Principal Solution Architect, Data (Group Benefits)

Position Overview:The Principal Solution Architect, Data is responsible for defining, scaling, and governing enterprise-wide or business solution architecture across platforms, domains, and delivery teams. This role shapes how technology solutions are designed, integrated, secured, and operated consistently across the organization. While architecture is foundational, the Principal Solution Architect, Data will be responsible for designing solutions in close collaboration with the business and technology stakeholders. Where applicable, the role will be accountable to build solutions that scale and align to business and technology requirements.Operating at an enterprise or portfolio level, the Principal Solution Architect, Data focuses less on individual solution delivery and more on establishing architecture patterns, standards, guardrails, and building solutions that enable teams to deliver high-quality, scalable, and secure solutions at speed.This role operates within a federated Enterprise Architecture (EA) model, partnering closely with business technology and platform teams to shape solutions in real time while improving accountability, speed, and delivery alignment. The architect remains connected to the central EA core through enterprise standards, governance, communities of practice, and cross-functional collaboration to ensure consistent, risk-aware technology decisions across domains.This role partners closely with Enterprise Architecture, Engineering, Product, Cybersecurity, and Platform teams to ensure solutions align to business strategy, are resilient and compliant, and can scale across multiple use cases without becoming a bottleneck to delivery.This Principal Solution Architect, Data role will have a strong focus on data solution architecture, modern data platforms, data products, and AI-enabled capabilities across the Insurance business.The role bridges business, engineering, architecture, and data teams to rapidly design, build, and deploy scalable solutions that improve underwriting, enrollment, billing, claims, customer service, Producer, reporting, analytics, and digital experiences.The architect will champion a data product mindset, treating data as a strategic enterprise asset with clear ownership, quality standards, reusable capabilities, governance, and measurable customer value.Key Responsibilities:Own and shape enterprise or business solution architecture strategy, standards, and patterns across multiple platforms and domains.Define and maintain reference architectures and reusable design patterns (“golden paths”) for solution delivery.Establish architectural guardrails that enable scalable, secure, and consistent solution design across teams.Own reusable solution patterns, reference architectures, golden paths, and cross-team design consistency.Work with Solution Architects to drive adoption; Head of Portfolio Architecture to tailor for BU context; Principal Enterprise Architect to align with enterprise standards.Lead enterprise-level or business-level design decisions for complex, high-impact initiatives that span multiple value streams or business units.Provide architectural oversight and guidance across portfolios, ensuring alignment to enterprise standards and long-term strategy.Drive early engagement on initiatives to identify cross-platform dependencies, systemic risks, and scalability constraints.Partner with Enterprise Architecture and platform teams to define build vs. buy guidance and integration patterns.Translate business and technology strategy into actionable architecture direction and solution designs.Partner with Security, Risk, and Compliance teams to embed governance, security, and regulatory requirements into solution architecture.Define and promote best practices for operational resilience, scalability, performance, and maintainability.Escalate enterprise exceptions, non-standard patterns, and enterprise-risk decisions.Influence and align stakeholders across engineering, product, and business leadership without direct authority.Mentor and coach architects and senior engineers to elevate architectural maturity across the organization.Represent solution architecture in enterprise forums, architecture review boards, and strategic technology discussions.Influence Value Stream leaders, Product Managers, Product Owners, and Tech Leads to align roadmaps, MVP scope, and technical trade-offs.Where applicable, the role will be accountable to build solutions that scale and algin to business and technology requirements.Be available for production incidents with major impact to business operations.Understand and participate across portfolio initiatives, connect dependencies and opportunities across programs to optimize solutions, increase reuse, and reduce data waste.Drive the adoption of a data product operating model across the organization.Champion data product thinking by promoting customer-centric design, product ownership, continuous improvement, and measurable business value.Establish best practices for discoverability, usability, interoperability, governance, and consumption of enterprise data products.Translate business strategy into scalable technology, data, and analytics solutions.Lead discovery workshops and data solution design sessions across underwriting, enrollment, billing, claims, customer service, reporting, and digital channels.Influence enterprise technology strategy by identifying reusable capabilities and modernization opportunities.Develop reusable frameworks, accelerators, and reference architectures to improve data delivery speed, consistency, and reuse.Design modern data platforms and pipelines that support real-time and batch processing, scalable data integration, and enterprise analytics needs.Ensure high-quality, trusted data through governance, observability, lineage, metadata, and automated data quality controls.Collaborate with data engineering, product, and AI teams to operationalize AI-enabled data solutions within the data ecosystem.Foster collaboration across architecture, engineering, product management, security, data, AI, and business teams.You Have (Required Qualifications) :Deep experience designing and governing enterprise-scale solution architectures across multiple teams and domains.15+ years of experience in data integration, data architecture, data modeling, data engineering, solution architecture, or enterprise technology.Proven ability to define and drive adoption of architecture standards, frameworks, and reusable patterns.Strong understanding of modern technology ecosystems, including application architectures, APIs and delivery, integration patterns, AI, cloud platforms, and data flows.Experience balancing business priorities, technical trade-offs, and risk at an enterprise level.Demonstrated ability to operate at both strategic and hands-on levels when needed.Strong experience influencing technical direction across