Principal Solution Architect, Enterprise Digital Technology

guardianlife; New York (NY); On-site; USD 160,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Guardian Life is seeking a Principal Solution Architect to define enterprise-wide solution architecture across platforms, domains, and delivery teams. You will shape how technology solutions are designed, integrated, secured, and operated, collaborating with business and technology stakeholders to scale and align with requirements.

You will lead architecture standards, reference architectures, and guardrails while partnering with EA, Security, Risk, Compliance, and Platform teams to ensure

Responsibilities

• Own enterprise and business solution architecture strategy, standards, guardrails, reference architectures, reusable patterns, and cross-team design consistency across platforms and domains.
• Lead complex design decisions across value streams and business units, translating business and technology strategy into actionable architecture direction, solution designs, and delivery choices.
• Drive early architecture engagement to identify cross-platform dependencies, systemic risks, scalability constraints, build-versus-buy implications, integration patterns, and non-standard enterprise exceptions.
• Partner with Enterprise Architecture, Security, Risk, Compliance, platform, product, and engineering teams to embed enterprise standards, governance, security, resiliency, performance, and maintainability into solution design.
• Influence Solution Architects, Portfolio Architecture leaders, Value Stream leaders, Product Managers, Product Owners, and Tech Leads to align roadmaps, MVP scope, technical trade-offs, and BU-specific architecture decisions.
• Mentor architects and senior engineers, represent solution architecture in enterprise forums and architecture review boards, and elevate architectural maturity across the organization.
• Where applicable, build scalable solutions aligned to business and technology requirements and support major production incidents with material business impact.
• Lead Enterprise Digital architecture direction across Marketing Technology, Customer Service Technology, UX/UI, Accessibility, Mobile, digital platforms, CRM, and Salesforce, including gold/silver patterns, standards, exceptions, reuse, simplification, and platform rationalization.
• Partner with engineering and delivery teams on complex solution designs, modernization initiatives, platform selection, Salesforce platform roadmaps, backlog priorities, delivery standards, run-state accountability, and production readiness.
• Evaluate platforms, tools, and emerging capabilities for strategic fit, incumbent rationalization, total cost of ownership, scalability, elasticity, resiliency, maintainability, and long-term enterprise value.
• Shape AI-first and AI-native architecture across Enterprise Digital, including AI-assisted engineering, developer productivity, agentic workflows, MCP capabilities, platform-embedded AI, customer context, APIs, and Guardian AI platform investments.
• Define target-state CRM and Salesforce architecture, including CRM, Data Cloud, customer context, canonical data models, integration, event-driven patterns, extensibility, security, release governance, and long-term platform evolution.
• Help senior technology and business leaders understand how strategic platform choices, modernization priorities, simplification, Salesforce evolution, and AI-native transformation improve scale, resilience, delivery velocity, and

Job description

Principal Solution Architect, Enterprise Digital Technology

Position Overview

The Principal Solution Architect 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.For Enterprise Digital Technology, this role provides portfolio-wide architecture leadership across CRM, Marketing Technology, Customer Service Technology, and the Digital Experience Platform, including UX, UI Engineering, Accessibility, and Mobile. The architect helps ensure architecture coherence across these capabilities while remaining hands-on with solution design and delivery teams.

Key Responsibilities

• Own enterprise and business solution architecture strategy, standards, guardrails, reference architectures, reusable patterns, and cross-team design consistency across platforms and domains.
• Lead complex design decisions across value streams and business units, translating business and technology strategy into actionable architecture direction, solution designs, and delivery choices.
• Drive early architecture engagement to identify cross-platform dependencies, systemic risks, scalability constraints, build-versus-buy implications, integration patterns, and non-standard enterprise exceptions.
• Partner with Enterprise Architecture, Security, Risk, Compliance, platform, product, and engineering teams to embed enterprise standards, governance, security, resiliency, performance, and maintainability into solution design.
• Influence Solution Architects, Portfolio Architecture leaders, Value Stream leaders, Product Managers, Product Owners, and Tech Leads to align roadmaps, MVP scope, technical trade-offs, and BU-specific architecture decisions.
• Mentor architects and senior engineers, represent solution architecture in enterprise forums and architecture review boards, and elevate architectural maturity across the organization.
• Where applicable, build scalable solutions aligned to business and technology requirements and support major production incidents with material business impact.
• Lead Enterprise Digital architecture direction across Marketing Technology, Customer Service Technology, UX/UI, Accessibility, Mobile, digital platforms, CRM, and Salesforce, including gold/silver patterns, standards, exceptions, reuse, simplification, and platform rationalization.
• Partner with engineering and delivery teams on complex solution designs, modernization initiatives, platform selection, Salesforce platform roadmaps, backlog priorities, delivery standards, run-state accountability, and production readiness.
• Evaluate platforms, tools, and emerging capabilities for strategic fit, incumbent rationalization, total cost of ownership, scalability, elasticity, resiliency, maintainability, and long-term enterprise value.
• Shape AI-first and AI-native architecture across Enterprise Digital, including AI-assisted engineering, developer productivity, agentic workflows, MCP capabilities, platform-embedded AI, customer context, APIs, and Guardian AI platform investments.
• Define target-state CRM and Salesforce architecture, including CRM, Data Cloud, customer context, canonical data models, integration, event-driven patterns, extensibility, security, release governance, and long-term platform evolution.
• Help senior technology and business leaders understand how strategic platform choices, modernization priorities, simplification, Salesforce evolution, and AI-native transformation improve scale, resilience, delivery velocity, and