Principal Architect

Principal ArchitectCollaborative. Respectful. A place to dream and do. These are just a few words that describe what life is like at Toyota. As one of the world's most admired brands, Toyota is growing and leading the future of mobility through innovative, high-quality solutions designed to enhance lives and delight those we serve. We're looking for talented team members who want to Dream. Do. Grow. with us.An important part of the Toyota family is Toyota Financial Services (TFS), the finance and insurance brand for Toyota and Lexus in North America. While TFS is a separate business entity, it is an essential part of this world-changing company- delivering on Toyota's vision to move people beyond what's possible. At TFS, you will help create best-in-class customer experience in an innovative, collaborative environment.Toyota does not offer support or sponsorship of job applicants for employment-based visas or any other work authorization for this role now or in the future. You must have the right to work in the United States and not require Toyota support or sponsorship for immigration-related employment now or in the future. You should not apply for this role if you will require Toyota to assist with immigration support or sponsorship now or in the future.At TFS, we're building a greenfield, cloud-native engineering platform that will redefine how Toyota Financial Services delivers digital products to millions of customers. We're looking for a Principal Architect — a senior individual contributor at the top of our IC track — who owns the technical coherence of the entire platform. This is not a management role and it's not an advisory role. It's for the engineer who can see across every layer of the system — application, data, AI/ML, and infrastructure — make binding architectural decisions and then get in the code to validate them. You'll be the connective tissue between engineering teams, setting direction across the stack, shaping standards that last, and serving as the person engineering leadership trusts to say, "this is how we build it."Platform Architecture & Technical LeadershipOwn the end-to-end reference architecture for our engineering platform team — application, data, AI/ML, and infrastructure layers — ensuring coherence across all product domainsMake binding, well-documented architectural decisions across teams; author RFCs, ADRs, and design documents that become the foundation for how we buildLead platform-wide technical design reviews and architecture forums, driving alignment across engineering leads, engineering managers, and productDefine, evolve, and enforce engineering standards: API design contracts, IaC patterns, security posture, observability baselines, and deployment safetyIdentify and resolve systemic risks before they become incidents — performance ceilings, reliability gaps, coupling issues, and architectural driftEvaluate and recommend new technologies, frameworks, and AWS services; balance innovation with operational maturity and team capabilityHands-On Implementation & Code QualityContribute with spikes/production-quality code in TypeScript and/or Python — you validate architectural decisions by writing and reviewing the code, not just describing itOwn the design and lead implementation of the most complex, cross-cutting platform components: shared infrastructure modules, API frameworks, data pipeline foundations, and AI/ML integration layersLead technical troubleshooting for the hardest distributed system failures — from API latency and data pipeline failures to infrastructure misconfigurations and LLM reliability issuesReview and approve architectural changes across codebases, holding a consistently high bar for quality, testability, observability, and securityData Platform & AI/ML ArchitectureArchitect the data backbone of the platform: S3-based lakehouse design, event-driven streaming pipelines, data orchestration, and analytical query patternsDefine integration patterns for AI/ML capabilities — how Bedrock agents, SageMaker endpoints, RAG pipelines, and agentic workflows connect to the application and data layers as first-class architectural concerns, not bolt-onsEstablish guardrails for LLM-based systems: structured outputs, prompt engineering standards, observability for model behavior, and patterns for deterministic, production-grade AI featuresPartner with the ML/AI engineering team to ensure AI components are observable, testable, and maintainable at production scaleCross-Functional Influence & Engineering CultureServe as a technical thought partner to Engineering Managers and the VP of Engineering — translating complex technical tradeoffs into clear, actionable recommendations for both engineering and non-technical stakeholdersPartner with Product and Program Management to assess technical feasibility, shape roadmaps, and surface risks earlyDrive the RFC and design review process across the engineering organization, ensuring major decisions have appropriate rigor and broad visibilityMentor senior and lead engineers — through design reviews, pairing, and written feedback — raising the technical ceiling of the entire orgContribute to hiring by conducting technical interviews for senior IC and architect-level roles, and helping define what architectural excellence looks like at TFSChampion a culture of documentation: ADRs, runbooks, design documents, and onboarding guides that transfer knowledge and reduce key-person riskWhat you bringBachelor's degree in computer science or related field, or equivalent practical experience10+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 5 years of operating as a hands-on architect or principal-level IC on AWS-based platformsProven track record of owning full-platform architecture decisions in production — not just advising, but being accountable for the outcomesAWS & Cloud ArchitectureDeep, hands-on expertise with serverless-first AWS architecture, including:Lambda, API Gateway (REST and Step Functions, EventBridge, SQS/SNS for compute and async orchestrationDynamoDB and/or Aurora Serverless for data persistence patternsS3, CloudFront, and edge patterns for object storage, CDN strategy, and API accelerationExperience designing multi-account AWS architectures with proper governance: AWS Organizations, Control Tower, Service Control Policies, and cross-account IAM patternsStrong command of IaC design and governance using AWS CDK, CloudFormation, or Terraform — owning infrastructure design end-to-end, not just reviewing itData PlatformExperience architecting S3-based lakehouse patterns: table formats (Apache Iceberg or Delta Lake), partitioning strategies, and lifecycle managementHands-on design of event-driven streaming pipelines using Kinesis, MSK/Kafka, or similar, through to analytics with Athena, Redshift, or equivalentFamiliarity with data governance patterns: Lake Formation, data cataloging, access control for sensitive financial dataAI/ML IntegrationPractical experience integrating Amazon Bedrock, SageMaker endpoints, or equivalent LLM/ML services into production application architecturesUnderstanding of agentic flow design — tool calling, memory patterns, human-in-the-loop checkpoints, and failure recovery in multi-step agent workflowsExperience with RAG pipeline architecture — embedding generation, vector store design (OpenSearch, pgvector, or similar), and query-time retrieval patternsAbility to define architectural standards for LLM reliability: structured outputs, guardrails, observability for model behavior, and prompt engineering governanceApplication & API ArchitectureProven ability to design and govern RESTful and GraphQL API contracts at scale — versioning strategies, federation patterns, type-safe tooling (OpenAPI, tRPC, GraphQL Code Generator)Experience with frontend architecture at platform scale: Next.js on AWS (CloudFront, View email address on click.appcast.io), monorepo tooling (Turborepo/Nx), and how front-end and back-end contracts evolve togetherSecurity & ObservabilityDeep understanding of security architecture: IAM least-privilege design, secrets management (Secrets Manager, SSM Parameter Store), encryption patterns, and network segmentationStrong experience with distributed observability: CloudWatch, X-Ray, Datadog — defining SLAs, building dashboards, instrumenting services for traceability, and leading incident responseCommunication & LeadershipStrong written and verbal communication — you can author a clear RFC, lead a contentious design review, and explain a complex architectural tradeoff to a non-technical executive