Principal Solution Architect, Enterprise API Platform

Principal Solution Architect, Enterprise API Platform

Position Overview:

The Principal Solution Architect, Enterprise API Platform, 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 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 algin to business and technology requirements.

Operating at an enterprise or portfolio level, the Principal Solution Architect 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.

For the Enterprise API Platform, this role serves as the strategic and technical architecture partner to the Head of Enterprise API Platform, helping translate API modernization and transformation objectives into practical, value-generating modernization decisions, reusable architecture patterns, MCP-enabled platform direction, and executable engineering outcomes.

You Will (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
• Owns 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 / 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
• Influences 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.
• Available for production incidents with major impact to business operations
• Balance strategic and tactical decisions across API modernization, API/MCP management, API lifecycle management, domain-aligned data models, reimplementation priorities, and AI-ready API capabilities.
• Continuously evaluate now versus later, strategic versus tactical, reusable versus disposable, and modernization versus value delivery, ensuring meaningful outcomes through thin slices rather than broad, low-value transformation efforts.
• Lead enterprise API architecture patterns, technical direction, and modernization alignment across API platform engineering, internal API delivery, external API delivery, and high-impact integration initiatives.
• Drive API rationalization, reuse, and domain alignment by helping teams redesign APIs around business capability-based, domain-aligned data models and solve common problems once rather than repeatedly.
• Guide reimplementation decisions for APIs coupled to non-performant or non-scalable data sources, balancing resiliency, scalability, maintainability, delivery urgency, and longer-term architectural direction.
• Help shape Guardian’s API, MCP gateway, and context-layer strategy so APIs become trusted, discoverable, observable, and governed inputs into agentic AI, reusable business capabilities, and future AI-native experiences.
• Serve as a critical daily and weekly architecture input to the Head of Enterprise API Platform, improving decision quality, decision velocity, modernization sequencing, and executive confidence in API transformation progress.
• Translate complex API architecture decisions into business outcomes, helping senior technology and business leaders understand “what this means” in terms of value, risk, scalability, execution, AI enablement, and strategic platform direction.

Required Qualifications: You Have:

• Deep experience designing and governing enterprise-scale solution architectures across multiple teams and domains
• Experience modernizing API ecosystems, including API management platforms, API lifecycle platforms, gateway patterns, integration patterns, performance and scalability improvements, and domain-aligned API design.
• Proven ability to define and drive adoption of architecture standards, frameworks, and reusable patterns
• Strong understanding of modern technology ecosystems (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.
• Strong engineering background with the ability to operate as a credible technical partner to engineering leaders while also shaping enterprise-level API architecture strategy.
• Demonstrated ability to balance pragmatic delivery with disruptive architectural thinking, including sequencing modernization work around prioritized strategic initiatives, high-visibility outcomes, and critical high-transaction-volume integrations.
• Strong understanding of MCP, agentic AI enablement, context-layer architecture, API observability, discoverability, governance, security, and the role of APIs as foundational inputs into AI-native enterprise capabilities.

Location:

• Three days a week at a Guardian office in Holmdel, NJ< New York, NY or Bethlehem, PA.

Salary Range:

$152,290.00 - $250,195.00

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 Promise

At 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.

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Equal Employment Opportunity

Guardian 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.

Accommodations

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Visa Sponsorship

Guardian 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.

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