Principal Enterprise Architect

Wolters Kluwer•Riverwoods, IL

3d•$120,000 - $214,350

About The Position

The Principal Observability Architect provides enterprise technical thought leadership and strategic direction for the evolution of Monitoring & Observability capabilities. The role defines enterprise strategy, future-state vision, target architecture, and roadmaps, and leads transformation initiatives intended to improve technology visibility, reliability, operational efficiency, and service quality. It is technology- and platform-agnostic, focusing on enterprise capabilities and outcomes rather than ownership of a particular monitoring product. The position establishes enterprise standards and capabilities, evaluates emerging technologies, and translates innovation into scalable solutions. It leads observability modernization, engineering enablement, intelligent event management, AIOps and automation strategies, and the application of SRE and reliability principles. The role also integrates observability with service-management and operational systems, develops executive-level recommendations, influences stakeholders across organizational boundaries, and mentors technical leaders and teams.

Requirements

Deep expertise in enterprise Monitoring & Observability strategy, architecture, engineering, and operations.
Strong understanding of metrics, logs, traces, events, synthetics, APM, infrastructure monitoring, network monitoring, database monitoring, and end-user experience monitoring.
Experience defining enterprise observability strategies, standards, operating models, and roadmaps.
Experience with major observability platforms and technologies such as Datadog, Splunk, Dynatrace, New Relic, Grafana, Prometheus, OpenTelemetry, Zabbix, SolarWinds, or equivalent.
Demonstrated experience leading enterprise technology transformation initiatives.
Ability to develop technology strategies, future-state visions, roadmaps, standards, and governance frameworks.
Proven ability to translate technical capabilities into measurable business and operational outcomes.
Experience driving organizational adoption and change across multiple technology teams.
Strong understanding of event management, event correlation, noise reduction, anomaly detection, and operational analytics.
Experience with AIOps, AI-enabled operations, or automated remediation.
Understanding of SRE principles, SLIs, SLOs, reliability engineering, and service health management.
Experience with automation, Infrastructure as Code, APIs, CI/CD, GitOps, or similar technologies.
Broad understanding of infrastructure, cloud, networking, databases, operating systems, virtualization, containers, and modern application architectures.
Experience with AWS and/or Azure environments.
Ability to engage credibly with infrastructure, application, cloud, security, architecture, and operations teams.
Strong understanding of ITSM and IT operations.
Experience integrating observability with CMDB, ServiceNow, service mapping, incident management, and automation platforms.
Understanding of how operational data can support broader service management and operational decision-making.
Exceptional communication and stakeholder management skills.
Ability to influence executives, architects, engineers, operations teams, and vendors.
Strong executive presence and strategic thinking.
Ability to operate at both the strategic and technical levels.

Nice To Haves

Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
10+ years of experience in infrastructure, operations, architecture, monitoring, observability, or related technology disciplines.
5+ years leading enterprise technology strategy or transformation initiatives.
Experience leading Monitoring & Observability modernization or transformation.
Experience with enterprise observability, AIOps, SRE, OpenTelemetry, or intelligent event management.
Relevant certifications in observability, cloud, architecture, automation, SRE, or ITIL.

Responsibilities

Serve as the enterprise technical thought leader for Monitoring & Observability.
Define enterprise vision, strategy, target-state architecture, roadmap, and transformation priorities.
Establish standards and principles for metrics, logs, traces, events, synthetics, application performance, infrastructure, network, database, and end-user observability.
Drive the evolution from traditional monitoring and alerting toward full-stack observability and operational intelligence.
Evangelize modern observability practices across infrastructure, application, cloud, security, and operations organizations.
Lead enterprise Monitoring & Observability transformation initiatives, including modernization, platform consolidation, tool rationalization, integration, automation, and adoption of emerging capabilities.
Develop and execute multi-year transformation roadmaps with measurable business and operational outcomes.
Identify opportunities to improve monitoring coverage, signal quality, operational efficiency, reliability, and cost.
Establish strategies for transitioning legacy monitoring capabilities to modern observability solutions.
Lead technology evaluations, proofs of concept, and strategic platform decisions.
Establish an Observability Engineering and Enablement capability focused on standards, reusable patterns, automation, and self-service.
Define scalable approaches for onboarding applications, infrastructure, cloud platforms, and services.
Promote Observability as Code, Infrastructure as Code, APIs, CI/CD, and automation.
Establish enterprise standards for monitoring configuration, telemetry quality, alerting, dashboards, data retention, and lifecycle management.
Partner with engineering teams to embed observability into application and infrastructure delivery processes.
Define intelligent event management strategies, including filtering, deduplication, enrichment, correlation, prioritization, and anomaly detection.
Evaluate and apply AI/AIOps capabilities to improve operational intelligence and efficiency.
Identify opportunities for predictive analytics, automated incident response, and automated remediation.
Drive the transition from reactive monitoring toward proactive, predictive, and increasingly automated operations.
Establish appropriate governance and human oversight for AI-enabled operations.
Apply SRE and reliability engineering principles to Monitoring & Observability.
Define approaches for SLIs, SLOs, service health indicators, and reliability metrics.
Establish end-to-end visibility across applications, infrastructure, cloud, networks, databases, and service dependencies.
Use observability data to improve availability, performance, incident response, problem management, and continuous service improvement.
Define integration between Monitoring & Observability and CMDB, ITSM, service mapping, incident management, configuration management, and automation.
Leverage service and configuration context to improve event correlation, impact analysis, incident assignment, and root-cause analysis.
Help establish operational telemetry as a trusted source of information for technology operations and service management.
Maintain awareness of emerging observability, AI, automation, cloud, and reliability technologies.
Evaluate industry trends and determine where emerging capabilities can provide meaningful enterprise value.
Lead vendor evaluations and strategic technology decisions while maintaining a platform-agnostic perspective.
Establish technology standards and reference patterns that support long-term enterprise strategy.
Develop executive-level strategies, roadmaps, business cases, and transformation recommendations.
Influence technology direction across organizational boundaries and build alignment among technical and business stakeholders.
Lead complex transformation initiatives involving multiple technology organizations and strategic partners.
Mentor architects, engineers, and technical leaders and promote innovation, automation, engineering excellence, and continuous improvement.