Senior Principal Architect Jobs (NOW HIRING)

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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 Senior Principal Architect - Platforms is responsible for providing 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 Senior Principal Architect will use 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 Senior Principal 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 change, executing strategy, technical leadership.

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS:

• Set up the cloud architectural vision for core capabilities and aligning patterns to allow for consistency and reuse
• Created architecture and designs for technology platform and platform engineering teams such as CI/CD platform, development platform, cloud platform, communications platform, or similar
• 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 domains and portfolios.
• Mentor other architects and DT teams, providing guidance about AWS design patterns, cost-aware architecture, and Well-Architected Framework practice, and fostering a culture of excellence without formal management authority.
• Effectively communicate to group leadership, management and teams throughout the company
• 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.
• Design for multi-region resilience and disaster recovery appropriate to systems supporting revenue, ticketing, and safety-adjacent operations.
• Develop architecture of developer enablement platforms (developer portal, CI/CD pipeline, API portal, etc.)
• Own end-to-end architecture of the enterprise's multi-region AWS cloud footprint, Amtrak’s cloud and developer platforms
• Act as the practice's principal technical authority on AWS — the escalation point for the hardest cloud architecture problems across the ~30-architect team.

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, data and intelligence or related field with 9+ year’s relevant experience or equivalent work experience with at least 5 years in a Senior or Principal Architect role.
• Must have repeated experience successfully directing significantly complex architecture initiatives over $5 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 with $250MM+ 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 that are complex or cross functional in nature.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Master’s degree in business or related field
• 11+ years of progressive experience in technology, with at least 8 years in a dedicated architectural role (e.g., Lead Architect, Enterprise Architect, Principal Architect).
• 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)
• AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional
• Deep hands-on expertise across core AWS services: Organizations, Control Tower, IAM, VPC/Transit Gateway, Landing Zone Accelerator, KMS, CloudTrail/Config, and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform strongly preferred).
• Working fluency in the AWS Well-Architected Framework and its application to safety- and payment-adjacent workloads.
• Familiarity with identity and access architecture (federated IAM, SSO, workload identity) and observability/telemetry architecture at platform scale.

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS and ABILITIES:

• Proficient in various digital technologies like cloud computing, data analytics, and enterprise applications
• 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
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills with stakeholders
• Proven leadership ability to inspire teams towards common goals

The salary/hourly range is $149,400.00 – $193,644.00. 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. 

Health and WellbeingFinancial and RetirementWork and Family Life SupportHealth, Dental, and Vision Insurance401K with Employer MatchGenerous Paid Time Off Wellness ProgramsRailroad Retirement BenefitsPaid Caregiving Days and Backup CareHealth Savings AccountPublic Service Student Loan ForgivenessFertility and Family Building BenefitsNo-cost Personal Health AdvocateStudent Loan AssistanceAdoption and Surrogacy AssistanceMedical Plan Opt-out CreditTuition and Education ReimbursementPaid Family Leave Life InsuranceRail Pass Privileges Short- and Long-term Disability InsuranceEmployee Assistance Program No-cost Financial Advisor SessionsCommuter and Flexible Spending Accounts

Learn more about our benefits offerings here.

Requisition ID:166748

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.