Principal Architect

Principal Architect

eSimplicity is a modern digital services company that partners with government agencies to improve the lives and protect the well-being of all Americans, from veterans and service members to children, families, and seniors. Our engineers, designers, and strategists cut through complexity to create intuitive products and services that equip federal agencies with solutions to courageously transform today for a better tomorrow.

The Principal Architect will lead reference architecture, cross-team technical standards, architecture governance, decision-making, interoperability patterns, and major technical trade-off analysis for a large-scale federal data and analytics modernization program. The program includes a governed cloud data platform, analytics products, APIs, AI-enabled capabilities, public-facing reporting, and integrated user services.

This role will guide technical direction across platform foundations, data supply chain, metadata maturity, analytics, public-facing products, AI/ML platform enablement, APIs, partner integrations, security, portability, and transition readiness. The Principal Architect will work with customer stakeholders, program leadership, engineering, data, product, security, AI, analytics, and partner teams to make architectural decisions transparent, reusable, secure, and aligned to customer objectives.

Responsibilities include:

• Own reference architecture, cross-team technical standards, architecture governance and decision-making, interoperability patterns, and major technical trade-off analysis.
• Lead applicable technical coverage across cloud and DevSecOps engineering, data engineering, data governance and metadata specialization, BI and analytics development, AI/ML platform engineering, security engineering and compliance, API services, partner integrations, and domain architecture.
• Guide architecture for platform-first delivery, approved technology direction, infrastructure as code, governed data trust patterns, API-first reuse, secure data sharing, AI-enabled service patterns, public-facing dashboards, and transition-ready artifact management.
• Coordinate with customer stakeholders, cloud and platform partners, security and privacy stakeholders, data owners, product teams, and downstream consumers on architecture reviews, environment changes, source onboarding, integrations, public-facing releases, and major technical decisions.
• Develop and maintain architectural artifacts in customer-accessible systems, including reference architectures, decision records, diagrams, standards, runbooks, interface documentation, joint operating agreements, service guides, data-flow documentation, and transition materials.
• Evaluate new or materially changed services against security, privacy, accessibility, cost transparency, observability, operational readiness, metadata maturity, AI governance, portability, and reuse criteria.
• Support joint operating agreements and cross-platform coordination for source-system and downstream-system interfaces, ingestion lead times, schema and metadata changes, incident boundaries, release dependencies, security and privacy responsibilities, support handoffs, and transition responsibilities.
• Promote out-of-the-box, native, reusable, open-source-aware, and portable solutions while minimizing unnecessary proprietary dependencies and avoiding contractor-managed external data systems.

Required qualifications include:

• 12+ years experience in software engineering, including implementing engineering best practices, iterative/continuous engineering principles
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, Math, or other related scientific or technical discipline.
• All candidates must pass public trust clearance through the U.S. Federal Government.
• Demonstrated ability to lead architecture for complex cloud, data, analytics, API, AI/ML, or digital platform ecosystems with multiple teams and stakeholders.
• Experience establishing reference architectures, technical standards, architecture governance, decision records, interoperability patterns, and technical trade-off recommendations.
• Working knowledge of cloud architecture, lakehouse or comparable data platforms, governance layers, infrastructure as code, CI/CD, observability, identity and access, API patterns, data sharing, dashboard platforms, and AI/ML enablement patterns.
• Ability to apply security, privacy, accessibility, data-use, Government data-rights, portability, reuse, and transition-readiness constraints to architecture decisions.
• Experience coordinating architecture across product, engineering, data, AI, BI, security, support, and external integration teams in a transparent agile delivery environment.
• Knowledge of federal system delivery expectations such as FISMA, NIST-based controls, FedRAMP-authorized cloud services, ATO support, access reviews, and continuous monitoring.
• Ability to comply with customer-specific security, privacy, accessibility, quality, training, and data-handling requirements for assigned systems and data.

Preferred qualifications include:

• Experience supporting federal, public sector, healthcare, or other regulated data, analytics, oversight, reporting, or public transparency programs.
• Experience with modern cloud platforms, infrastructure-as-code tooling, lakehouse or comparable data platforms, data governance layers, distributed processing, source control, CI/CD, API services, serverless patterns, secure data-sharing patterns, BI platforms, workflow tools, identity services, observability platforms, AI/ML platform capabilities, model serving, vector search, automated model evaluation, and retrieval-augmented generation patterns.
• Experience with tenant onboarding, federated data participation, governed data exchange, public-facing data services, API factory patterns, metadata maturity, and multi-tier data trust architectures.
• Experience with responsible AI governance, AI capability-gate roadmaps, model serving readiness, AI observability, inference logging, and human oversight for AI-enabled services.
• Hands-on experience building and optimizing data pipelines within the Databricks platform
• Preferred certifications may include cloud solutions architecture, data platform architecture, infrastructure as code, AWS, Databricks TOGAF, SAFe, cloud security, CISSP, FinOps, data architecture, or AI/ML platform credentials.

Working Environment: eSimplicity supports a remote work environment operating within the Eastern time zone so we can work with and respond to our government clients. Expected hours are 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM Eastern unless otherwise directed by manager.

Occasional travel for training and project meetings. It is estimated to be less than 5% per year.

Benefits: eSimplicity offers a comprehensive benefits package, including medical, dental, and vision coverage, 401(k) retirement benefits, paid time off, paid holidays, life and disability insurance, and additional wellness and employee support programs. Eligibility may vary based on employment status and applicable plan terms.

Reasonable Accommodation: eSimplicity is committed to providing reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities during the application and hiring process. Applicants who need assistance or an accommodation should contact Human Resources.

Equal Employment Opportunity: eSimplicity is an Equal Opportunity Employer, including disability and protected veteran status. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, protected veteran status, disability, or any other legally protected status.

Salary Description $101,100 -$150,000