Principal Solution Architect, Enterprise API Platform

Operating at an enterprise or portfolio level, the Principal Solution Architect focuses on establishing architecture patterns, standards, and guardrails to enable teams to deliver high-quality, scalable, and secure solutions at speed. This role partners closely with business technology and platform teams to shape solutions in real time while ensuring alignment with enterprise standards, governance, and cross-functional collaboration.

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

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.
• Drive 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, or 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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 and reusable business capabilities.
• Serve as a critical 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 value, risk, scalability, execution, AI enablement, and strategic platform direction.

Requirements

• 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 shaping enterprise-level API architecture strategy.
• Demonstrated ability to balance pragmatic delivery with disruptive architectural thinking, including sequencing modernization work around prioritized strategic initiatives.
• 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.

Schedule

Three days a week at a Guardian office in Holmdel, NJ.

Pay

Salary range: $152,290.00 - $250,195.00. The salary for this position 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.

Benefits

Guardian offers contemporary, supportive, flexible, and inclusive benefits and resources, including:

• Skill-building and leadership development opportunities.
• Philanthropic opportunities to build communities and grow your career.
• Comprehensive benefits for full-time eligible employees, including health, retirement, and wellness programs. Explore more at www.guardianlife.com/careers/corporate/benefits.