Distinguished Architect [Data & Intelligence] - Remote

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.

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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.