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Distinguished Architect Jobs (NOW HIRING)

Distinguished Architect

New York, NY · On-site

$75.50 - $93.50/hr

To get the best candidate experience, please consider applying for a maximum of 3 roles within 12 months to ensure you are not duplicating efforts. Job Category Sales Job Details About Salesforce ...

Distinguished Architect, AI

New York, NY · On-site

$300K - $484K/yr

Datadog is expanding the Technical Solutions (TS) organization by seeking a customer-focused, deeply technical Distinguished Architect to join our Product Solutions Architecture (PSA) team. In this ...

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Distinguished Architect information

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$32.5K

$171.7K

$236K

How much do distinguished architect jobs pay per year?

As of Jun 8, 2026, the average yearly pay for distinguished architect in the United States is $171,736.00, according to ZipRecruiter salary data. Most workers in this role earn between $125,000.00 and $221,500.00 per year, depending on experience, location, and employer.

What is a Distinguished Architect job?

A Distinguished Architect is a senior technical leader responsible for shaping the overall architecture and strategy of complex systems or enterprise solutions. They provide expertise in design, scalability, and innovation, often influencing technical standards and best practices across an organization. Distinguished Architects collaborate with executives, engineering teams, and stakeholders to align technology with business goals. Their role requires deep industry knowledge, leadership skills, and the ability to solve high-level architectural challenges.

What are the key skills and qualifications needed to thrive in the Distinguished Architect position, and why are they important?

Excelling as a Distinguished Architect requires deep expertise in systems design, enterprise architecture, and solution integration, typically supported by advanced degrees and considerable experience in architecture roles. Familiarity with frameworks like TOGAF, cloud platforms such as AWS or Azure, and architecture modeling tools are commonly expected, as are relevant certifications. Outstanding leadership, strategic vision, and the ability to communicate complex ideas to both technical and non-technical stakeholders distinguish top professionals in this role. These competencies are critical for driving large-scale technology initiatives and aligning architecture strategies with business goals.

What are typical daily responsibilities for a Distinguished Architect?

On a typical day, a Distinguished Architect will lead the conceptualization and design of complex technical solutions, review and approve high-level architectural decisions, and ensure alignment with business strategy. They often collaborate with cross-functional teams, mentor other architects and engineers, and provide technical guidance throughout the project lifecycle. Additionally, they may engage with executive leadership to communicate architecture vision and support long-term technology planning. This role also involves staying up to date on emerging technologies to ensure the organization’s architecture remains innovative and robust.

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What cities are hiring for Distinguished Architect jobs? Cities with the most Distinguished Architect job openings:
What are the most commonly searched types of Distinguished Architect jobs? The most popular types of Distinguished Architect jobs are:
What states have the most Distinguished Architect jobs? States with the most job openings for Distinguished Architect jobs include:
What job categories do people searching Distinguished Architect jobs look for? The top searched job categories for Distinguished Architect jobs are:
Infographic showing various Distinguished Architect job openings in the United States as of May 2026, with employment types broken down into 95% Full Time, and 5% Part Time. Highlights an 95% Physical, 2% Hybrid, and 3% Remote job distribution, with an average salary of $171,736 per year, or $82.6 per hour.
Distinguished Architect [Data & Intelligence] - Washington DC, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Chicago

Distinguished Architect [Data & Intelligence] - Washington DC, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Chicago

Amtrak

Philadelphia, PA

$64.25 - $82.75/hr

Other

Medical, Dental, Vision, Life, Retirement, PTO

Posted 5 days ago


Amtrak rating

8.0

Company rating: 8.0 out of 10

Based on 142 frontline employees who took The Breakroom Quiz

22nd of 76 rated public transport


Job description

Your success is a train ride away!

As we move America's workforce toward the future, Amtrak connects businesses and communities across the country. We employ more than 20,000 diverse, energetic professionals in a variety of career fields throughout the United States. The safety of our passengers, our employees, the public and our operating environment is our priority, and the success of our railroad is due to our employees.

Are you ready to join our team?

Our values of 'Do the Right Thing, Excel Together and Put Customers First' are at the heart of what matters most to us, and our Core Capabilities, 'Building Trust, Accountability, Effective Communication, Customer Focus, and Proactive Safety & Security' are what every employee needs to know and do to be most impactful at Amtrak. By living the Amtrak values, focusing on our capabilities, and actively embracing and fostering diverse ideas, backgrounds, and perspectives, together we will honor our past and make Amtrak a company of the future.

