Principal Architect - Information Technology

Principal Architect - Information Technology

Location Chicago, Illinois, United States This job is associated with 2 categories See allJob IdWHQ00025935-1Information TechnologyJob TypeFull-TimePosted Date 08/17/2026

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Description

Job overview and responsibilities

The Principal Architect will be responsible for leading the architectural design and strategy for Baggage Scanning suite applications. The role will lead the design, implementation, deployment, and maintenance.

Work with other architects across the organization and at the enterprise level to build resilient and performant applications which can handle multiple business capabilities and deliver value. Guide the team on best practices in building large scale systems.

The Principal Application Architect is highly experienced, self-sufficient, requires no direct supervision, and mentors/coach's others.

Collaborate with domain architects, engineers, and leaders to develop technical standards, reference architectures, design patterns, opinion papers, and architecture decision frameworks that guide the design of technology solutions, especially those requiring integration of applications

Develop and manage a technical strategy and coordinates adoption. This role will be responsible to guide architects and convey best practices/common pitfalls for system design, infrastructure integrations, application development practices, and application runtime principles

Manage the architecture review process by creating validation checklists, reviewing architectural artifacts, and providing domain specific guidance to drive architectural alignment across the enterprise

Apply architectural and engineering concepts to design solutions that meet operational requirements, such as scalability, maintainability, security, reliability, extensibility, flexibility, availability, and manageability

Implement and maintain CI/CD pipelines and observability tools (Harness, Dynatrace, Datadog, Splunk) to ensure efficient software delivery and application reliability

Conduct research and develop Proof of Concepts on emerging technologies and implementation toolkits in support of anticipated development efforts and recommend technologies that are functionally robust and cost effective

Architect solutions leveraging Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), Artificial Intelligence (AI) Software as a Service (SaaS) platforms, agentic workflows, AI integrated development platforms, and custom-built technology products

Research, enforce, and drive the adoption of design patterns throughout the enterprise and promotes best practices for solution design and development

Identify new technologies, industry trends, and best practices, which should be incorporated into BFS policies & roadmap

Be a Thought Partner, establishing themselves as the Subject matter expert with Product Owners, Applications Developers, Architects, Analysts, Business Process owners

Leading and influencing the design, testing, evaluation, implementation, and support for technologies & R&D POCs of various size and complexity (application services, software, and systems tools)

Hands-on development, support and troubleshoot of software systems as required, optimizing performance, resolving problems, and providing follow-up on all issues and solutions

Ability to lead diagnostics/troubleshooting with the production support team during outages/incidents (including outside of business hours as needed)

Work closely to define the product technical roadmap, prioritization and effort estimation with the product owners, business and platform architects.

Architects complex release patterns, code review/branching strategies, and/or documentation of various levels of architecture; context diagram, component diagram, deployment diagram, sequence diagram, and logical architecture

Support pilots for emerging technologies (including AWS services and CoPilot) and guide their transition into scalable, supported production environments.

Develops documentation to support the application and as a guide for establishing common practices across the platform

Partners with platform engineering and DevOps teams to research, design and implement the appropriate technology needed to support the automation and orchestration strategy

Partnership with the Enterprise architecture, network, and security engineering team is critical to ensure that the architectural principals support the requirements and needs of the application as well as enterprise.

Communicates regularly and effectively with senior technology leadership

Coordinate effort with external stakeholders to ensure timely delivery of dependent components

Working knowledge of service-level agreements (SLAs), escalation paths, managed services workflows, and ticketing platforms such as ServiceNow and Jira.

Ensures solutions are clearly communicated for implementation, deliverables are of acceptable quality

Ensures compliance of architectural and engineering policies, standards and procedures

Monitor and stay abreast of industry trends and anticipate future direction of application development and cloud computing

Qualifications

What’s needed to succeed (Minimum Qualifications):

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Systems, or related field

5+ years of experience in enterprise architecture, with a strong background in managing complex enterprise applications and infrastructure

3+ years of AWS experience

2+ years of Android Mobile Solution Experience

Experience with usage of cloud platform like AWS, GCP and serverless technologies, services and container technologies (Docker, Kubernetes etc.) or similar

Full-stack application management in AWS cloud native technologies like such as EC2, S3, RDS, EKS, Lambda, AmazonMQ, API Gateway, DynamoDB etc., and high level network and hardware integration

Experience implementing /deploying microservices, web services and APIs, gateways, service mesh in highly automated CI/CD environments

Experience in Well-Architected frameworks, application performance tuning, application resilience and reliability improvement

Experience in developing large scale responsive web applications across multiple end user devices

Experience in troubleshooting and support during critical system outages for operationally critical applications

Familiarity with GenAI, agentic technologies, automation platforms, and AI tools.

Coordinating efforts across multiple teams like Release Managers, DevOps Engineers, QA, UX designers for a successful delivery of applications

DevOps and CI/CD: Strong knowledge of DevOps practices, including CI/CD, automation, and observability tools (Dynatrace, Datadog, Splunk)

Security and Vulnerability Management: Solid understanding of security best practices, including vulnerability management and mitigation

Data Management: Proficient in data architecture, governance, and security, with experience in both relational and non-relational databases

Must be legally authorized to work in the United States for any employer without sponsorship

Successful completion of interview required to meet job qualification

Reliable, punctual attendance is an essential function of the position

What will help you propel from the pack (Preferred Qualifications):

Master's degree in Computer Science

Airline Experience

The base pay range for this role is $140,600.00 to $183,108.00.

The base salary range/hourly rate listed is dependent on job-related, factors such as experience, education, and skills. This position is also eligible for bonus and/or long-term incentive compensation awards.

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field with 5+ years in enterprise architecture and managing complex applications
• Minimum 3 years AWS experience and 2 years Android mobile solution experience
• Proficient in cloud platforms, microservices, CI/CD, DevOps, security best practices, and troubleshooting critical system outages