Senior Enterprise Architect

goosehead; Westlake (TX); On-site; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Goosehead Insurance is seeking a Senior Enterprise Architect to lead our enterprise architecture team, shaping software platforms with hands-on leadership across modernization, cloud adoption, and AI integration.

You will collaborate across architecture, engineering, product, data, security, and business units to define standards, translate business challenges into scalable, secure solutions, and mentor engineers in delivering high-quality software.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of professional experience in software engineering or architecture.
• 4+ years at principal/lead architect level within a complex enterprise.
• Hands-on experience designing enterprise-scale software systems.

Responsibilities

• Architectural leadership to design scalable, secure, observable distributed systems.
• Develop architectural prototypes, reference implementations, and scaffolding.
• Lead software modernization initiatives, including cloud adoption and API strategy.
• Define and drive AI and GenAI architecture within enterprise applications.
• Establish architecture patterns, standards, and roadmaps aligned with strategy.
• Mentor architects and engineers to promote code quality and design excellence.

Skills

Software architecture

Cloud architecture

AI integration

Technical leadership

Mentorship

Job description

We are seeking a visionary, hands-on Senior Enterprise Architect to join our enterprise architecture team and help shape the future of our software platforms. This role will provide technical leadership across software architecture, enterprise modernization, scalability, cloud adoption, and the strategic integration of emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence.

The ideal candidate is an accomplished software engineer and architect with a deep understanding of designing, building, and evolving complex enterprise software systems. This individual will work across architecture, engineering, product, data, security, and business teams to establish technical direction, define architectural standards, and translate complex business challenges into practical, scalable, and secure software solutions.

This is not a data science or AI model-development role. However, we are looking for a software architect who understands how to apply and integrate AI capabilities into real-world enterprise software. Candidates may come from a strong software engineering, architecture, platform engineering, or AI engineering background; deep expertise in statistics, model training, or academic machine learning is not required.

The Principal Software Architect will remain hands-on while operating at an enterprise level‑developing prototypes, reference implementations, frameworks, scaffolding, and complex technical solutions that help engineering teams adopt architectural patterns and deliver high-quality software. The role will also serve as a technical thought leader and mentor, helping establish a culture of engineering excellence, innovation, and continuous modernization.

Experience in the insurance industry is a strong plus.

Key Responsibilities

• Architectural Leadership: Design and collaborate with engineering teams to build resilient, highly scalable, secure, maintainable, and observable distributed software systems as part of a collaborative enterprise architecture team.
• Hands-On Architecture & Development: Develop architectural prototypes, reference implementations, scaffolding, frameworks, algorithms, and other technical solutions that demonstrate architectural patterns and accelerate engineering adoption and delivery.
• Enterprise Modernization: Lead architectural direction for software modernization initiatives, including legacy application transformation, application decomposition, cloud adoption, platform evolution, API strategies, integration, and modernization of critical enterprise systems.
• AI & Generative AI Architecture: Define and lead the technical strategy for incorporating AI and GenAI capabilities into enterprise applications and platforms. Evaluate and integrate LLMs, third-party AI services, AI agents, and other emerging AI technologies where they provide meaningful business or engineering value.
• AI-Enabled SDLC: Identify opportunities to leverage AI to improve developer productivity, software development, testing, code quality, documentation, application modernization, and other areas of the SDLC. Establish reusable patterns, standards, and guardrails that enable engineering teams to adopt AI safely and effectively.
• Technical Roadmap & Governance: Establish architecture patterns, reference architectures, frameworks, engineering standards, and technical roadmaps across software development and AI adoption, ensuring alignment with enterprise strategy, business objectives, security requirements, and industry best practices.
• Cloud & Distributed Systems: Provide architectural leadership for cloud-native applications and distributed systems, with an emphasis on scalability, resilience, availability, performance, observability, and operational excellence.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner closely with product management, engineering, data, security, infrastructure, and business leadership to translate complex business problems into practical, elegant, and scalable technical solutions.
• Technical Influence & Mentorship: Serve as a technical mentor and thought leader for architects and engineering teams. Promote strong software engineering practices, rigorous code quality, design excellence, performance optimization, and continuous improvement.
• Technology Evaluation: Evaluate emerging technologies, software frameworks, cloud-native services, AI capabilities, and architectural approaches to continuously evolve the organization's technology landscape.
• Leadership: The ideal candidate is able to see the big picture, understand the details, and help teams turn architectural vision into working software.

Required Qualifications

• 12+ years of professional experience in software engineering, software architecture, or a related technical discipline.
• 4+ years operating at a Principal Engineer, Principal Architect, Enterprise Architect, Lead Architect, or similar senior technical leadership level within a complex enterprise environment.
• Deep, hands-on experience designing and building enterprise-scale softwar