Principal Architect

Quick Facts

• Role: Principal Architect (Solution Architecture + Software Engineering)

Description

Define and drive the long-term architecture for business-critical products, platforms, and services. Lead an architecture guild and review process, set and evolve architecture standards and guardrails, and translate strategy and requirements into implementable logical and physical designs. Drive AI-first adoption with reference architectures and Responsible AI controls while validating designs through prototypes, reviews, and operational evidence.

Responsibilities

• Lead the architecture guild across the organization (standards, patterns, tools, lessons learned)
• Set and evolve architectural standards, principles, reference architectures, reusable patterns, approved technology choices, and guardrails
• Define AI-first reference architectures and guardrails (agents, retrieval, evaluation, Responsible AI)
• Align architecture processes, artifacts, and decision rights across planning through operations
• Run and continuously improve the architecture review process (intake/triage, quality bars, ADRs, escalation, adoption/outcome measures)
• Lead reviews of the most consequential programs, documenting context, options, tradeoffs, risks, and decisions
• Help teams create logical and physical architectures (services, data flows, integrations, APIs; deployment topology, resiliency, observability, DR, capacity)
• Coach teams to translate functional and nonfunctional requirements into detailed architecture specifications and diagrams
• Build and improve a pro-code golden path (templates, scaffolding, and CI/CD pipelines)
• Develop the golden loop (instrumented developer loop covering build/test/deploy/monitor/feedback with AI-assisted workflows)
• Mentor engineers through design coaching, code/design reviews, pairing, and career guidance
• Prototype and validate high-risk or novel designs before irreversible commitments
• Contribute production-quality reference implementations, templates, and sample code
• Identify architectural gaps, technical debt, obsolete technologies, and systemic risks; prioritize long-term improvements
• Define target-state architecture and sequenced transition roadmaps
• Balance tradeoffs across reliability, security, privacy, safety, accessibility, performance, scalability, sustainability, maintainability, time-to-market, and TCO
• Use telemetry, incidents, capacity/cost models, security findings, and customer feedback to assess architecture health
• Communicate complex architectures to engineering, business, and executive audiences

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 8+ years technical engineering experience coding in C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python (or equivalent)
• Ability to meet Microsoft, customer, and/or government security screening requirements, including passing the Microsoft Cloud Background Check at hire/transfer and every two years thereafter
• Microsoft cannot sponsor a work visa for this role

Benefits

• High-impact technical leadership role influencing architecture standards, AI transformation, and delivery at scale