Solution Architect

Codal • Chicago, IL

4h • $185,000 - $210,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

Codal is looking for a Solution Architect who can look at a client's technology landscape, understand what's working, what isn't, and chart a credible path forward. You'll design and defend end-to-end solutions across software, systems, data, AI, and DevOps, translating ambiguous business goals into architectures that are practical to build and easy to evolve. This is a hands-on and client-facing role. You'll move between whiteboard sessions with client executives, deep technical design work, and hands-on prototyping to prove out an approach before committing a team to it. You're comfortable weighing cost, timeline, risk, and maintainability against each other, then making a recommendation and standing behind it. We expect this role to embody Codal’s principles of mindful excellence, insatiable expertise, diverse intuition, data-led curiosity, and candid leadership in how you lead technically, mentor your team, and engage with clients.

Requirements

• 9+ years of hands-on software or systems engineering experience, including experience designing and owning architecture for complex, client-facing solutions.
• Understanding and ability to solve complex client problems that will impact client business.
• Proven ability to evaluate an existing technology landscape and make a clear, defensible recommendation, including build-vs-buy and platform trade-offs.
• Strong grounding across at least two of the following: application architecture, systems/infrastructure design, data architecture, AI/ML solutioning, and DevOps.
• Comfort learning a new domain or stack quickly (just-in-time), with enough hands-on ability to validate an approach yourself rather than only directing others.
• Experience presenting technical recommendations directly to clients, including non-technical and executive stakeholders.
• Hands-on experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure), containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), and modern CI/CD practices.
• Solid understanding of databases and data platforms (SQL, NoSQL, and analytics platforms such as BigQuery).
• Clear, confident communication skills, and the judgment to know when to hold a position and when to adapt it.
• The drive to learn, adapt, and apply to the ever changing technology landscape.

Nice To Haves

• Experience in a consulting or professional services environment, including supporting pre-sales, proposals, or client discovery.
• Experience architecting solutions that incorporate AI/ML capabilities into existing products or platforms.
• Experience leading architecture review boards or similar governance processes.
• A track record of guiding teams through complex technical challenges and ambiguous requirements to a shipped outcome.
• Certifications in a cloud platform or AI such as AWS Solution Architect or Claude Certified Architect

Responsibilities

• Assess a client's existing technology landscape (software, systems, data, and infrastructure) and rationalize the pros, cons, and risks of what's in place versus what's proposed.
• Design end-to-end solution architectures spanning application, data, AI/ML, and DevOps concerns, and document them clearly enough for both engineers and executives to act on.
• Present and defend architecture recommendations to client stakeholders, including technical leads and executive sponsors, with support from Codal's delivery and account teams.
• Support discovery, technical planning, and pre-sales conversations, translating client goals and constraints into a scoped, deliverable technical approach.
• Create and maintain architecture decision records that capture the trade-offs considered and the reasoning behind each major decision.
• Guide engineering teams through implementation, staying hands-on where needed (prototyping, code review, unblocking hard technical problems) without holding up delivery.
• Evaluate emerging tools, platforms, and AI capabilities, and bring forward recommendations that would meaningfully improve a client's solution or delivery speed.
• Partner with DevOps, data, and engineering leads to align architecture with CI/CD, cloud infrastructure, and data platform realities on the ground.
• Mentor engineers and technical leads on architectural thinking, not just implementation, helping the broader team reason about systems, not just code.
• Support planning, estimation, and risk management across the project lifecycle, flagging architectural risk early.

Benefits

• Health Insurance: Comprehensive medical coverage for employees and their dependents.
• Maternity/Paternity Leave: Additional time off and support for new parents.
• Employer 401k match - 4%
• Professional Development: Opportunities for training, workshops, and conferences to enhance employees' skills and knowledge.
• A hybrid work environment for in-person collaboration and sprint-planning days

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed