Sr Manager, Solution Architecture

Ulta Beauty; Bolingbrook (IL); On-site; USD 170,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Ulta Beauty in Bolingbrook, IL seeks a Senior Manager of Solution Architecture to lead the technology strategy for customer-facing digital experiences across Web, Mobile, and the GraphQL layer. This hands-on leadership role balances strategic direction with architectural design and prototyping, guiding a team of architects and collaborating with product, UX, and business leaders.

The role emphasizes AI-native engineering, scalable platforms, and continuous improvement, with a focus on

Qualifications

• Experience designing and evolving modern digital experience platforms across Web and Mobile.
• Ability to build and guide architecture strategies that drive business outcomes.
• Strong leadership, mentoring, and collaboration with product, UX, and engineering teams.

Responsibilities

• Define and evolve target architecture for Ulta Beauty's Digital Experience Platform across Web, Mobile, GraphQL, and shared frontend capabilities.
• Partner with Product, Business, UX, and Engineering to align technology investments with business outcomes.
• Shape roadmaps and architectural strategies to support customer-facing experiences.
• Lead architecture governance with designs reviews and alignment across product teams.
• Establish architecture principles, standards, and reusable patterns to boost velocity.
• Mentor architects through reviews, guidance, and continuous learning.
• Communicate strategy, risks, and investment recommendations to senior leadership.
• Foster documentation and engineering excellence through ADRs and reference architectures.

Skills

Solution Architecture

Technical Leadership

AI Engineering

Architecture Reviews

Cross-functional Leadership

GraphQL

Frontend Architecture

Mentoring

Tools

Amplience

CI/CD

Redis

Job description

Overview

Live the experience. From professional empowerment to continual learning opportunities. From ongoing investment in new and emerging technologies to a career of self-determination. At Ulta Beauty, our tech team is critical to our scalability—and is recognized that way. We've been defined as a \"mature start-up.\" A place where interdepartmental exposure, open doors, and genuine collaboration is ubiquitous. Where challenges come fast and furious, requiring agility, mental dexterity, and creativity. Where our passion for better solutions drives us and is core to who we are. We're engineering for the future of retail, and it's no-holds-barred. But for those motivated by continual change and ambiguity, by superior leadership, by whip smart colleagues who will press you daily for your very best, you'll find that virtually nothing's impossible at Ulta Beauty.

THE IMPACT YOU CAN MAKE

We are seeking an experienced Senior Manager, Solution Architecture to lead the technology strategy and architecture for Ulta Beauty's customer-facing digital experiences across Web, Mobile, and the GraphQL experience layer. This is a hands-on leadership role requiring a balance of strategic thinking, architectural leadership, people development, and direct technical contribution. You will partner closely with Product, Engineering, UX, and Business leaders to define technology strategy, shape roadmaps, influence investment decisions, and ensure architecture delivers measurable business outcomes. You will lead a team of architects while remaining deeply engaged in solution design, architecture reviews, technical spikes, prototypes, and proof-of-concepts (POCs) that validate architectural direction and reduce delivery risk. The balance of responsibilities will evolve based on business priorities, strategic initiatives, and delivery needs. The ideal candidate embraces AI-native engineering, modern digital experience platforms, and continuous innovation while maintaining a relentless focus on performance, scalability, engineering excellence, and exceptional customer experiences.

YOU'LL ACCOMPLISH THESE GOALS BY:

Strategic Architecture Leadership

• Define and evolve the target architecture for Ulta Beauty's Digital Experience Platform across Web, Mobile, GraphQL, and shared frontend capabilities.
• Partner with Product, Business, UX, and Engineering leaders to align technology investments with measurable business outcomes.
• Shape technology roadmaps and architectural strategies supporting customer-facing digital experiences.
• Lead architecture governance by reviewing designs, challenging tradeoffs, and ensuring consistent architectural direction across multiple product teams.
• Establish architecture principles, standards, reusable patterns, and engineering best practices.
• Drive platform thinking by promoting reusable capabilities, shared services, and common architectural patterns that improve engineering velocity.
• Mentor, coach, and develop Solution and Domain Architects through architecture reviews, technical guidance, and continuous learning.
• Communicate architecture strategy, roadmap progress, technology risks, and investment recommendations to senior leadership.
• Foster a culture of technical excellence, documentation, accountability, and continuous improvement.

Technical Leadership & Solution Architecture

• Lead architecture and solution design for complex, enterprise-scale digital initiatives.
• Build technical prototypes, proof-of-concepts (POCs), architecture spikes, and reference implementations to validate architectural approaches and reduce delivery risk.
• Remain hands-on by guiding engineering teams through complex technical challenges and critical implementation decisions.
• Review APIs, GraphQL schemas, integration patterns, and solution designs to ensure scalability, maintainability, security, and performance.
• Partner with engineering teams throughout implementation to ensure architectural integrity and successful execution.
• Drive performance optimization, resiliency, observability, and operational excellence across customer-facing platforms.
• Champion documentation excellence through architecture decision records (ADRs), solution blueprints, reference architectures, and technical standards.
• Continuously evaluate emerging technologies and modern engineering practices to improve developer productivity and customer experiences.

Technology Expertise

• The ideal candidate brings deep experience designing and evolving modern digital experience platforms with expertise across the following areas:
• Frontend & Experience Architecture:React, modular UI, microfrontends, GraphQL, Backend-for-Frontend (BFF), server-driven UI, shared component libraries, and enterprise design systems.
• Digital Experience Platforms:Headless CMS (Amplience preferred), content management, web, native mobile, webview integration, and omnichannel customer experiences.
• Performance & Scalability:Core Web Vitals, mobile performance, Redis caching, CDN strategies, release isolation, resiliency, observability, and scalable distributed architectures.
• Customer Experience Optimization:SEO, AEO (Answer Engine Optimization), experimentation, A/B testing, personalization, feature management, and digital analytics.
• Modern Engineering Practices:Cloud-native architectures, API-first design, CI/CD, DevSecOps, security, and platform engineering.

AI-Native Engineering

• The successful candidate is expected to understand and apply modern AI engineering practices across both customer experiences and software development.

Leveraging AI-enabled engineering practices to improve developer productivity, software quality, and delivery speed. Understanding AI-powered customer experiences, agentic workflows, retrieval-based architectures (RAG), evaluation strategies, orchestration patterns, and AI integration approaches. Applying responsible AI principles, including governance, security, privacy, guardrails, observability, and cost optimization. Evaluating emerging AI technologies and identifying opportunities to accelerate engineering efficiency and business outcomes.

Leadership Expectations

• Serve as a player-coach by balancing strategic leadership with direct technical engagement.
• Lead and mentor a high-performing architecture organization.
• Challenge architectural assumptions and technical tradeoffs while enabling teams to make sound engineering decisions.
• Build strong partnerships across Product, UX, Engineering, Security, Platform, and Business organizations.
• Influence technical direction without relying solely on organizational authority.
• Foster collaboration, innovation, ownership, and accountability across teams.
• Develop architects through coaching, architecture reviews, and technical mentorship.
• Champion high standards for documentation, architecture quality, engineering excellence, and execution.