Principal Enterprise Architect

Columbia Sportswear • Portland, OR

2d • Hybrid

About The Position

The Principal Enterprise Architect will help blueprint the digital transformation of Columbia Sportswear, Mountain Hardware, Sorel, and Prana. Working with business and technical partners, engineering teams, other architects, and business leaders, this role designs connected enterprise solutions and shapes the future integration architecture for company platforms. Solutions should be extensible, operationally excellent, cost-optimized, resilient, and aligned with architectural principles and business objectives. The role identifies opportunities for growth and efficiency and provides strategic advantage through innovative solutions, collaborative partnerships, storytelling, and transitional architectures.

This is a hybrid role based at company headquarters near Portland, Oregon. The current expectation is onsite work four days per week, subject to change based on business needs and company discretion.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in business administration, Computer Science, Information Systems, or equivalent experience.
• 10 or more years of increasingly responsible professional experience in a technology-related field.
• Five or more years in technology architect or engineering leadership roles providing design leadership to technical, business, and cross-functional initiatives.
• Familiarity with enterprise-scale applications supporting product creation, supply chain, and corporate technology capabilities.
• Demonstrated end-to-end (ideation, design, build, operate) experience integrating enterprise applications using cloud-based services and APIs, and modern programming languages and frameworks such as C#, Java, or NodeJS.
• High skill in creating compelling integration architecture presentations covering enterprise-scale vendor-packaged applications, native cloud-based applications, services, and other applications.
• Expertise in agile methodologies.
• Familiarity with leading enterprise cloud architectures in AWS or Microsoft Azure.
• Demonstrated influencing leadership through teamwork, facilitation, active listening, and written, visual, and verbal communication with customers.
• Strong team orientation and ability to thrive on virtual, international, cross-functional teams.
• Experience facilitating meetings with customers and technical staff, building consensus, defining key decisions and solution options, and mediating compromises.
• Strong analytical skills and a passion for data-driven decision-making, including internal due diligence, market analysis, hypothesis structuring, and synthesized findings and recommendations.
• Ability to communicate effectively with technical and non-technical staff.
• Ability to solve complex problems and exercise independent judgment in a highly complex global environment using leading-edge technology and/or integrating diverse systems.
• Excellent interpersonal, negotiating, and marketing skills for working with users, senior management, and external personnel on significant matters involving coordinated activity across organizational lines.

Responsibilities

• Partner with engineering leadership to provide technical recommendations and develop architectural plans informed by product roadmaps and Columbia’s strategic vision.
• Balance tactical timelines, costs, and risks.
• Strengthen architecture literacy through shared principles, reusable patterns, architecture guidance, and consistent service and API design practices.
• Advocate for and drive adoption of architectural and engineering best practices and standards.
• Act as an architecture liaison among business teams, technical teams, and Columbia leadership; provide technical mentoring, guidance, and training throughout the organization.
• Monitor IT trends and identify capabilities that simplify and maintain a modern enterprise integration platform.
• Use research, case studies, and prototypes to develop connected solutions that increase business value.
• Work with architects and engineering teams to resolve architectural issues, mitigate risks, and optimize cost savings and efficiencies.
• Support engineering teams in maintaining technical architecture consistent with company architecture principles; contribute to technical designs and specifications.
• Engage external vendors and their technology teams to align architectural integration standards with CDT’s standards.

Benefits

• 401(k) plan with a generous company match.
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance.
• Life insurance and disability coverage.
• Flexible spending accounts and a health savings account.
• Voluntary benefits, including accident, critical illness, hospital indemnity, and legal services.
• Free, confidential, 24/7/365 EAP+ counseling services.
• Wellness benefits.
• Employee discounts.
• Generous time-off program.

What This Job Offers

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