Principal Architect

Cox Enterprises; New York (NY); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Cox Automotive seeks a senior enterprise architect to lead platform architecture for a set of automotive retail solutions, including CRM, API-driven services, and Gen AI capabilities. You will partners with product and engineering leadership to align technology with business value, guiding decision-making and delivery across teams.

The role emphasizes cloud-native patterns, serverless and containers, and a strong emphasis on non-functional requirements, interfaces, and scalable integration.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or higher with substantial related experience.
• Experience with cloud-native architectures and AWS.
• Extensive full development life cycle for mission-critical apps.
• API-first software with serverless, containers, and distributed systems.
• Foundational knowledge of OIDC, SAML, SCIM, SQL/NoSQL, Node.js, Python, Java, React, and JavaScript/TypeScript.
• Experience delivering multi-workload, multi-team software products.
• Strong consulting skills and ability to communicate architectural concepts.

Responsibilities

• Set platform architectural direction, long-term vision, and guiding principles.
• Plan, define, and design solutions across multiple Release Trains.
• Guide engineers and architects on requirements, interfaces, and delivery automation.
• Identify architectural runway aligned with upcoming business features.
• Frame architecture in business terms and assess economic impact.
• Advocate for sound architectural solutions across the organization.
• Define critical non-functional requirements at platform level.
• Collaborate to promote reuse of shared capabilities across Cox Automotive.

Skills

Cloud-native architectures

API-first design

Serverless technologies

Containers

Distributed architectures

OIDC

SAML

SCIM

SQL

NoSQL

Node.js

Python

Java

React

JavaScript/TypeScript

Education

Bachelor’s degree in a related discipline

Master’s degree in a related field

Ph.D. in a related field

14+ years of related experience

Tools

AWS

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

Cox Automotive offers you the chance to take a leading role in the digital revolution of the automotive industry. We are on a journey to build out new omni channel experiences, B2B APIs, and Gen AI capabilities for automotive retailers. You will partner with our product and engineering leadership to solve key consumer problems and deliver connected client experiences for car dealerships including: CRM, desking, FNI, vehicle valuation, acquisition, pricing, inventory management, merchandising, servicing, and delivery. We are looking for someone with deep automotive experience who knows what it takes to make complex workloads work together.

The right individual balances product solutioning with hands‑on technical discovery and is able to influence the larger community of software engineers and product owners to align everyone to a shared technology direction and strategy. While providing a general view of the solution architecture, they enable implementation teams to make local decisions to provide a faster flow of value and better economics.

This role involves tight collaboration with business stakeholders, teams, vendors, partners, and customers in defining the technology infrastructure, decomposition into components and subsystems, and the definition of interfaces between subsystems.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

• Set the platform architectural direction, long-term vision, and guiding principles.

• Participate in the planning, definition, and high-level design of the solutions. Work with multiple Release Trains to identify dependencies and define integration strategies.

• Provide guidance to engineers and technical architects in clarifying requirements, allocating responsibilities to subsystems, defining interfaces, and stablishing delivery automation and testing strategies.

• Identify required architectural runway in support of upcoming business features and capabilities. Work with product and engineering counterparts to ensure that it is prioritized and delivered.

• Frame technical and architectural alternatives in business terms, clearly articulating both business and technical implications of various options. Operate within the retail platform’s financial framework to validate the economic impact of design decisions.

• Champion sound architectural solutions and effectively advocate for them at all levels of the organization.

• Establish critical non-functional requirements at the platform level.

• Partner with other areas of Cox Automotive to promote the strategic development and re-use of shared capabilities.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in a related discipline and 10 years’ experience in a related field. The right candidate could also have a different combination, such as a master’s degree and 8 years’ experience; a Ph.D. and 5 years’ experience in a related field; or 14 years’ experience in a related field.

• Experience with cloud-native architectures and delivering software and services leveraging cloud infrastructure such as AWS.

• 8 years of experience in full development life cycle and significant experience in delivering mission-critical applications and services in a production environment for a industry.

• Experience building software with API-first approach using serverless technologies, containers, and distributed architectures.

• Strong foundational knowledge of software engineering and familiarity with various technologies such as OIDC, SAML, SCIM, SQL, NoSQL, Node.js, Python, Java, React, and JavaScript/TypeScript.

• Experience building, integrating, and testing complex software products composed by multiple workloads and teams.

• Exemplary consulting skills and a track record of applying these skills as a practicing architect. Outstanding verbal, written, presentation, facilitation, and interaction skills, including ability to effectively communicate architectural issues and concepts to multiple organization levels. Skills to work effectively with teams throughout organization.

• 4 years of experience as a solution or technical architect.