Principal Architect - Information Technology

United Airlines•Chicago, IL

3d•$140,600 - $183,108

About The Position

The Principal Architect leads architectural design and strategy for Baggage Scanning suite applications, including their design, implementation, deployment, and maintenance. The role works across teams and with enterprise architects to build resilient, performant applications that support multiple business capabilities, deliver business value, and follow best practices for large-scale systems. The position is highly experienced and self-sufficient, requires no direct supervision, and includes mentoring and coaching others. The architect collaborates with domain architects, engineers, leaders, product owners, business process owners, analysts, and developers to establish technical standards, reference architectures, design patterns, opinion papers, and architecture decision frameworks. The role develops technical strategy and guides its adoption, manages architecture reviews, and ensures solutions meet operational requirements and comply with architectural and engineering policies, standards, and procedures. Responsibilities also include hands-on development and troubleshooting; CI/CD and observability implementation; research and proofs of concept for emerging technologies; and architectural work involving cloud platforms, AI and GenAI, agentic workflows, and application development platforms. The architect partners with platform engineering, DevOps, enterprise architecture, network, and security teams; supports production incidents as needed, including outside business hours; and communicates with senior technology leadership and external stakeholders to help deliver application and platform roadmaps.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field.
At least 5 years of experience in enterprise architecture, with a strong background managing complex enterprise applications and infrastructure.
At least 3 years of AWS experience.
At least 2 years of Android mobile solution experience.
Experience with cloud platforms such as AWS or GCP, serverless technologies and services, and container technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes or similar.
Experience managing full-stack applications using AWS cloud-native technologies such as EC2, S3, RDS, EKS, Lambda, Amazon MQ, API Gateway, and DynamoDB, as well as high-level network and hardware integration.
Experience implementing or deploying microservices, web services, APIs, gateways, and service mesh in highly automated CI/CD environments.
Experience with Well-Architected frameworks, application performance tuning, and improving application resilience and reliability.
Experience developing large-scale responsive web applications across multiple end-user devices.
Experience troubleshooting and supporting operationally critical applications during system outages.
Familiarity with GenAI, agentic technologies, automation platforms, and AI tools.
Experience coordinating across teams such as Release Managers, DevOps Engineers, QA, and UX designers to deliver applications.
Strong knowledge of DevOps practices, including CI/CD, automation, and observability tools such as Dynatrace, Datadog, and Splunk.
Solid understanding of security best practices, including vulnerability management and mitigation.
Proficiency in data architecture, governance, and security, with experience in relational and non-relational databases.
Must be legally authorized to work in the United States for any employer without sponsorship.
Successful completion of an interview is required to meet job qualifications.
Reliable, punctual attendance is an essential function of the position.

Nice To Haves

Master's degree in Computer Science.
Airline experience.

Responsibilities

Lead the architectural design and strategy for Baggage Scanning suite applications and guide their design, implementation, deployment, and maintenance.
Collaborate with architects across the organization to build resilient, performant applications that support multiple business capabilities.
Mentor and coach team members on best practices for building large-scale systems.
Develop technical standards, reference architectures, design patterns, opinion papers, and architecture decision frameworks with domain architects, engineers, and leaders.
Develop technical strategy and coordinate its adoption, guiding architects on system design, infrastructure integrations, application development practices, and runtime principles.
Manage architecture reviews by creating validation checklists, reviewing architectural artifacts, and providing domain-specific guidance.
Design solutions that meet operational requirements including scalability, maintainability, security, reliability, extensibility, flexibility, availability, and manageability.
Implement and maintain CI/CD pipelines and observability tools to support efficient software delivery and application reliability.
Research emerging technologies, develop proofs of concept, and recommend robust and cost-effective technologies.
Architect solutions using GenAI, AI SaaS platforms, agentic workflows, AI-integrated development platforms, and custom-built technology products.
Drive enterprise adoption of design patterns and promote solution design and development best practices.
Identify technologies, industry trends, and practices for potential inclusion in BFS policies and roadmaps.
Act as a subject-matter expert and thought partner to product owners, developers, architects, analysts, and business process owners.
Lead and influence the design, testing, evaluation, implementation, and support of technologies and R&D proofs of concept.
Provide hands-on software development, support, and troubleshooting, including performance optimization and issue resolution.
Lead diagnostics and troubleshooting with production support teams during outages and incidents, including outside business hours as needed.
Work with product owners, business teams, and platform architects to define technical roadmaps, prioritization, and effort estimates.
Architect release patterns, code review and branching strategies, and architecture documentation such as context, component, deployment, sequence, and logical architecture diagrams.
Support pilots for emerging technologies, including AWS services and Copilot, and guide their transition to scalable, supported production environments.
Develop application documentation and guidance for common platform practices.
Partner with platform engineering and DevOps teams to research, design, and implement technology for automation and orchestration.
Coordinate with enterprise architecture, network, and security engineering teams to ensure architecture supports application and enterprise requirements.
Communicate regularly and effectively with senior technology leadership.
Coordinate with external stakeholders to ensure timely delivery of dependent components.
Ensure solutions are clearly communicated for implementation and deliverables meet acceptable quality standards.
Monitor industry trends and anticipate developments in application development and cloud computing.