Principal, Finance Business Architecture & Solution Strategy

LinkedIn•Mountain View, CA

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

This role will be based in San Francisco or Sunnyvale. At LinkedIn, our approach to flexible work is centered on trust and optimized for culture, connection, clarity, and the evolving needs of our business. The work location of this role is hybrid, meaning it will be performed both from home and from a LinkedIn office on select days, as determined by the business needs of the team. We are seeking a Principal Process Architect, Finance Business Architecture & Solution Strategy to join the Architecture & Strategy pillar within the Center of Ops Innovation (COI) at LinkedIn. This role operates as a strategic accelerator for Finance transformation, sitting upstream of delivery and engineering to define business architecture, solution strategy, and decision frameworks that enable scalable, high-quality execution. As a Principal Architect, you will serve as the catalyst for translating Finance strategy into clear, decision-ready solution paths simplifying complexity, shaping enterprise-wide consistency, and ensuring initiatives begin with strong problem framing, well-defined options, and explicit decision guardrails. This role is critical in shifting Finance transformation from fragmented, reactive execution to intentional, scalable, and proactive architecture-led delivery.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or equivalent work experience.
10+ years of experience in Finance, Accounting, Finance Technology, or Finance transformation.
Experience leading large-scale transformation initiatives across ERP, SaaS, or enterprise Finance technology ecosystems.
Experience across end-to-end Finance processes, such as FP&A, Record-to-Report (R2R), Source-to-Pay (S2P), or Order-to-Cash (O2C).
Experience in business architecture, solution strategy, or enterprise solution design.

Nice To Haves

Experience translating complex business problems into structured solution options, evaluating trade-offs, and developing decision frameworks.
Experience with vendor/platform evaluations, business case development, RFPs, POCs, and buy-vs.-build assessments.
Strong understanding of accounting principles, including US GAAP and/or IFRS, and their application within Finance systems and processes.
Experience defining future-state capabilities, architecture frameworks, and scalable solution patterns across Finance.
Experience shaping AI and automation strategies, including business-level governance, scalability, risk, and adoption considerations.
Experience influencing senior stakeholders and driving alignment across Finance, Engineering, Data, and Strategy teams in highly matrixed environments.
Executive-level communication and storytelling skills, including presenting recommendations, decision frameworks, and trade-offs to senior leadership.

Responsibilities

Define future-state Finance business capabilities across domains (R2R, S2P, O2C,FP&A.)
Develop business-led architecture frameworks and reference patterns to ensure consistency across initiatives
Establish system interaction and data ownership principles at a business level
Lead buy vs. build vs. hybrid assessments, evaluating scalability, risk, cost, and time-to-value
Develop clear, decision-ready solution options, including trade-offs across cost, flexibility, speed and long-term architectural fit
Enable leadership to make high-quality, timely decisions with full visibility into implications
Conduct platform and vendor capability evaluations aligned to Finance needs (not technical design)
Prevent vendor-driven solution bias by grounding decisions in business priorities and long-term strategy
Support structured evaluations including RFPs, POCs, and market assessments
Establish clear assumptions, constraints, and guardrails for each initiative
Define: what is in scope vs. out of scope
what decisions are locked vs. open
what trade-offs are acceptable vs. non-negotiable
Reduce ambiguity and prevent mid-stream scope and direction changes
Define business-level guardrails for AI and automation adoption, ensuring: compliance scalability risk mitigation
Ensure solution decisions align with long-term automation and intelligent finance strategy
Translate solution options into investment implications for FY planning
Partner with Finance leadership to: shape ROI narratives
align solution choices with funding and prioritization decisions
Ensure short-term decisions are evaluated against long-term cost and scalability
Act as a trusted advisor to Process Owners, Finance leadership, and Engineering
Orchestrate inputs across: Delivery teams Engineering Data Strategy COE / Innovation teams
Drive alignment without direct authority in a highly matrixed environment
Provide clear problem framing and solution direction before delivery kickoff
Support delivery teams with advisory guidance, without owning execution
Enable faster startup times, reduced rework and improved consistency across initiatives