Distinguished Architect [Data & Intelligence] - Washington DC, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Chicago

Amtrak•Wilmington, DE

5d•Onsite

About The Position

The Distinguished Architect [Data & Intelligence] is responsible for providing visionary companywide architecture services to ensure portfolio technology investments are in alignment with corporate goals and its ability to move towards the future in an evolving business environment. As a Digital Technology expert, this role will utilize communication, influence, guidance, and governance processes to maximize return on technology investment, and reduce time to capability, while minimizing operational costs. The Distinguished Architect will use visionary strategic thinking to choose technology capabilities, strategize and build around them to bring value to business relevant capability change. As part of the DT architecture team the Distinguished Architect will be responsible for communicating technology target state, roadmap and change progress to portfolio leaders and other stakeholders. They will use their communication and influence skills to promote awareness and understanding of architecture principles across the organization, evangelizing for strategic enterprise change, executing strategy, technical leadership.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in computer science, data and intelligence or related field with 13+ year’s relevant experience or equivalent work experience with at least 5 years in a Principal or Senior Principal Architect role within a large, complex enterprise.
Must have repeated experience successfully directing significantly complex architecture initiatives over $7 million, developing capabilities that typically involve different stakeholders, multiple lines of business, many solution varieties, highly regulated environments, business transformations at mass scale.
Proven contribution to the architecture profession or industry, such as publications, research, intellectual property, innovation, development of training, or contributions to standards bodies or professional organizations. They must also have contributed to the development of professional architects in sharing this knowledge.
Experience creating significant business value realization with $500 million+ or more enterprises as an architect providing vision and choosing platforms. moving organizations forward and scaled for future initiatives.
Requires demonstrated ability to manage multiple architecture engagements and effectively plan and utilize collaborative cross functional teams to ensure the architecture objectives obtain key results.
Must possess strong communication and interpersonal skills, work well with others in an integrated team environment, and must be self-motivated.
Relationship building and collaboration skills across diverse and matrixed stakeholders and customers.
Ability to surface, prioritize, and balance priorities across multiple stakeholders.
Excellent problem-solving and analytical skills, including experience leveraging data to inform decision-making.
Technical and critical thinking expertise to break complex processes and products into component modular modern architectures.
Proven ability to align resources, processes and technology initiatives with business strategies across multiple lines of business (LOBs) or business units

Nice To Haves

Master’s degree in business or related field
17+ years of progressive experience in technology and architecture, with at least 12 years in a Principal or Senior Principal Architect role within a large, complex enterprise.
Certifications or equivalent• Databricks Data Architect Professional• AWS Machine Learning Specialty or Azure AI Engineer• Stanford / DeepLearning.AI GenAI Certificates
Travel and Transportation experience or relevant technology domain experience
Experience with governance, risk, regulatory and compliance.
The Architect’s skills and knowledge should span multiple architecture domains (e.g., Business Architecture, Application/Solution Architecture, Technical/Infrastructure Architecture & Information/Data Architecture)
Lakehouse (Databricks, Iceberg, Delta)
Data mesh & domain-driven data design
GenAI architecture (RAG, agents, fine-tuning)
ML platforms (MLflow, Vertex AI, SageMaker)
ERP, OT, CRM data integration
Strong understanding of Architecture best practice and value methodology
Knowledge of IT, OT, domain and business architecture
Experience with Agile process for business value realization

Responsibilities

Set up the architectural vision for core capabilities and aligning patterns to allow for consistency and reuse
Define enterprise principles, patterns and guidance that help in technology data capabilities, platforms and infrastructure, how applications are built, deployed, and maintained to align with strategic needs and maximizing technology investments
Provide Oversight and Governance to the current, interim and potential future state of key architecture domains to ensure value alignment with the organization's overall goals and objectives.
Ensure the reference architectures, standards, and guidelines of the organization's technology is safe, secure, stable and compliant with industry standards.
Drive adoption and re-use of the preferred resources, processes and technology across multiple or cross functional portfolios.
Mentor other architects and DT teams, providing guidance and fostering a culture of excellence.
Effectively communicate at all levels from senior leadership and throughout the company
Create strategic roadmaps and comprehensive plans that outline how the Digital Technology architecture will evolve to drive organization change, support the business strategy over time, and ensure DT initiatives are prioritized based on their expected business value and strategic importance.
Guide Investment Decisions Aligning technology plans and investments to business vision and strategy that is necessary to ensure we are building the right things.
Envision architecture patterns and strategies that drive significant competitive differentiation and business transformation
Solve the most intricate and ambiguous architectural challenges that span multiple domains, systems, and business units, providing definitive technical direction.
Design, govern, and oversee the implementation of robust, scalable, and efficient architectural solutions for cross domain business problems.
Translate complex technical ideas into digestible concepts for both technical teams and non-technical stakeholders.
Act as a liaison between engineering and business teams to ensure alignment and understanding.
Assist in the identification, evaluation, and adoption of groundbreaking technologies and architectural patterns that drive significant competitive differentiation and business transformation
Work closely with Solution Architects and engineering leads to translate requirements into robust technical design on for our most complex technical solutions
In our major enterprise initiatives and complex systems of systems, ensuring products are scalable, secure, performant, and maintainable.
Provide expert technical guidance, and contribute to the evolution of our architectural standards.