Principal Solutions Architect & Set-Up

NRG Energy; Seattle (WA); Hybrid; USD 210,000 - 245,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Free daily lunch and drinks on site

Paid holidays and flexible paid time

Employee/Friends/Family Discounts

Onsite health clinic, gym, gaming

Medical/dental/vision/life coverage &

401(k) + Employer Match

Employee Resource Groups

Quarterly Innovation Weeks

Job summary

Vivint Smart Home is hiring a Principal Solutions Architect to own the holistic technical view of device setup and connectivity across panel firmware, cloud services, mobile applications, and device radios. This role translates complex architectures into actionable changes that speed installations and improve reliability.

You will collaborate across hardware, embedded, platform, cloud, and mobile teams, evaluate third‑party services, and work with device makers to ensure seamless integration

Qualifications

• 10+ years in software or systems engineering with architect/lead experience on distributed systems including physical devices.
• Deep understanding of connected device architecture, provisioning, commissioning, cloud-to-device connectivity, OTA updates, and telemetry at scale.
• Knowledge of home networking realities and connectivity protocols (Wi‑Fi, mesh, band steering, multicast, mDNS, BLE, Z‑Wave, Matter, Thread, cellular backhaul).
• Experience evaluating/integrating third‑party platforms and managing vendor relationships through production.
• Experience with hardware manufacturers, ODMs, or silicon vendors in new product development.
• Ability to influence across embedded, cloud, mobile, and hardware groups without authority.
• Excellent written communication; ability to document complex systems for executives and engineers.
• Analytical rigour with reliability and observability data; define metrics for architectural changes.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain the holistic architectural picture for device setup and connectivity across firmware, cloud, mobile, and radios.
• Partner with engineering leadership to propose and socialize architectural changes that reduce install time and improve quality.
• Define architecture for device health telemetry and self-healing to monitor connectivity health and recover from network events.
• Lead build-versus-buy evaluations for third-party services and integrate them into the platform, data model, security, and privacy posture.
• Work with device makers, ODMs, and silicon partners to ensure protocols, provisioning, updates, and telemetry integrate smoothly.
• Write architecture evaluations, reference designs, and decision records to guide tradeoffs across protocols, performance, diagnostics, and recovery.
• Analyze field/telemetry data to identify failure patterns and translate into prioritized architectural work with measurable outcomes.
• Advise product leadership on roadmap/strategy, including protocol strategy by device category and future hardware needs.

Skills

Distributed systems architecture

Device provisioning

Cloud-to-device connectivity

OTA firmware updates

Fleet telemetry at scale

Home networking expertise

Vendor integration

Influence without authority

Written communication

Job description

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Welcome to the intersection of energy and home services. At NRG, we’re driven by our passion to create a smarter, cleaner and more connected future.

Vivint Smart Home, an NRG owned company, is a leading smart home company in the United States, dedicated to redefining the home experience with intelligent products and services. We find purpose in proactively protecting and keeping our customers connected to home, no matter where they are. Join the Smart Home team to create smarter, safer and more sustainable homes.

Summary

Vivint Smart Home is hiring a Principal Solutions Architect to own the holistic technical view of how our devices get set up and how they stay connected. This role is responsible for understanding our end-to-end architecture across panel firmware, cloud services, mobile applications, and the radios and home networks in between, and for translating that understanding into a concrete set of architectural changes that make installations faster and more reliable. Setup and connectivity are the two moments that most shape install time, product quality, and long-term customer trust. This leader will hold the system-level picture that no single engineering team owns today and use it to drive change across all of them.

You will operate across hardware, embedded, platform, cloud, and mobile engineering, partnering closely with product, design, QA, data, and field operations. You will also be our technical face to the outside: evaluating and integrating third‑party services such as network telemetry, diagnostics, and observability, and working directly with device manufacturers so that every new device we build fits cleanly into our ecosystem from the first design review. This is a role for a deeply technical leader who influences through architecture and evidence rather than authority, and who is willing to own the seams between teams that nobody else owns.