Job Summary

The Distinguished Architect [Data & Intelligence] is responsible for providing visionary companywide architecture services to ensure portfolio technology investments are in alignment with corporate goals and its ability to move towards the future in an evolving business environment. As a Digital Technology expert, this role will utilize communication, influence, guidance, and governance processes to maximize return on technology investment, and reduce time to capability, while minimizing operational costs. The Distinguished Architect will use visionary strategic thinking to choose technology capabilities, strategize and build around them to bring value to business relevant capability change.

As part of the DT architecture team the Distinguished Architect will be responsible for communicating technology target state, roadmap and change progress to portfolio leaders and other stakeholders. They will use their communication and influence skills to promote awareness and understanding of architecture principles across the organization, evangelizing for strategic enterprise change, executing strategy, technical leadership.

This position is onsite in Washington, DC, Wilmington, DE, Philadelphia, PA, or Chicago, IL

Essential Functions
  • Set up the architectural vision for core capabilities and aligning patterns to allow for consistency and reuse
  • Define enterprise principles, patterns and guidance that help in technology data capabilities, platforms and infrastructure, how applications are built, deployed, and maintained to align with strategic needs and maximizing technology investments
  • Provide Oversight and Governance to the current, interim and potential future state of key architecture domains to ensure value alignment with the organization's overall goals and objectives.
  • Ensure the reference architectures, standards, and guidelines of the organization's technology is safe, secure, stable and compliant with industry standards.
  • Set up the architectural vision for core capabilities and aligning patterns to allow for consistency and reuse
  • Define enterprise principles, patterns and guidance that help in technology data capabilities, platforms and infrastructure, how applications are built, deployed, and maintained to align with strategic needs and maximizing technology investments
  • Provide Oversight and Governance to the current, interim and potential future state of key architecture domains to ensure value alignment with the organization's overall goals and objectives.
  • Ensure the reference architectures, standards, and guidelines of the organization's technology is safe, secure, stable and compliant with industry standards.
  • Drive adoption and re-use of the preferred resources, processes and technology across multiple or cross functional portfolios.
  • Mentor other architects and DT teams, providing guidance and fostering a culture of excellence.
  • Effectively communicate at all levels from senior leadership and throughout the company
  • Create strategic roadmaps and comprehensive plans that outline how the Digital Technology architecture will evolve to drive organization change, support the business strategy over time, and ensure DT initiatives are prioritized based on their expected business value and strategic importance.
  • Guide Investment Decisions Aligning technology plans and investments to business vision and strategy that is necessary to ensure we are building the right things.
  • Envision architecture patterns and strategies that drive significant competitive differentiation and business transformation]
  • Solve the most intricate and ambiguous architectural challenges that span multiple domains, systems, and business units, providing definitive technical direction.
  • Design, govern, and oversee the implementation of robust, scalable, and efficient architectural solutions for cross domain business problems.
  • Translate complex technical ideas into digestible concepts for both technical teams and non-technical stakeholders.
  • Act as a liaison between engineering and business teams to ensure alignment and understanding.
  • Assist in the identification, evaluation, and adoption of groundbreaking technologies and architectural patterns that drive significant competitive differentiation and business transformation
  • Work closely with Solution Architects and engineering leads to translate requirements into robust technical design on for our most complex technical solutions
  • In our major enterprise initiatives and complex systems of systems, ensuring products are scalable, secure, performant, and maintainable.
  • Provide expert technical guidance, and contribute to the evolution of our architectural standards.
Minimum Qualifications
  • Bachelor's degree in computer science, data and intelligence or related field with 13+ year's relevant experience or equivalent work experience with at least 5 years in a Principal or Senior Principal Architect role within a large, complex enterprise.
  • Must have repeated experience successfully directing significantly complex architecture initiatives over $7 million, developing capabilities that typically involve different stakeholders, multiple lines of business, many solution varieties, highly regulated environments, business transformations at mass scale.
  • Proven contribution to the architecture profession or industry, such as publications, research, intellectual property, innovation, development of training, or contributions to standards bodies or professional organizations. They must also have contributed to the development of professional architects in sharing this knowledge.
  • Experience creating significant business value realization with $500 million+ or more enterprises as an architect providing vision and choosing platforms. moving organizations forward and scaled for future initiatives.
  • Requires demonstrated ability to manage multiple architecture engagements and effectively plan and utilize collaborative cross functional teams to ensure the architecture objectives obtain key results.
  • Must possess strong communication and interpersonal skills, work well with others in an integrated team environment, and must be self-motivated.
  • Relationship building and collaboration skills across diverse and matrixed stakeholders and customers.
  • Ability to surface, prioritize, and balance priorities across multiple stakeholders.
  • Excellent problem-solving and analytical skills, including experience leveraging data to inform decision-making.
  • Technical and critical thinking expertise to break complex processes and products into component modular modern architectures.
  • Proven ability to align resources, processes and technology initiatives with business strategies across multiple lines of business (LOBs) or business units
Preferred Qualifications
  • Master's degree in business or related field
  • 17+ years of progressive experience in technology and architecture, with at least 12 years in a Principal or Senior Principal Architect role within a large, complex enterprise.
  • Certifications or equivalent
    Databricks Data Architect Professional
    AWS Machine Learning Specialty or Azure AI Engineer
    Stanford / DeepLearning.AI GenAI Certificates
  • Travel and Transportation experience or relevant technology domain experience
  • Experience with governance, risk, regulatory and compliance.
  • The Architect's skills and knowledge should span multiple architecture domains (e.g., Business Architecture, Application/Solution Architecture, Technical/Infrastructure Architecture & Information/Data Architecture)
Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities
  • Lakehouse (Databricks, Iceberg, Delta)
  • Data mesh & domain-driven data design
  • GenAI architecture (RAG, agents, fine-tuning)\
  • ML platforms (MLflow, Vertex AI, SageMaker)
  • ERP, OT, CRM data integration
  • Strong understanding of Architecture best practice and value methodology
  • Knowledge of IT, OT, domain and business architecture
  • Experience with Agile process for business value realization

