Principal Architect – Azure Integration, API & AI Engineering 

Location: Dallas, TX (5 Days On-Site)

Position Overview

We are seeking an experienced Principal Architect to support our Integration and API Engineering organization. This is a highly visible leadership role responsible for driving enterprise architecture strategy, modernizing integration platforms, and establishing engineering standards across APIs, event-driven systems, cloud-native applications, and AI-enabled solutions.

The ideal candidate is a hands-on technology leader with deep expertise in Microsoft Azure, enterprise integration architecture, API governance, Domain-Driven Design (DDD), Event-Driven Architecture (EDA), and modern software engineering practices. This individual will partner closely with engineering, product, infrastructure, security, and business stakeholders to define scalable, secure, and future-ready technology solutions.

Key Responsibilities

Architecture Leadership

• Define and govern enterprise architecture standards, principles, and best practices.
• Lead architecture reviews and provide technical leadership across multiple engineering teams.
• Develop technology roadmaps aligned with business objectives and modernization initiatives.
• Establish reusable reference architectures, frameworks, and governance processes.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and drive adoption strategies.

API & Integration Architecture

• Design enterprise-scale API ecosystems that are secure, scalable, observable, and highly available.
• Define standards for API design, lifecycle management, versioning, documentation, and security.
• Lead integration strategies across enterprise applications, SaaS platforms, partner systems, and cloud services.
• Drive API governance, API catalog management, and service reuse initiatives.
• Design synchronous and asynchronous integration patterns.

Domain-Driven Design & Event-Driven Architecture

• Facilitate domain discovery and event storming workshops with business and technical stakeholders.
• Define bounded contexts, aggregates, domain services, and domain events.
• Lead decomposition of monolithic systems into domain-centric services and capabilities.
• Design event-driven architectures using messaging and event-streaming platforms.
• Establish standards for event contracts, schema governance, resiliency, retries, dead-letter processing, idempotency, and fault tolerance.

AI & Intelligent Engineering

• Identify opportunities to leverage AI for business process improvement and engineering productivity.
• Design and govern enterprise AI solutions, including responsible AI practices.
• Drive adoption of AI-assisted development tools and engineering workflows.
• Provide guidance on Large Language Models (LLMs), Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), AI Agents, semantic search, and vector databases.

Cloud & Platform Architecture

• Architect cloud-native solutions leveraging Microsoft Azure services.
• Define strategies for scalability, resiliency, disaster recovery, observability, and operational excellence.
• Partner with platform teams to improve CI/CD pipelines, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), deployment automation, and developer experience.
• Champion platform engineering and cloud modernization initiatives.

Engineering Excellence

• Promote Test-Driven Development (TDD), Behavior-Driven Development (BDD), and automated quality practices.
• Advocate for Clean Architecture, SOLID principles, and maintainable software design.
• Establish standards for unit, integration, contract, performance, and security testing.
• Mentor architects, engineers, and technical leaders across the organization.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor''s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related discipline.
• 10+ years of software engineering experience.
• 5+ years in a Principal Architect, Enterprise Architect, Principal Engineer, or senior technical leadership role.
• Proven experience designing and implementing enterprise-scale integration and distributed systems.
• Strong hands-on experience with Microsoft Azure architecture and cloud-native solutions.
• Deep expertise in:
  • API Architecture & Enterprise Integrations
  • Domain-Driven Design (DDD)
  • Event-Driven Architecture (EDA)
  • Test-Driven Development (TDD)
  • Microservices & Distributed Systems
  • Cloud-Native Architecture
  • Software Design Patterns & Architectural Principles
• Experience with enterprise messaging technologies such as Kafka, Azure Service Bus, Event Hubs, RabbitMQ, or similar platforms.
• Strong understanding of REST APIs, OpenAPI, OAuth2, OIDC, API security, and identity management.
• Experience implementing observability solutions, distributed tracing, logging, monitoring, and telemetry.
• Excellent communication, leadership, stakeholder management, and mentoring skills.

Preferred Qualifications

Microsoft Azure

• Azure API Management (APIM)
• Azure Functions
• Azure Service Bus
• Azure Event Hubs
• Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
• Azure SQL / Managed Instance
• Application Insights
• Azure AI Services

Additional Technical Expertise

• .NET and C# development experience.
• API governance programs and enterprise API catalogs.
• CQRS, Event Sourcing, Saga Patterns, and Distributed Transaction Management.
• OpenTelemetry and enterprise observability platforms.
• Large Language Models (LLMs), RAG, AI Agents, Prompt Engineering, Vector Databases, and Semantic Search.
• Azure, Cloud, or Architecture certifications.

What We Are Looking For

The successful candidate will demonstrate:

• Enterprise architecture leadership across multiple teams and business units.
• Deep Azure integration and API platform expertise.
• Experience establishing architecture governance and engineering standards.
• Strong background in modernization initiatives and cloud transformation.
• Ability to influence executive stakeholders and drive strategic technology decisions.
• Passion for mentoring engineers and fostering engineering excellence.
• Balance of strategic thinking and hands-on technical depth.

Ideal Candidate Profile

Candidates who have successfully led enterprise integration modernization programs, established API governance frameworks, implemented event-driven architectures, and driven cloud-native transformation initiatives within large organizations will be highly preferred.

Experience designing AI-enabled enterprise solutions and enabling engineering teams through AI-assisted development practices is a significant advantage.