Principal Solution Architect

Position Summary

The Principal Solution Architect is a senior technology leader responsible for establishing and evolving solution architecture practices across enterprise platforms, products, and business capabilities. This role provides strategic direction for how technology solutions are designed, integrated, secured, and scaled while ensuring consistency across multiple portfolios and delivery teams.

Working at the intersection of business strategy and technology execution, the Principal Solution Architect collaborates with business stakeholders, engineering leaders, product teams, and enterprise architects to create architecture approaches that support organizational objectives and long-term growth. The position combines strategic architecture leadership with hands-on solution design, helping teams deliver scalable, resilient, and high-performing technology solutions.

Operating within a federated architecture framework, the role serves as a key link between enterprise standards and decentralized delivery teams. The Principal Solution Architect promotes architectural consistency, enables rapid delivery through reusable practices and patterns, and ensures technology decisions balance innovation, governance, security, and operational excellence.

This leader partners closely with Enterprise Architecture, Platform Engineering, Cybersecurity, Product Management, and Delivery teams to guide architectural decisions that can support evolving business needs and enterprise-scale growth.

Core Responsibilities
Solution Architecture Strategy & Standards

• Define and evolve solution architecture strategies that support enterprise objectives across multiple domains and technology ecosystems.
  
• Develop and maintain reusable architecture blueprints, design standards, and implementation frameworks for product and platform teams.
  
• Establish architecture principles and decision guidelines that promote consistency, scalability, and maintainability.
  
• Drive adoption of standardized architectural practices across business and technology organizations.
  
• Ensure solution architecture approaches align with broader enterprise architecture direction and technology strategies.

Enterprise Solution Design & Oversight

• Lead architectural planning and design for complex initiatives spanning multiple business functions, platforms, or value streams.
  
• Provide architectural guidance throughout the lifecycle of strategic programs and technology investments.
  
• Translate business goals and technology strategies into practical solution architectures and implementation approaches.
  
• Identify dependencies, architectural risks, integration challenges, and scalability considerations early in program planning.
  
• Support the development of enterprise-ready solutions that can be leveraged across multiple teams and use cases.

Architecture Governance & Technology Alignment

• Establish architecture guardrails, design controls, and review processes that encourage both innovation and compliance.
  
• Partner with Enterprise Architecture teams to align solution patterns with enterprise standards and target-state architectures.
  
• Evaluate technology alternatives and provide recommendations regarding platform selection, integration strategies, and build-versus-buy decisions.
  
• Review solution proposals to ensure adherence to architectural principles, security requirements, and operational standards.
  
• Escalate non-standard technology approaches, enterprise-level risks, and exception requests when appropriate.

Stakeholder Engagement & Cross-Functional Leadership

• Collaborate with business leaders, engineering teams, product management, platform organizations, security teams, and architects to drive solution alignment.
  
• Influence technology direction across multiple teams and organizational boundaries without formal authority.
  
• Facilitate architecture discussions and decision-making processes among diverse stakeholder groups.
  
• Serve as a trusted advisor on complex technical and business challenges.
  
• Represent solution architecture within governance forums, leadership discussions, and technology review boards.

Security, Risk & Operational Excellence

• Integrate security, compliance, privacy, and risk management requirements into solution designs and architecture standards.
  
• Partner with cybersecurity and compliance functions to ensure solutions meet regulatory and organizational requirements.
  
• Promote architecture best practices that improve reliability, resilience, observability, and operational supportability.
  
• Assess solution designs for long-term maintainability, performance, recoverability, and scalability.
  
• Provide architectural guidance during critical production events affecting business operations.

Architecture Community & Talent Development

• Mentor solution architects, technical leads, and senior engineers to strengthen architectural capabilities across the organization.
  
• Contribute to architecture communities of practice and continuous improvement initiatives.
  
• Promote architectural excellence through coaching, knowledge sharing, and best-practice development.
  
• Help establish standards for architecture documentation, solution reviews, and design quality.
  
• Foster a culture of collaboration, innovation, and enterprise thinking.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
  
• Significant experience designing and leading enterprise-scale solution architectures across diverse technology environments.
  
• Demonstrated success defining, implementing, and governing architecture frameworks, standards, and reusable design patterns.
  
• Strong expertise in modern technology domains, including cloud platforms, application architectures, APIs, integration services, data platforms, artificial intelligence, and distributed systems.
  
• Experience evaluating complex business requirements and translating them into effective technical solutions.
  
• Proven ability to influence strategic technology decisions across matrixed organizations.
  
• Strong understanding of Agile, product-centric, and iterative delivery methodologies.
  
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills with the ability to engage both technical and executive audiences.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience operating within large-scale enterprise environments with federated technology organizations.
  
• Background working in highly regulated industries such as insurance, financial services, healthcare, or similar sectors.
  
• Experience with cloud transformation initiatives, digital modernization programs, and platform engineering practices.
  
• Familiarity with enterprise integration strategies, event-driven architectures, API ecosystems, and AI-enabled solutions.
  
• Experience supporting governance frameworks, risk management processes, and compliance-driven technology environments.
  
• Relevant industry certifications or advanced education in architecture, cloud computing, or technology leadership.

Key Competencies

• Enterprise-scale solution architecture and systems design expertise.
  
• Strong understanding of architecture governance, standards management, and technology strategy.
  
• Ability to develop reusable frameworks, architectural patterns, and implementation guidance.
  
• Skilled at balancing business priorities, technical debt, risk, cost, and delivery timelines.
  
• Strong analytical thinking and problem-solving capabilities.
  
• Excellent facilitation, negotiation, and consensus-building skills.
  
• Ability to simplify complex technical concepts for diverse audiences.
  
• Experience leading through influence in highly collaborative and matrixed organizations.
  
• Commitment to building scalable, secure, resilient, and maintainable technology solutions.
  
• Passion for mentoring others and advancing architectural maturity across the enterprise.

Compensation: Up to $210,000 annually
Compensation is based on a range of factors that include relevant experience, knowledge, skills, other job-related qualifications.