Solution Architect - Hotel Technology & Enterprise Systems - Hybrid AZ

Best Western; United States; On-site; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Best Western is seeking a Solution Architect to shape and govern its hotel technology architecture. You will partner with business, engineering, and vendor teams to design secure, scalable, and cost-effective solutions across reservations, distribution, PMS, loyalty, and data systems.

The role combines strategic architecture leadership with hands-on design reviews, modernization efforts, and cross-functional execution planning to reduce technical debt and align with enterprise standards.

Qualifications

• 7+ years in enterprise software architecture and delivery.
• Experience translating business needs into scalable solutions.
• Strong communication with executives and technical teams.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end architecture for hotel technology and enterprise systems.
• Define current-state, target-state, and transitional architecture models.
• Collaborate with business, technology, vendor teams and delivery partners.

Skills

Solution Architecture

Cloud Architecture

Enterprise Systems

Stakeholder Communication

Delivery Leadership

Architecture Governance

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science

Tools

AWS

Kubernetes

REST APIs

Job description

Join BWH Hotels - Where Passion Meets Purpose

At BWH® Hotels, we don't just offer employment opportunities, we create opportunities to be part of something extraordinary. As a global leader in hospitality for nearly 80 years, our vision is to inspire travel through unique experiences. Joining our corporate team means becoming part of a dynamic and inclusive community that values innovation, collaboration, and making a meaningful impact in the travel industry.

Headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, BWH Hotels boasts a powerful portfolio of 18 brands, including WorldHotels™, Best Western® Hotels & Resorts, and SureStay Hotels®, with approximately 4,300 hotels in over 100 countries. We take pride in our top-ranking employee engagement scores and foster a workplace culture where your contributions truly matter. Join us and be part of a team that's shaping the future of hospitality!

The Solution Architect shapes and governs the architecture for Best Western's hotel technology and enterprise systems portfolio. This role partners with business, technology, engineering, and vendor teams to design secure, scalable, resilient, and cost-effective solutions across core hospitality platforms, including reservations, distribution, Property Management Systems, loyalty, contact center, integration, identity, cloud, and data systems. The position provides both strategic and hands-on architecture leadership by translating business needs into practical designs, defining current-and-future-state architecture, guiding modernization, reducing technical debt, and ensuring alignment with enterprise standards and priorities. The ideal candidate brings technical depth, business acumen, delivery leadership, vendor collaboration, and strong executive communication while supporting implementation planning, design reviews, and issue resolution.

Key Responsibilities

Architecture & Solution Design

• Lead end-to-end solution architecture for hotel technology and enterprise system initiatives.
• Develop current-state, target-state, and transitional architecture models for complex platforms and integrations.
• Design scalable, secure, resilient, and maintainable solutions across cloud, application, data, API, integration, and enterprise platforms.
• Assess architecture patterns, system constraints, technical debt, scalability risks, operational processes, and single points of failure.
• Define and maintain architecture standards, reusable design assets, diagrams, system inventories, integration maps, dependency models, and data-flow documentation.
• Support modernization strategies that decouple legacy business logic, introduce modern integration patterns, reduce high-risk technologies, and account for performance, reliability, security, privacy, compliance, supportability, and total cost of ownership.

Hospitality Platform Modernization

• Provide architecture leadership across Best Western's core hospitality ecosystem, including CRS, distribution, PMS, loyalty, member-facing systems, contact center technologies, and adjacent enterprise platforms.
• Support modernization of reservation and distribution capabilities by evaluating current-state architecture, integration dependencies, data movement, transaction flows, and future-state options.
• Partner with delivery teams to simplify, consolidate, re-platform, or modernize existing solutions and prepare for major transformation initiatives, vendor implementations, platform migrations, and digital capability expansion.

Integration, Cloud & Technical Enablement

• Design and govern enterprise integration patterns, including REST APIs, event-driven architecture, microservices, middleware, batch processing, third-party connectivity, API gateways, service orchestration, data exchange, and system interoperability.
• Provide architecture oversight for AWS, cloud-native, and hybrid solutions while ensuring alignment with security-by-design principles.

Delivery Leadership & Governance

• Provide technical oversight throughout the project lifecycle, from discovery and design through implementation, testing, go-live, and handoff.
• Facilitate architecture workshops, design reviews, technical assessments, stakeholder discovery sessions, and translate requirements into actionable technical solutions.
• Collaborate with project managers, product owners, developers, engineers, security, infrastructure, vendors, and business stakeholders to align delivery approach and execution.
• Identify architecture risks, dependencies, design gaps, delivery constraints, and mitigation options while supporting estimation, planning, sequencing, and delivery quality.

Business Partnership & Executive Communication

• Serve as a trusted technology advisor to business and technology leadership, helping translate operational needs, platform gaps, regulatory considerations, and business outcomes into architecture direction.
• Present architecture recommendations, tradeoffs, risks, and future-state options in clear business terms that connect decisions to reliabi