Principal Solution Architect, Enterprise API Platform

guardianlife; New York (NY); On-site; USD 170,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Guardian Life in New York seeks a Principal Solution Architect for the Enterprise API Platform to define, scale, and govern enterprise-wide architecture across platforms and delivery teams. This role shapes how technology solutions are designed, integrated, secured, and operated consistently across the organization.

Collaborating with business and technology stakeholders, you will build scalable solutions, establish patterns, guardrails, and reference architectures to enable teams to deliver

Responsibilities

• Own and shape enterprise or business solution architecture strategy, standards, and patterns across multiple platforms and domains
• Define and maintain reference architectures and reusable design patterns for solution delivery
• Establish architectural guardrails that enable scalable, secure, and consistent solution design across teams
• Owns reusable solution patterns, reference architectures, golden paths, and cross-team design consistency
• Lead enterprise-level or business-level design decisions for complex, high-impact initiatives that span multiple value streams or business units
• Provide architectural oversight and guidance across portfolios, ensuring alignment to enterprise standards and long-term strategy
• Drive early engagement on initiatives to identify cross-platform dependencies, systemic risks, and scalability constraints
• Translate business and technology strategy into actionable architecture direction and solution designs
• Partner with Security, Risk, and Compliance teams to embed governance, security, and regulatory requirements into solution architecture
• Define and promote best practices for operational resilience, scalability, performance, and maintainability
• Escalate enterprise exceptions / non-standard patterns / enterprise-risk decisions
• Influence and align stakeholders across engineering, product, and business leadership without direct authority
• Mentor and coach architects and senior engineers to elevate architectural maturity across the organization
• Represent solution architecture in enterprise forums and architecture review boards and strategic technology discussions
• Influences Value Stream leaders, Product managers, Product Owners and Tech Leads to align roadmaps, MVP scope, and technical trade-offs

Job description

Principal Solution Architect, Enterprise API Platform

Position Overview:

The Principal Solution Architect, Enterprise API Platform, is responsible for defining, scaling, and governing enterprise-wide or business solution architecture across platforms, domains, and delivery teams. This role shapes how technology solutions are designed, integrated, secured, and operated consistently across the organization. While architecture is foundational, the Principal Solution Architect will be responsible for designing solutions in close collaboration with the business and technology stakeholders. Where applicable, the role will be accountable to build solutions that scale and algin to business and technology requirements.
Operating at an enterprise or portfolio level, the Principal Solution Architect focuses less on individual solution delivery and more on establishing architecture patterns, standards, guardrails and building solutions that enable teams to deliver high-quality, scalable, and secure solutions at speed.
This role operates within a federated Enterprise Architecture (EA) model, partnering closely with business technology and platform teams to shape solutions in real time while improving accountability, speed, and delivery alignment. The architect remains connected to the central EA core through enterprise standards, governance, communities of practice, and cross-functional collaboration to ensure consistent, risk-aware technology decisions across domains.
This role partners closely with Enterprise Architecture, Engineering, Product, Cybersecurity, and Platform teams to ensure solutions align to business strategy, are resilient and compliant, and can scale across multiple use cases-without becoming a bottleneck to delivery.

You Will (Key Responsibilities):

• Own and shape enterprise or business solution architecture strategy, standards, and patterns across multiple platforms and domains


• Define and maintain reference architectures and reusable design patterns (\"golden paths\") for solution delivery


• Establish architectural guardrails that enable scalable, secure, and consistent solution design across teams


• Owns reusable solution patterns, reference architectures, golden paths, and cross-team design consistency


• Work with Solution Architects to drive adoption; Head of Portfolio Architecture to tailor for BU context; Principal Enterprise Architect to align with enterprise standards


• Lead enterprise-level or business-level design decisions for complex, high-impact initiatives that span multiple value streams or business units


• Provide architectural oversight and guidance across portfolios, ensuring alignment to enterprise standards and long-term strategy


• Drive early engagement on initiatives to identify cross-platform dependencies, systemic risks, and scalability constraints


• Partner with Enterprise Architecture and platform teams to define build vs. buy guidance and integration patterns


• Translate business and technology strategy into actionable architecture direction and solution designs


• Partner with Security, Risk, and Compliance teams to embed governance, security, and regulatory requirements into solution architecture


• Define and promote best practices for operational resilience, scalability, performance, and maintainability


• Escalate enterprise exceptions / non-standard patterns / enterprise-risk decisions


• Influence and align stakeholders across engineering, product, and business leadership without direct authority


• Mentor and coach architects and senior engineers to elevate architectural maturity across the organization


• Represent solution architecture in enterprise forums, architecture review boards, and strategic technology discussions


• Influences Value Stream leaders, Product managers, Product Owners and Tech Leads to align roadmaps, MVP scope, and technical trade-offs.


• Where applicable, the role will be accountable to build solutions that scale and algin to business and technology requirements.


• Available for production incidents with major impact to business operations


• Balance strategic and tactical decisions across API modernization, API/MCP management, API lifecycle management, domain-aligned data models, reimplementation priorities, and AI-ready API capabilities.


• Continuously evaluate now versus later, strategic versus tactical, reusable versus disposable, and modernization versus value delivery, ensuring meaningful outcomes through thin slices rather than broad, low-value transformation efforts.


• Lead enterprise API architecture patterns, technical direction, and modernization alignment across API platform engineering, internal API delivery, ext