Lead Solution Architect

Ecolab Inc. • Naperville, IL

3d • $153,900 - $230,800

About The Position

The Lead Solution Architect – Digital Solutions partners with Business and Product leaders, Digital Engineering, Data & AI, shared digital-platform teams, cybersecurity, and enterprise technology partners to design secure, scalable, and supportable solutions across Ecolab Digital’s portfolio. Working within the portfolio architecture direction established by the Senior Director, Solution Architecture, this role independently leads solution architecture from business and product intent through engineering-ready design and implementation guidance. The architect serves as a day-to-day technical partner to Product and Engineering, makes well-bounded architecture decisions, and escalates enterprise-wide trade-offs and exceptions through established architecture leadership. The role calls for strong distributed-systems and integration architecture, practical AI-enabled product experience, and sound judgment across cloud, connected systems, performance, security, and production operability.

The architect owns end-to-end solution architecture for digital products and operational capabilities, translating customer, business, and Product outcomes into coherent technical designs and decisions. Solutions may span web and mobile applications, cloud services, APIs, event-driven integration, data platforms, AI-enabled capabilities, operational workflows, and connected-device systems. The role provides architecture guidance throughout design, build, testing, deployment, and operational readiness, and contributes reusable patterns and reference designs to the broader Ecolab Digital architecture ecosystem.

The position is based in Naperville, Illinois. The base salary range is $153,900–$230,800, and the position is eligible for annual performance-based bonus pay under plan terms. Compensation considers factors such as experience, education, training, and geography. Ecolab provides comprehensive, market-competitive benefits; applicants can consult the company’s benefits website for details.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Engineering, or a related technical field.
• 12 or more years of progressive technology experience, including significant experience designing and delivering complex enterprise or digital solutions.
• Strong hands-on architecture experience with cloud-native applications, APIs/microservices, event-driven integration, distributed systems, and modern application design patterns.
• Experience translating business and Product requirements into end-to-end solution architectures, non-functional requirements, and engineering-ready technical direction.
• Experience architecting complex enterprise integrations or operational/service platform transformations, including legacy-system integration, clear data ownership, and phased migration/coexistence patterns.
• Strong understanding of performance, scalability, availability, resilience, maintainability, observability, and production-support considerations.
• Knowledge of identity, authentication and authorization, data-access controls, secure integration patterns, and tenant-aware application design.
• Ability to reason across application, integration, data, platform, and infrastructure boundaries rather than optimizing a single technology layer.
• Ability to work effectively with Product, Engineering, Data & AI, cybersecurity, infrastructure, and enterprise-platform stakeholders.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including ability to explain architecture trade-offs and decisions to senior technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Experience working with globally distributed teams and guiding engineers or technical leads through ambiguity without relying on positional authority.
• Demonstrated ability to lead architecture working sessions, review engineering designs, mentor technical contributors, and drive pragmatic decisions across multiple concurrent initiatives.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with B2B digital products supporting distributed operations, service workflows, customer/site hierarchies, or similarly complex enterprise environments.
• Five years in solution or technical architecture roles.
• Experience integrating AI/ML or generative-AI capabilities into production applications, with understanding of security, data boundaries, evaluation/quality, observability, and human accountability.
• Experience with IoT/connected-device ecosystems, telemetry, event processing, or edge-to-cloud integration.
• Experience with Azure or another major cloud platform and modern data/analytics platforms such as Databricks or equivalent.
• Experience with enterprise API management, event streaming, observability/APM, and distributed tracing.
• Experience with generative-AI or agentic solution patterns, retrieval/knowledge integration, enterprise authorization, content lifecycle, and secure tool/API orchestration in production environments.
• Experience modernizing legacy integrations and introducing stable service/event boundaries while supporting phased coexistence and migration.
• Experience creating reusable reference architectures, architecture decision records, and standards that accelerate delivery without unnecessary governance overhead.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end solution architecture for digital products and operational capabilities, translating customer, business, and Product outcomes into coherent, engineering-ready designs and decisions.
• Architect solutions spanning web and mobile applications, cloud services, APIs, event-driven integration, data platforms, AI-enabled capabilities, and operational workflows.
• Design production integration of AI/ML, generative AI, and intelligent-agent capabilities, including trusted knowledge retrieval, enterprise data access, tool/API integration, evaluation, human oversight, and operational controls.
• Architect modernization of enterprise operational and service capabilities, including CRM/service platforms, legacy systems, and phased coexistence, with explicit capability boundaries, system-of-record ownership, and transition states.
• Define integration boundaries between domain capabilities and shared Ecolab Digital and Enterprise platforms, including API/service contracts, events, data ownership, customer/site context, identity, authorization, and entitlements.
• Work with Product owners, engineering leaders, and technical teams to turn solution intent into component designs, interface contracts, architecture decision records, non-functional requirements, delivery guardrails, and implementable technical choices.
• Address performance and scalability for enterprise and multi-site use cases, including service fan-out, caching, asynchronous processing, data-access patterns, observability, and capacity considerations.
• Architect connected-device and IoT integration where relevant, including ingestion, contextualization, event processing, edge/cloud boundaries, and governed downstream consumption, with clear operational and analytical ownership.
• Apply security-by-design principles across identity, authentication and authorization, secrets, network boundaries, data access, tenant isolation, and sensitive information handling.
• Work with shared platform, enterprise architecture, Data & AI, cybersecurity, and infrastructure teams to use established enterprise patterns where appropriate and surface genuine gaps requiring new capabilities.
• Provide architecture leadership through design, build, testing, deployment, and operational readiness; resolve design trade-offs without assuming project-management or line-management accountability.
• Contribute reusable architecture patterns, reference designs, and lessons learned to the broader Ecolab Digital architecture ecosystem.
• Communicate architecture decisions clearly to senior leaders, Product partners, engineers, and globally distributed teams.
• Facilitate timely architecture decisions with Product and Engineering partners; document trade-offs, identify unresolved dependencies, and engage enterprise architecture or platform owners when decisions cross domain boundaries.
• Lead architecture working sessions, review engineering designs, mentor technical contributors, and drive pragmatic decisions across multiple concurrent initiatives.

Benefits

• Comprehensive, market-competitive benefits for associates and their families; specific benefit details are available through Ecolab’s benefits website.
• Eligible for annual bonus pay based on performance, per plan terms.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior