Principal Software Architect

AT&T; Plano (TX); On-site; USD 174,000 - 261,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical/Dental/Vision coverage

401(k) plan

Tuition reimbursement program

Paid Time Off and Holidays

Paid Parental Leave

Paid Caregiver Leave

Disability Benefits

Life and ADI Insurance

Employee Discounts

Job summary

AT&T is seeking a Principal Solution Architect in Plano, TX to lead enterprise architecture across complex platforms. You will translate business needs into secure, scalable designs, guiding teams through delivery, governance, and operations.

This role requires influencing stakeholders across product, engineering, security, and infrastructure with executive-level communication. Ideal candidates have 7+ years of architecture experience, strong cloud and API expertise, and a proven ability to

Qualifications

• Experience designing, architecting, and delivering enterprise solutions.
• Ability to translate requirements into architecture and execution guidance.
• Experience with target-state architectures, roadmaps, and architecture decisions.
• Strong understanding of security, data protection, and auditability.
• Ability to lead across business, product, engineering, and operations.

Responsibilities

• Convert objectives and constraints into architecture decisions.
• Lead end-to-end architecture across applications, APIs, data, cloud, and security.
• Develop reference architectures and design standards for teams.
• Architect secure, scalable, resilient enterprise solutions for mission-critical apps.
• Guide API strategy, event flows, data integration, and platform collaboration.
• Partner with stakeholders to align technology with priorities.
• Provide governance through reviews, risk assessments, and tradeoffs.
• Embed availability, observability, and disaster recovery into designs.
• Evaluate new technologies and modernization opportunities with a business lens.
• Mentor architects and engineers to influence decisions without authority.

Skills

Solution architecture

Cloud platforms

APIs

Security architecture

Leadership without authority

Executive communication

Observability

Job description

This position requires office presence of a minimum of 5 days per week and is only located in the location(s) posted. No relocation is offered.

AT&T will not hire any applicants for this position who require employer sponsorship now or in the future.

Join AT&T and help shape the communications and technology platforms that connect customers, employees, and business capabilities at scale. The Technology Services organization advances information technology performance by delivering secure, reliable, and efficient solutions that improve business outcomes and end user experience. In this role, you will translate business strategy into practical, scalable, and operable technology designs while partnering across product, engineering, security, infrastructure, operations, and executive stakeholders. When you step into a career with AT&T, you will not just imagine the future, you will help create it.

What You'll Do

As a Principal Solution Architect, you will serve as a senior technical authority responsible for defining solution architecture, design standards, integration patterns, and technology direction for complex enterprise platforms. You will connect business needs to secure, scalable, resilient, and maintainable technology solutions while guiding teams through delivery, governance, and operational readiness.

Key responsibilities include:

• Convert business objectives, customer experience needs, operational constraints, and compliance requirements into clear solution architecture decisions.
• Lead end-to-end architecture across applications, APIs, data, cloud platforms, integrations, security, observability, and operations.
• Develop reusable reference architectures, integration patterns, design standards, architecture decision records, and roadmaps that improve consistency across teams.
• Architect secure, scalable, resilient, and cost-effective enterprise solutions that support mission-critical applications and business capabilities.
• Guide API strategy, service boundaries, event-driven patterns, data flows, system interactions, and platform integration across complex ecosystems.
• Partner with product, engineering, infrastructure, operations, cybersecurity, vendors, and business stakeholders to align technology decisions with enterprise priorities.
• Provide architecture governance through design reviews, risk assessments, tradeoff analysis, technology selection, and delivery checkpoints.
• Drive operational excellence by embedding availability, reliability, performance, disaster recovery, monitoring, incident readiness, and supportability into designs.
• Evaluate emerging technologies, modernization opportunities, automation capabilities, and technical debt reduction strategies with a practical business lens.
• Mentor architects and engineers, influence technical direction without relying on formal authority, and build shared confidence around complex architecture decisions.

