows. You'll work across engineering disciplines, bringing coherence to architectural decisions that affect multiple product teams and long-term platform health.

This isn't a governance role. You'll be deeply engaged with engineering teams, shaping how AI agents and LLM-driven workflows are designed, governed, and integrated responsibly — where security and compliance matter as much as velocity.

What you'll own

• Enterprise reference architecture.
• AI & agent architecture.
• AI Development Lifecycle (AIDLC).
• Integration & systems design.
• Security & compliance by design.
• Technical leadership & mentorship.
• Estimation & gate input.

What you'll deliver

• A coherent, well-documented enterprise architecture that product and platform teams actively use as a reference.
• Architectural patterns for AI agent workflows and LLM integrations that are production-ready, governed, and reusable.
• An AIDLC framework that guides how AI systems are built, evaluated, and maintained over time.
• Architecture estimates (Gate 0 and Gate
  1) with assumptions logs and risk registers.
• Reduced architectural drift and fewer production issues caused by inconsistent design decisions.
• A culture of architectural thinking that's embedded in engineering teams, not siloed in a central function.

The first 90 days

Month 1:
Understand the current architecture landscape — what's working, where the gaps are, and where teams are making inconsistent decisions. Begin defining the architectural north star and identify the highest-leverage areas to address first.

Month 2:
Publish v1 of the reference architecture. Engage directly with product teams to validate and refine.

Month 3:
Iterate based on feedback. Publish the roadmap for various business units. Establish regular architectural touchpoints with engineering leads and begin scaling adoption across teams.

What we're looking for

• 10–15 years in software engineering, with significant time in principal or staff architect roles across complex, multi-team environments.
• Strong cloud architecture experience on AWS — services, networking, data, and security patterns at scale.
• Proven experience designing and architecting AI-integrated systems — including LLMs, agentic patterns, RAG, and tool-use orchestration.
• Familiarity with the AI development lifecycle: model evaluation, observability, responsible AI practices, and iterative improvement.
• Broad engineering background across backend services (Java ecosystem preferred), APIs, event-driven architecture, and data systems.
• Experience in regulated environments (PCI/PII) with a track record of building compliance into design rather than adding it after.
• Comfortable working at multiple altitudes — from whiteboard architecture to reviewing a pull request when it matters.

Beyond the credentials, you're someone who makes complex things clearer. You write well — ARB's, design docs, technical strategy. You earn influence through the quality of your thinking, not your title. And you're genuinely excited about what's possible with AI, while being clear-eyed about the risks.

You'll partner closely with engineering leadership, product leads, AI/ML engineers, App Sec, and data platform teams. You're the senior technical voice on architecture decisions — with the credibility to challenge, align, and unblock across functions.

Compensation:
The good faith compensation for this position is $170,000 - $190,000 USD, commensurate with experience.

Duties, responsibilities and activities may change at any time according to business needs.

The performance of additional responsibilities if you are designated as a Data Protection Champion (DPC), Senior Information Risk Owner (SIRO) or Information Assurance Accounting Officer (IAAO).

This position operates in a professional office environment. This role…