The salary/hourly range is $179,300.00 - $232,416.00. Pay is based on several factors including but not limited to education, work experience, certifications, etc. Depending on an employee's assigned worksite or location, Amtrak may consider a geo-pay differential to be applied to the employee's base salary. Amtrak may offer additional incentive and pay programs to recognize and reward our employees, including a short-term incentive bonus based upon factors such as individual and company performance that is commensurate with the level of the position. In addition to your salary, Amtrak offers a comprehensive benefit package that includes health, dental, and vision plans; health savings accounts; wellness programs; flexible spending accounts; 401K retirement plan with employer match; life insurance; short and long term disability insurance; paid time off; back-up care; adoption assistance; surrogacy assistance; reimbursement of education expenses; Public Service Loan Forgiveness eligibility; Railroad Retirement sickness and retirement benefits; and rail pass privileges. Learn more about our benefits offerings here.

Requisition ID:166277

Work Arrangement:06-Onsite 4/5 Days Click here for more information about work arrangements at Amtrak.
Relocation Offered:No
Travel Requirements:Up to 25%

You power our progress through your performance.

We want your work at Amtrak to be more than a job. We want your career at Amtrak to be a fulfilling experience where you find challenging work, rewarding opportunities, respect among colleagues, and attractive compensation. Amtrak maintains a culture that values high performance and recognizes individual employee contributions.


Amtrak is committed to a safe workplace free of drugs and alcohol. All Amtrak positions requires a pre-employment background check that includes prior employment verification, a criminal history check and a pre-employment drug screen.

Candidates who test positive for marijuana will be disqualified, regardless of any state or local statute, ordinance, regulation, or other law that legalizes or decriminalizes the use or possession of marijuana, whether for medical, recreational, or other use. Amtrak's pre-employment drug testing program is administered in accordance with DOT regulations and applicable law.


In accordance with DOT regulations (49 CFR 40.25), Amtrak is required to obtain prior drug and alcohol testing records for applicants/employees intending to perform safety-sensitive duties for covered Department of Transportation positions. If an applicant/employee refuses to provide written consent for Amtrak to obtain these records, the individual will not be permitted to perform safety-sensitive functions.

In accordance with federal law governing security checks of covered individuals for providers of public transportation (Title 6 U.S.C. 1143), Amtrak is required to screen applicants for any permanent or interim disqualifying criminal offenses.


Note that any education requirement listed above may be deemed satisfied if you have an equivalent combination of education, training and experience.


Amtrak is an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race/color, to include traits historically associated with race, including but not limited to, hair texture and hairstyles such as braids, locks and twists, religion, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth and related conditions, such as lactation), national origin/ethnicity, disability (intellectual, mental and physical), veteran status, marital status, ancestry, sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression, genetic information, citizenship or any other personal characteristics protected by law.


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About Amtrak

Sourced by ZipRecruiter

As we move America's workforce toward the future, Amtrak connects businesses and communities across the country. We employ more than 20,000 diverse, energetic professionals in a variety of career fields throughout the United States. The safety of our passengers, our employees, the public and our operating environment is our priority, and the success of our railroad is due to our employees.

Industry

Travel arrangement services

Company size

10,000+ Employees

Headquarters location

Washington, DC, US

Year founded

1971