Core skills this role is expected to demonstrate:

• Business acumen: Connect architecture choices to revenue, cost, customer experience, delivery risk, and operational outcomes.
• Systems thinking: Understand upstream and downstream impacts across applications, data, APIs, infrastructure, security, and operations.
• Technical foundation: Guide engineering decisions across modern application, cloud, integration, data, automation, and platform technologies.
• Architecture and design: Apply architecture patterns, design principles, service boundaries, domain modeling, and fit-for-purpose technology choices.
• Communication: Explain complex designs clearly to executives, business partners, engineers, vendors, and support teams.
• Leadership without authority: Influence decisions, resolve disagreement, create alignment, and move cross-functional teams toward execution.
• Integration expertise: Design REST APIs, event flows, messaging, identity integration, SaaS connectivity, and enterprise interoperability patterns.
• Security mindset: Build authentication, authorization, privacy, auditability, compliance, and secure-by-design principles into architecture.
• Operational excellence: Plan for resilience, observability, performance, supportability, incident response, capacity, and disaster recovery.
• Decision making under uncertainty: Make practical tradeoffs across scope, cost, risk, time, technical debt, future flexibility, and business value.

What You'll Need

• 7+ years of experience designing, architecting, and delivering large-scale enterprise technology solutions.
• Strong hands-on background in software engineering, enterprise applications, APIs, cloud platforms, integration patterns, and modern delivery practices.
• Demonstrated ability to translate business requirements, strategic priorities, and operational constraints into solution architecture and execution guidance.
• Experience defining target-state architectures, transition roadmaps, reference patterns, sequence flows, deployment views, data flows, and architecture decision records.
• Strong understanding of security architecture, identity, access management, data protection, resilience, regulatory considerations, and auditability.
• Experience with highly available, fault-tolerant, scalable, observable, and supportable systems in mission-critical environments.
• Ability to lead architecture reviews, challenge assumptions, evaluate design tradeoffs, and guide teams through complex technical decisions.
• Proven ability to work across business, product, engineering, operations, infrastructure, cybersecurity, and vendor stakeholders.
• Excellent written, verbal, presentation, and executive communication skills with the ability to simplify complex technical concepts.
• Strong leadership presence, mentoring capability, and ability to influence outcomes without direct authority.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience architecting enterprise platforms in Fortune 500 or similarly large, complex environments.
• Experience with cloud-native architecture, hybrid cloud platforms, microservices, API management, event-driven architecture, and platform modernization.
• Knowledge of architecture governance methods such as reference architectures, architecture review boards, reusable standards, and architecture decision records.
• Experience with observability, DevOps, CI/CD, infrastructure automation, resiliency engineering, and production support models.
• Industry certifications or formal training in cloud architecture, enterprise architecture, security architecture, or related technology disciplines.

Success in this role looks like practical architecture that teams can execute, business partners can understand, and operations teams can support with confidence.

#LI-Onsite Full-time office role.

Our Principal Solution Architecture jobs earn between $174,100.00 - $261,100.00 USD Annual. Not to mention all the other amazing rewards that working at AT&T offers. Individual starting salary within this range may depend on geography, experience, expertise, and education/training.

Joining our team comes with amazing perks and benefits:

• Medical/Dental/Vision coverage
• 401(k) plan
• Tuition reimbursement program
• Paid Time Off and Holidays (based on date of hire, at least 23 days of vacation each year and 9 company-designated holidays)
• Paid Parental Leave
• Paid Caregiver Leave
• Additional sick leave beyond what state and local law require may be available but is unprotected
• Adoption Reimbursement
• Disability Benefits (short term and long term)
• Life and Accidental Death Insurance
• Supplemental benefit programs: critical illness/accident hospital indemnity/group legal
• Employee Assistance Programs (EAP)
• Extensive employee wellness programs
• Employee discounts up to 50% off on eligible AT&T mobility plans and accessories, AT&T internet (and fiber where available) and AT&T phone

Weekly Hours: 40

Time Type: Regular

Location: USA:TX:Plano / W Plano Pkwy - Adm:3400 W Plano Pkwy

Salary Range: $174,100.00 - $261,100.00

AT&T and its subsidiaries are committed to equal employment opportunity. All hiring, promotion, and other employment decisions remain merit-based and free from discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, religious creed, national origin, ancestry, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, physical disability, mental disability, pregnancy, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, citizenship status, military status, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local laws. In addition, AT&T will provide reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities. AT&T is a fair chance employer and does not initiate a background check until an offer is made. Click here to learn more or request an application accommodation here.