What You'll Do:

• Build and maintain the holistic architectural picture of setup and device connectivity across panel firmware, cloud services, mobile applications, and device radios, including a clear view of where product behavior lives today and where it should live.
• Partner with engineering leadership to propose, sequence, and socialize the architectural changes that reduce install time and improve install quality
• Define the architecture for device health telemetry and self‑healing, so that devices continuously report connectivity health such as signal strength, disconnects, reconnect time, and retry behavior, and recover from common home network events without a technician or a customer call.
• Lead build‑versus‑buy evaluations for third‑party services across networking, diagnostics, and observability, then own the technical integration of what we buy into our platform, data model, and security and privacy posture.
• Work directly with device makers, ODMs, and silicon partners during new product development to ensure that commissioning and operating protocols, provisioning flows, update mechanisms, and telemetry hooks integrate well within our product ecosytem
• Write the architecture evaluations, reference designs, and decision records that give product and engineering a shared basis for tradeoffs across protocols, performance, diagnostics, and recovery.
• Diagnose real-world failure patterns using field, telemetry, and customer support data, and turn them into prioritized architectural work with a clear line to the metric each change is expected to move.
• Serve as a technical advisor to product leadership on roadmap and strategy, including protocol strategy by device category and the architecture required for the next generation of hardware.

What We're Looking For:

• 10+ years in software or systems engineering, including significant time as an architect or technical lead on distributed systems that include physical devices.
• Deep, hands‑on understanding of connected device architecture, including device provisioning and commissioning, cloud-to-device connectivity, over‑the‑air firmware update, and fleet telemetry at scale.
• Working knowledge of home networking realities and connectivity protocols, including Wi‑Fi and consumer mesh systems, band steering, multicast and mDNS behavior, BLE, Z‑Wave, Matter, Thread, and cellular backhaul.
• Experience evaluating, selecting, and integrating third‑party platforms and services, and comfort owning the technical side of a vendor relationship through to production.
• Direct experience working with hardware manufacturers, ODMs, or silicon vendors on new product development, including reviewing requirements documents and influencing design decisions early enough to matter.
• Proven ability to influence without authority across embedded, cloud, mobile, and hardware organizations, and to build alignment on a multi‑year architectural direction.
• Exceptional written communication, with the ability to turn a tangled system into a document that both an executive and a firmware engineer find useful.
• Analytical rigor with reliability and observability data, including defining the metrics that prove an architectural change actually worked.

Job Functions:

Position requires in-office presence in Seattle, WA on a hybrid schedule for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday with a work from home day on Friday. The position will start remote and then will move into the hybrid schedule.

Working at Vivint:

Learn about the Vivint Culture and why it’s a great place to grow your career! Here are some highlighted perks you should ask us about:

• Free daily lunch and drinks on site
• Paid holidays and flexible paid time away
• Employee/Friends/Family Discounts
• Onsite health clinic, gym, gaming tables
• Medical/dental/vision/life coverage & 24/7 Medical Hotline
• 401(k) + Employer Match
• Employee Resource Groups
• Quarterly Innovation Weeks

The base salary range for this position is: $210,000 - $245,000* *The base salary range above represents the low and high end of the salary range for this position. Actual salaries will vary based on several factors including but not limited to location, experience, and performance. The range listed is just one component of the total compensation package for employees. Other rewards may include annual bonus, short- and long-term incentives, and program‑specific awards. In addition the position may be eligible to participate in the benefits program which include, but not limited to, medical, vision, dental, 401K, and flexible spending accounts.

NRG Energy is committed to a drug and alcohol‑free workplace. To the extent permitted by law and any applicable collective bargaining agreement, employees are subject to periodic random drug testing, and post‑accident and reasonable suspicion drug and alcohol testing. EOE AA M/F/Protected Veteran Status/Disability. Level, Title and/or Salary may be adjusted based on the applicant’s experience or skills.

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Official description on file with Talent.

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