Principal IT Architect

NextEra Energy•Houston, TX

About The Position

The Principal IT Architect is a senior technical leader responsible for defining, governing, and driving enterprise‑level technology architecture. This role develops and maintains high‑level logical and technical designs, guides strategic technology decisions, and ensures solutions align with business strategy, risk posture, and long‑term scalability. The role serves as a top‑level expert and visionary across assigned technologies, platforms, or domains. This position develops and maintains high-level designs for overall logical and technical IT architecture. Employees in this role provide leadership, strategic decision-making, and guidance within technical disciplines, responding to disruptive technologies and solving unique and complex problems. Individuals facilitate and orchestrate the delivery of targeted business outcomes through technical decisions. Leaders in this job serve as top-level experts and visionaries in the development of roadmaps, strategy, and design for assigned technology areas.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or equivalent experience
6+ years of progressive experience in IT architecture, systems design, or large scale solution delivery
Proven experience designing and governing enterprise scale architectures across multiple platforms or domains
Strong expertise in enterprise and solution architecture concepts and patterns
Strategic thinking with the ability to translate business goals into executable technology roadmaps
Deep understanding of technology lifecycle management, risk management, and architectural governance
Excellent leadership, influence, and stakeholder communication skills
Ability to simplify complex technical topics for executive decision making
Strong documentation, analytical, and problem solving skills
High School Grad / GED
Bachelor's or Equivalent Experience
Experience: 6+ years

Nice To Haves

Bachelor’s Degree

Responsibilities

Lead the definition and evolution of enterprise and domain architecture, including current state, future state, and transition architectures
Partner with business and IT leadership to analyze strategies, operating models, and industry trends to define architecture principles, standards, and roadmaps
Drive digital modernization and innovation by evaluating emerging technologies and translating them into pragmatic, scalable solutions
Define high level migration and transformation plans to close capability gaps and retire technical debt
Establish and enforce architecture governance, assurance, and compliance with enterprise standards
Oversee evaluation, selection, risk assessment, and design standards for hardware, software, platforms, and services
Produce and maintain architecture artifacts (e.g., reference architectures, solution designs, concepts of operation)
Coach and mentor senior architects and technical SMEs, promoting consistency and best practices across the architecture landscape
Communicate complex technical concepts clearly to executive, business, and delivery stakeholders, demonstrating business value and tradeoffs
Works with business partners to analyze strategy and trends to define the requirements, principles, and models that guide technology decisions
Communicates and enforces technology standards with business partners
Understands industry trends and the practical application of existing, new, and emerging technologies
Drives digital innovation and develops roadmaps through new technologies and approaches to fulfill strategic business plans
Defines high-level migration plans to address gaps in current state
Coaches, mentors, and leads technical subject matters experts to enable and drive consistency across technology architectures
Designs and owns governance, assurance, and standards activities for enterprise technology architecture compliance
Oversees and facilitates the evaluation, risk assessment, selection, and design of hardware and software technology and product standards
Delivers technology architecture artifacts, possibly including reference architectures or concepts of operation
Performs other job-related duties as assigned