Sr Manager, Solution Architecture

About the role

We are seeking an experienced Senior Manager, Solution Architecture to lead the technology strategy and architecture for Ulta Beauty's customer-facing digital experiences across Web, Mobile, and the GraphQL experience layer. This is a hands-on leadership role requiring a balance of strategic thinking, architectural leadership, people development, and direct technical contribution. You will partner closely with Product, Engineering, UX, and Business leaders to define technology strategy, shape roadmaps, influence investment decisions, and ensure architecture delivers measurable business outcomes. You will lead a team of architects while remaining deeply engaged in solution design, architecture reviews, technical spikes, prototypes, and proof-of-concepts (POCs) that validate architectural direction and reduce delivery risk. The balance of responsibilities will evolve based on business priorities, strategic initiatives, and delivery needs. The ideal candidate embraces AI-native engineering, modern digital experience platforms, and continuous innovation while maintaining a relentless focus on performance, scalability, engineering excellence, and exceptional customer experiences.

Strategic Architecture Leadership

• Define and evolve the target architecture for Ulta Beauty's Digital Experience Platform across Web, Mobile, GraphQL, and shared frontend capabilities.
• Partner with Product, Business, UX, and Engineering leaders to align technology investments with measurable business outcomes.
• Shape technology roadmaps and architectural strategies supporting customer-facing digital experiences.
• Lead architecture governance by reviewing designs, challenging tradeoffs, and ensuring consistent architectural direction across multiple product teams.
• Establish architecture principles, standards, reusable patterns, and engineering best practices.
• Drive platform thinking by promoting reusable capabilities, shared services, and common architectural patterns that improve engineering velocity.
• Mentor, coach, and develop Solution and Domain Architects through architecture reviews, technical guidance, and continuous learning.
• Communicate architecture strategy, roadmap progress, technology risks, and investment recommendations to senior leadership.
• Foster a culture of technical excellence, documentation, accountability, and continuous improvement.

Technical Leadership & Solution Architecture

• Lead architecture and solution design for complex, enterprise-scale digital initiatives.
• Build technical prototypes, proof-of-concepts (POCs), architecture spikes, and reference implementations to validate architectural approaches and reduce delivery risk.
• Remain hands-on by guiding engineering teams through complex technical challenges and critical implementation decisions.
• Review APIs, GraphQL schemas, integration patterns, and solution designs to ensure scalability, maintainability, security, and performance.
• Partner with engineering teams throughout implementation to ensure architectural integrity and successful execution.
• Drive performance optimization, resiliency, observability, and operational excellence across customer-facing platforms.
• Champion documentation excellence through architecture decision records (ADRs), solution blueprints, reference architectures, and technical standards.
• Continuously evaluate emerging technologies and modern engineering practices to improve developer productivity and customer experiences.

Technology Expertise

The ideal candidate brings deep experience designing and evolving modern digital experience platforms with expertise across the following areas:

• Frontend & Experience Architecture: React, modular UI, microfrontends, GraphQL, Backend-for-Frontend (BFF), server-driven UI, shared component libraries, and enterprise design systems.
• Digital Experience Platforms: Headless CMS (Amplience preferred), content management, web, native mobile, webview integration, and omnichannel customer experiences.
• Performance & Scalability: Core Web Vitals, mobile performance, Redis caching, CDN strategies, release isolation, resiliency, observability, and scalable distributed architectures.
• Customer Experience Optimization: SEO, AEO (Answer Engine Optimization), experimentation, A/B testing, personalization, feature management, and digital analytics.
• Modern Engineering Practices: Cloud-native architectures, API-first design, CI/CD, DevSecOps, security, and platform engineering.

AI-Native Engineering

The successful candidate is expected to understand and apply modern AI engineering practices across both customer experiences and software development. This includes:

• Leveraging AI-enabled engineering practices to improve developer productivity, software quality, and delivery speed.
• Understanding AI-powered customer experiences, agentic workflows, retrieval-based architectures (RAG), evaluation strategies, orchestration patterns, and AI integration approaches.
• Applying responsible AI principles, including governance, security, privacy, guardrails, observability, and cost optimization.
• Evaluating emerging AI technologies and identifying opportunities to accelerate engineering efficiency and business outcomes.

Leadership Expectations

• Serve as a player-coach by balancing strategic leadership with direct technical engagement.
• Lead and mentor a high-performing architecture organization.
• Challenge architectural assumptions and technical tradeoffs while enabling teams to make sound engineering decisions.
• Build strong partnerships across Product, UX, Engineering, Security, Platform, and Business organizations.
• Influence technical direction without relying solely on organizational authority.
• Foster collaboration, innovation, ownership, and accountability across teams.
• Develop architects through coaching, architecture reviews, and technical mentorship.
• Champion high standards for documentation, architecture quality, engineering excellence, and execution.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of experience in software engineering, application architecture, or solution architecture.
• 5+ years leading architecture teams or senior technical organizations.
• Experience architecting enterprise-scale customer-facing digital platforms.
• Deep expertise in React-based web applications and modern frontend architecture.
• Strong understanding of GraphQL architecture, API-first design, and integration patterns.
• Experience with headless CMS platforms (Amplience preferred).
• Knowledge of Redis and distributed caching strategies.
• Experience designing scalable, resilient, and high-performing web and mobile solutions.
• Strong understanding of Core Web Vitals, frontend performance optimization, and customer experience engineering.
• Experience implementing enterprise Design Systems and shared component architectures.
• Knowledge of SEO, AEO, personalization, experimentation platforms, and feature management.
• Strong documentation skills, including architecture diagrams, ADRs, technical standards, and reference architectures.
• Excellent communication, collaboration, and executive presentation skills.

Preferred Experience

• Experience in retail, eCommerce, or other high-traffic consumer digital platforms.
• Experience supporting both native mobile applications (iOS/Android) and web platforms.
• Familiarity with MACH architecture principles and composable commerce.
• Experience with AWS or other cloud platforms.
• Knowledge of observability platforms and modern monitoring practices.
• Experience integrating identity, loyalty, payments, search, personalization, and content platforms.

Pay

The pay range for this position is $122,900.00 - $200,000.00 / Year with the opportunity for eligible associates to earn additional compensation pursuant to the Company's bonus plan. Exact pay will be based on factors including, but not limited to relevant education, qualifications, certifications, experience, level, shift, geographic location, and business and organizational needs.

Benefits

Full-time positions are eligible for paid time off, health, dental, vision, life and disability benefits. Part-time positions are eligible for dental, vision, life, and disability benefits. For additional information concerning our benefits, visit our Benefits and Career Development page: https://learn.bswift.com/ulta