Principal Architect

Cox Automotive; Town of Islip (NY); On-site; USD 163,000 - 272,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Parental leave

Paid time off

Paid holidays

Wellness hours

Job summary

Cox Automotive is seeking a senior platform architect to lead the architectural direction for our automotive digital platform on Long Island, NY. You will influence product and engineering leaders, define interfaces, and ensure scalable, cost-efficient delivery of omni-channel experiences and B2B APIs.

The role requires hands-on discovery, collaboration with stakeholders, and a track record of delivering complex, multi-workload systems using serverless, containers, and distributed architectures.

Qualifications

• Experience with cloud-native architectures and cloud infrastructure (AWS).
• 8+ years delivering mission-critical applications in production.
• API-first development using serverless, containers and distributed architectures.
• Foundational software engineering knowledge across OIDC/SAML/SCIM/SQL/NoSQL/JS/TS/React.
• Strong consulting and communication skills across large organizations.

Responsibilities

• Set platform architectural direction, long-term vision and guiding principles.
• Plan, define and design solutions across multiple Release Trains and integrations.
• Guide engineers and architects in requirements, interfaces and delivery automation.
• Identify architectural runway and prioritize for upcoming features.
• Articulate business and technical implications of design choices.
• Advocate for sound architectural solutions at all levels.
• Establish non-functional requirements at platform level.
• Promote reuse of shared capabilities across Cox Automotive.

Skills

Cloud architecture

API-first development

Serverless

Containers

Distributed systems

AWS

OIDC/SAML/SCIM

SQL/NoSQL

Java

Node.js

Python

React

JavaScript/TypeScript

Education

Bachelor's degree

Master's degree

Ph.D.

Job description

parental leave, paid time off, paid holidays

United States, New York, Long Island

Sep 14, 2026

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.

USD 163,400.00 - 272,300.00

Compensation:

Compensation includes a base salary in the range of $163,400.00 - $272,300.00. The base salary may vary within the anticipated base pay range based on factors such as the ultimate location of the position and the selected candidate's knowledge, skills, and abilities. Position may be eligible for additional compensation that may include an incentive program.

Benefits:

The Company offers eligible employees the flexibility to take as much vacation with pay as they deem consistent with their duties, the company's needs, and its obligations; seven paid holidays throughout the calendar year; and up to 160 hours of paid wellness annually for their own wellness or that of family members. Employees are also eligible for additional paid time off in the form of bereavement leave, time off to vote, jury duty leave, volunteer time off, military leave, and parental leave.

EOE, including disability/vets