Principal Architect

About this role

Principal Architect — Enterprise Architecture & AI The opportunity 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. You define and evolve the architectural blueprint for our core systems — cloud-native services on AWS, Java backends, Angular front-ends, and data layers (Postgres/Oracle). You create the patterns teams reach for because they're genuinely good, not because they're mandated. AI & agent architecture. You lead the architectural design of AI-enabled systems: LLM integrations, agentic workflows, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), tool-use patterns, and multi-agent orchestration. You define how AI capabilities are composed into products safely and at scale. AI Development Lifecycle (AIDLC). You shape how AI systems are designed, evaluated, monitored, and iterated — from prompt engineering and model selection through to evaluation frameworks, observability, drift detection, and responsible deprecation. Integration & systems design. You define integration patterns across services, APIs, event-driven systems, and AI components — ensuring cohesion, resilience, and clear contracts between system boundaries. Security & compliance by design. In partnership with AppSec and risk functions, you embed security, PCI/PII compliance, and responsible AI controls into architectural defaults structural, not bolted on. Technical leadership & mentorship. You raise the architectural thinking of senior engineers and tech leads through direct engagement, clear documentation, and collaborative design — not top-down control. Estimation & gate input . You produce Gate 0 (ROM) and Gate 1 (detailed) architecture estimates for your initiatives, with clearly documented assumptions, risk flags, and dependency inventories that product and portfolio teams can plan from. 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. Who you'll work with You'll partner closely with engineering leadership, product leads, AI/ML engineers, AppSec, 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. Other Duties 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). Work Environment This position operates in a professional office environment. This role routinely uses standard office equipment such as computers, phones, photocopiers, filing cabinets and fax machines. Physical Demands The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essentia