Principal Architect

This role is part of the Engineering Architecture Technology Group (VP & Architects, Distinguished Engineers, SMEs) and reports to the VP of Engineering Architecture. This role requires significant influence across engineering teams and leadership circles. The ideal candidate is a visionary but hands-on technologist who thrives on solving complex business problems, mentoring teams, and driving enterprise-wide architectural transformation.

Key Responsibilities-

Strategic Leadership
• Define and evangelize architectural standards, patterns, and best practices that enable scalability, security, and innovation.
• Act as a thought leader for technology strategy, influencing senior executives and engineering leaders.
• Lead architecture reviews and provide guidance to senior engineers and cross-functional teams.
• Partner with product and engineering leadership to align architecture with business priorities and growth objectives.
Technical Ownership
• Design and deliver architecture blueprints and reference implementations for critical initiatives.
• Drive adoption of forward-thinking practices such as microservices, event-driven architectures, cloud-native solutions and agentic frameworks.
• Champion DevSecOps, CI/CD, and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) practices across engineering squads.
• Ensure security and compliance are embedded in all solutions (HIPAA, PCI, SOC 2).
• Foster a technical culture that drives high ambition, accountability, and desire to make an impact.
Execution & Delivery
• Plan and execute assigned project initiatives with measurable outcomes.
• Actively participate in implementation, ensuring high-quality, timely delivery in a fast-paced environment.
• Foster a culture of lean Agile practices, continuous improvement, and technical excellence.
• Support & participate in deployments
• Be the connective tissue between the cross functional engineering teams for architectural matters.
• Ensure the scrum teams understand and adopt the architectural vision, standards and guidelines.

Outcomes
First 90 days
• Gain deep understanding of current business model, architecture, and key stakeholders.
• Assess existing software, data, and cloud architectures, identifying areas for improvement.
• Begin contributing to architecture transformation initiatives and socialize recommendations.

Ongoing
• Influence enterprise-wide engineering and architecture practices.
• Enable high-performance engineering teams through mentorship and technical leadership.
• Drive next-generation architectural patterns for microservices, integration platforms, and infrastructure as code.

Competencies
• Strategic thinking and execution
• Technical leadership and mentoring
• Influencing without authority
• Stakeholder management and communication
• Problem-solving and decision-making
• Emotional intelligence and collaboration
• Change leadership in high-growth environments

Who We Seek

• 20 years of enterprise software engineering experience with proven success in architecture transformations.
• Strong background in financial services or FinTech (payments, banking, lending preferred).
• Expertise in distributed systems, microservices, cloud-native architectures, and event-driven design.
• Deep understanding of Agile delivery, CI/CD, DevSecOps, and automated testing practices.
• Hands-on experience with:
o .NET (C#, ASP.NET MVC/WebAPI), Python and modern JavaScript frameworks (React, Angular)
o SQL Server, T-SQL, and related data platforms
o Azure DevOps, GitHub, and major cloud providers (Azure preferred)
• Infrastructure-as-Code tools (Terraform, Ansible, Chef, Puppet)
• Familiarity with AI frameworks and tools such as Semantic Kernel, Azure OpenAI, and LangChain.
• Familiarity with security and compliance frameworks (HIPAA, PCI, SOC 2).
• Exceptional communication and leadership skills with ability to influence at all levels.