distributed teams without direct reporting authority.Ability to bridge business and technology, translating strategy into clear architectural direction.Excellent communication skills with the ability to convey complex concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences.Experience working in regulated or risk-sensitive environments with strong awareness of governance and compliance needs.Track record of mentoring architects and engineers and elevating organizational capabilities.Experience collaborating within Agile / product-based delivery models.Experience producing product-level and team-level technical design documentation.Additional Data-Focused Qualifications Required :Bachelor’s or master’s degree in computer science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field.15+ years of experience in data integration, data architecture, data modeling, data engineering, solution architecture, or enterprise technology.Proven experience designing and delivering enterprise-scale data platforms, data products, or analytics capabilities.Strong understanding of modern data architecture principles, including data mesh, data products, metadata, governance, and domain-driven design.Experience with modern data platforms such as Databricks, Apache Spark, Delta Lake, Kafka, or similar technologies.Experience rolling out AI capabilities or AI-enabled solutions within a data ecosystem.Experience within insurance industry, including enrollment, eligibility, policy administration, billing, claims, customer data, and employer administration.Expertise in cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, or GCP, APIs, microservices, and distributed systems.Strong programming and data engineering skills in Python, PySpark, and SQL.Exceptional communication, executive presence, and stakeholder management skills.Experience leading data product initiatives, including proof-of-concept development and feasibility assessment.Familiarity with product management methodologies and Agile frameworks.Success Measures:Increased adoption and reuse of enterprise data products.Improved business outcomes through product-driven data capabilities.Faster delivery of business initiatives through reusable platforms and engineering accelerators.Increased adoption of AI-powered solutions across organization.Higher data quality, trust, discoverability, and governance.Strong cross-functional alignment between business, product, engineering, architecture, and data organizations.Establishment of a sustainable product culture that treats data as a strategic enterprise asset.Location:Three days a week at a Guardian Life Office in Holmdel, NJ, New York, NY or Bethlehem, PA.Salary Range:The salary range reflected above is a good faith estimate of base pay for the primary location of the position. The salary for this position ultimately will be determined based on the education, experience, knowledge, and abilities of the successful candidate. In addition to salary, this role may also be eligible for annual, sales, or other incentive compensation.Our PromiseAt Guardian, you’ll have the support and flexibility to achieve your professional and personal goals. Through skill-building, leadership development and philanthropic opportunities, we provide opportunities to build communities and grow your career, surrounded by diverse colleagues with high ethical standards.Inspire Well-BeingAs part of Guardian’s Purpose – to inspire well-being – we are committed to offering contemporary, supportive, flexible, and inclusive benefits and resources to our colleagues. Explore our company benefits at . Benefits apply to full-time eligible employees. Interns are not eligible for most Company benefits.Equal Employment OpportunityGuardian is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will be considered for employment without regard to age, race, color, creed, religion, sex, affectional or sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, marital status, disability, military or veteran status, or any other classification protected by applicable law.AccommodationsGuardian is committed to providing access, equal opportunity and reasonable accommodation for individuals with disabilities in employment, its services, programs, and activities. Guardian also provides reasonable accommodations to qualified job applicants (and employees) to accommodate the individual's known limitations related to pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions, unless doing so would create an undue hardship. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or to receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please contact View email address on click.appcast.io. Please note: this resource is for accommodation requests only. For all other inquires related to your application and careers at Guardian, refer to the Guardian Careers site.Visa SponsorshipGuardian Life is not currently or in the foreseeable future sponsoring employment-based visas (e.g., such as an H-1B). In order to be a successful applicant, you must be legally authorized to work in the United States, without the need for employer sponsorship/support now or at any time in the future.Notice Regarding Guardian’s Use of Artificial Intelligence in RecruitmentAs part of Guardian’s job application process, Guardian may use artificial intelligence tools (“AI Tools") to automate the sorting and filtering of information provided by applicants as part of its preliminary screening. This preliminary screening may be used to help identify applicant materials and resumes relative to their indication that the applicant meets the requirements for the specific job for which they are applying, as specified in the listing posted on Guardian’s jobs website (Careers at Guardian at ). At Guardian, we do not use AI Tools to substantially assist or replace human judgment or discretionary decision making in our hiring process. All hiring decisions will be made by Guardian colleagues.Please be aware that if you apply for a specific position with Guardian, you will have the choice of opting out of Guardian’s use of AI Tools during the job application process. If you would like to request an alternative process that does not utilize AI Tools or would like to request a reasonable accommodation, within ten business days of your position application, you must email your request to View email address on click.appcast.io, making sure to provide your name and job requisition identification number. Guardian will retain your applicant materials and resume and all information therefrom in accordance with Guardian’s document retention policy, a copy of which you may request via View email address on click.appcast.io, at applicable times, Guardian will make public the most recent bias audit results for such AI tools, which may be found here. Current Guardian Colleagues: Please apply through the internal Jobs Hub in Workday.SummaryLocation: Holmdel; New YorkType: Full time