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Principal Architect

Chief Data Office (CDO)
Location: Irving, TX (Hybrid)

About the Role

As a Principal Architect in the Chief Data Office (CDO), you will serve as a senior technical leader responsible for shaping the architecture, standards, and strategy that enable secure, scalable, and reliable delivery across data and analytics platforms.

In this role, you will partner closely with engineering, platform, security, and leadership teams to define reference architectures, modern DevSecOps practices, and enterprise-scale CI/CD solutions. You will influence long-term technical direction, drive governance and compliance automation, and help teams deliver software faster with reduced risk.

This position plays a key role in advancing the Path to Production – Release Cargo Management (P2P RCM) initiative in partnership with the Chief Development Experience Office (CDXO), improving release predictability, audit readiness, and developer experience across the enterprise.

What You’ll Do

Architecture Strategy & Technical Leadership

• Define and own the enterprise architecture vision, roadmap, and reference architectures for cross-platform engineering within the CDO.
• Lead architecture design for APIs, web services, data pipelines, CMS platforms, and enterprise integration patterns.
• Establish and participate in architecture review forums to ensure solutions align with enterprise standards for scalability, reliability, and security.
• Create architectural decision records (ADRs), technology roadmaps, and standards documentation.
• Mentor senior and principal engineers, providing guidance on architectural patterns and technical trade-offs.

DevSecOps & Release Engineering

• Define target-state architectures for enterprise CI/CD pipelines with embedded security, compliance, and governance controls.
• Architect and standardize reusable GitHub Actions workflows for build, test, security scanning, and release governance.
• Integrate automated security controls into the SDLC, including:Static code analysis (Sonar)SAST (Checkmarx)SCA (Black Duck)Secret scanning (GitHub Secret Scanning)DAST
• Design and govern deployment automation to OpenShift (OCP) using Harness CD, including promotion strategies, approvals, rollback mechanisms, and audit-ready traceability.
• Define pipeline security gates, policy enforcement, and automated evidence collection.

Enterprise Standards & Governance

• Partner with Enterprise Architecture to align CDO standards with firm-wide technology principles.
• Define development standards, branching strategies, deployment patterns, and release management governance.
• Establish reference designs for infrastructure-as-code, GitOps workflows, observability, and incident response.
• Drive adoption of shift-left security, zero-trust principles, and defense-in-depth architectures.

Innovation & Influence

• Evaluate and recommend emerging technologies in cloud-native platforms, Python ecosystems, DevOps tooling, and AI-assisted development.
• Lead proof-of-concept and proof-of-architecture initiatives and translate results into enterprise guidance.
• Collaborate across platform engineering, security, cloud operations, and enterprise architecture teams.
• Represent the Chief Data Office in architecture councils and governance forums.
• Influence enterprise-wide technology decisions through thought leadership and technical advocacy.

Required Qualifications

• 12+ years of software engineering and architecture experience, including enterprise-scale systems developed in Python.
• 12+ years designing web applications, APIs, and distributed systems using frameworks such as Django, FastAPI, or Flask.
• 10+ years of experience architecting CI/CD pipelines, DevOps platforms, and release engineering systems.
• Hands-on experience with GitHub Actions, reusable workflow design, and pipeline governance.
• Experience integrating automated security scanning into CI/CD pipelines (Sonar, Checkmarx, Black Duck, GitHub Secret Scanning, DAST).
• Experience designing deployment automation for Kubernetes or OpenShift, including tools such as Harness CD.
• 7+ years of experience in DevSecOps and application security architecture, including compliance automation.
• 7+ years of experience defining enterprise architecture standards and governance frameworks.
• Experience with cloud platforms (GCP, AWS, Azure) and/or large-scale on-prem Kubernetes/OpenShift environments.
• Ability to consult with and influence senior technical leadership on complex engineering challenges.

Preferred Qualifications

• 15+ years of Python development with deep expertise in modern Python patterns and large-scale system design.
• Extensive experience with Django, including CMS platforms such as Wagtail and CodeRed CMS.
• Experience with data pipelines and orchestration tools (., Airflow, Kedro, MLFlow).
• Strong background in infrastructure-as-code and GitOps (Terraform, Ansible).
• Experience with SRE practices, observability architectures, and incident management.
• Familiarity with spec-driven development, API-first design, and domain-driven design (DDD).
• Experience defining enterprise strategies for AI-enabled development tools (., GitHub Copilot, Cursor).
• Proven track record leading enterprise-scale technical transformations.
• Strong executive communication and stakeholder influence skills.

Job Expectations

• Ability to work on-site at an approved location in a hybrid environment.
• Ability to collaborate effectively across distributed teams.

Key Skills

• Python (enterprise-scale development and automation)
• DevOps & CI/CD
• Kubernetes & OpenShift
• GitHub Actions & reusable workflows
• Secure SDLC and DevSecOps
• Release engineering and governance
• Cloud-native and platform architecture