Senior Enterprise Architect

Goosehead-Insurance; Westlake (OH); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Goosehead-Insurance seeks a visionary Senior Enterprise Architect to lead architectural direction across software platforms, modernization, cloud adoption, and AI integration, translating complex business needs into scalable, secure solutions.

The role combines hands-on development with enterprise strategy, mentoring engineers, and collaborating with product, data, security, and leadership to drive observability, governance, and technical excellence across the organization.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience designing enterprise-scale software systems.
• Strong background in architecture patterns (microservices, API-driven, event-driven).
• Experience with cloud-native architectures and observability.

Responsibilities

• Design and lead resilient, scalable, secure distributed systems.
• Develop prototypes and reference implementations to accelerate adoption.
• Define architectural standards and roadmaps aligned with business strategy.
• Lead AI/GenAI strategy and integration into enterprise applications.
• Mentor architects and engineers and promote engineering excellence.

Skills

Architectural leadership

Hands-on development

Cloud architecture

AI integration

Mentorship

Cross-functional collaboration

Tools

Microsoft Azure

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 ResponsibilitiesArchitectural 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 Qualifications12+ 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 software applications and distributed systems.Strong software development background with significant experience in one or more modern programming languages such as Java, Python, .NET/C#, or similar.Demonstrated expertise with modern architectural patterns, including microservices, event-driven architecture, API-driven systems, distributed systems, cloud-native architecture, and domain-driven design.Experience architecting and delivering systems that require high availability, scalability, resiliency, security, performance, and operational excellence.Experience with cloud platforms and cloud-native services, preferably Microsoft Azure.Demonstrated ability to move between high-level architecture and hands-on technical implementation, including developing prototypes, reference architectures, frameworks, or production-quality code.Strong understanding of software development lifecycle practices, DevOps, CI/CD, automated testing, observability, and modern engineering practices.Practical experience with AI and/or generative AI in software applications or engineering environments.Ability to evaluate AI technologies and determine how they can be effectively integrated into enterprise software and existing technology ecosystems.Exceptional communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to influence engineers, architects, product leaders, business stakeholders, and executive leadership.Demonstrated ability to establish technical direction, build consensus, and make sound architectural decisions in a complex enterprise environment.The successful candidate will be an architect and technical leader who can operate comfortably at multiple levels—from discussing enterprise technology strategy with executives to reviewing architecture and code with engineers.