Lead Solution Architect

A large, complex national retail and supply-chain organization is seeking a hands-on IT Solutions Architect with a strong enterprise view to drive solutioning across critical retail and inventory initiatives. This role owns the technical engagement and drives successful project outcomes by translating business needs into scalable, supportable architectures-especially across integration-heavy ecosystems.


This is not a "high-level strategist" role. The team needs a solver who can assess current state (often with limited documentation), define both functional and non-functional requirements, create High-Level Design (HLD) documentation, and guide solutions through governance (Architecture Review Board) and delivery.


In parallel, this architect will help establish a repeatable model / community of Solution Architects-a "bench" the organization can assign to projects from planning → design → delivery support, then rotate to the next set of initiatives.

What You'll Do (Core Responsibilities)


Architecture & Delivery Leadership

• Own end-to-end solution architecture for 2 projects at a time typically (up to 2-4 depending on size/complexity).
• Lead current-state assessment and define future-state architecture-even when documentation is sparse.
• Partner with PMs, BAs, engineering, infrastructure, and security teams to ensure solution designs meet business outcomes and technical standards.
• Capture and validate functional + non-functional requirements, with emphasis on:
  • Reliability, scalability, performance
  • Disaster recovery / resiliency
  • Security, identity/access considerations
  • Logging/monitoring strategy & overall system health
• Produce architecture documentation required for delivery, including High-Level Design (HLD) and diagrams.
• Present solutions and tradeoffs to the Architecture Review Board, incorporate feedback, and drive approvals.
• Translate designs into actionable guidance for delivery teams; ensure teams follow architecture reviews and enterprise technical recommendations.

Integration & Ecosystem Architecture (Critical Need)

• Architect cloud-based and hybrid solutions with complex internal/external integrations.
• Define and optimize integration patterns (API, event, messaging) and reduce integration overhead through pragmatic data exposure approaches.
• Evaluate and propose approaches to:
  • Stabilize systems that are not sustainable
  • Address technical debt while planning modernization (including movement toward ERP modernization such as SAP)
  • Improve cost/performance of existing integrations through new concepts/technology
• Work product-first: help evaluate vendors/products and design the ecosystem and integration approach in the cloud (less "write code," more "configure/enable and integrate the right solution").

Partner & Stakeholder Engagement

• Act as a key technical representative in partner/vendor conversations; communicate clearly with senior technical stakeholders.
• Deliver high-quality presentations and architecture walk-throughs; influence decision-making with clear rationale and visuals.

Architecture Community / Pool Model

• Help develop a process and community for a pool of Solution Architects that can be assigned to initiatives as demand shifts.
• Contribute to shared best practices, reusable patterns, and reference architecture inputs that improve consistency and delivery speed.
• Mentor and coach engineers/administrators/developers on architecture and requirements best practices.

Initial Project Focus (Near-Term)


You'll likely start across two retail domain initiatives:


1) Enterprise Retail Platform (Legacy/Homegrown)

• A long-standing internally built retail/merchandising platform with many integrations.
• Key outcomes:
  • Assess current state and integration landscape
  • Partner with BAs gathering requirements; ensure non-functional requirements are fully captured (reliability, DR, security, etc.)
  • Produce HLD and architecture diagrams
  • Present to Architecture Review Board for review/approval
  • Ensure delivery teams understand and implement the approved design

2) Retail Inventory Systems (RIS)

• Architecture leadership across inventory-focused modernization and integration projects
• Additional initiatives in the retail systems space may be added

Required Qualifications

• 6-10+ years in Solution Architecture / Application Architecture / Integration Architecture (or equivalent).
• Demonstrated experience designing solutions across enterprise ecosystems (not narrow/siloed architecture).
• Strong ability to create and communicate:
  • HLDs
  • Integration diagrams (system context, logical flows, sequence/data flows)
  • Architecture options/tradeoffs and recommendations
• Experience driving solutions through governance (technical reviews / architecture boards).
• Proven ability to operate in legacy environments with limited documentation and still produce clear, actionable designs.
• Strong stakeholder management-able to influence across technical and non-technical groups.

Preferred Experience / Technical Background

• Cloud: AWS (cloud-first approach; new initiatives primarily cloud-based)
• Integration: MuleSoft strongly preferred
• Messaging/Streaming: IBM MQ, ActiveMQ, Kafka and/or AWS integration services (as relevant)
• ERP awareness: SAP familiarity and/or SAP integration strategy knowledge (architectural understanding of SAP landscape)
• Data/Platforms: Databricks familiarity helpful
• Architecture practices: secure API design principles, 12-factor / component-driven architecture concepts, modernization roadmaps, logging/monitoring strategy