Enterprise Architect Principal

Enterprise Architect, Principal

Scottsdale, AZ

Who are we looking for?

Choice Hotels, one of the world’s largest lodging franchisors, has an exciting new opportunity as our Enterprise Architecture, Principal in the Enterprise Architecture team. The award-winning Choice Hotels Technology Center is transforming the hospitality industry by delivering innovative solutions across our ecosystem, including cutting-edge applications, data platforms, and AI/ML capabilities.

As a key contributor to our innovation and hospitality systems strategy, you will collaborate with Product Management to shape the near and long-term vision for Choice Hotels’ technology investments. Additionally, you will partner closely with Engineering to drive modernization, ensure scalability, and align technology solutions with our franchisees’ and guests’ evolving needs.

Do you have significant expertise in designing and delivering innovative technology solutions and a passion for the intersection of hospitality and innovation? We invite you to apply today for our Enterprise Architecture, Principal role and #MakeItYourChoice.

Your Responsibilities

• Partner and align with key business and operational stakeholders throughout Choice Hotels to understand their objectives and long-range strategies.
• Collaborate directly and proactively on the strategic roadmap to influence and inform technology investments based on hospitality industry trends and emerging innovations. Translate these trends into opportunities for modernizing systems and enhancing guest and franchisee experiences.
• Engage as a thought leader in innovation and prototyping of new capabilities tailored to hospitality use cases, leveraging cutting-edge technology solutions to improve operational efficiency and service delivery.
• Work with technology organization leaders to align the business roadmap and technology capabilities, ensuring long-term efficient, effective, and value-driven delivery of solutions.
• Act as a strategic partner to Business and Technology leadership and Product Management, generating and prioritizing ideas that align with Choice’s mission of hospitality innovation.
• Drive innovation in hospitality systems, identifying opportunities to reimagine the guest journey, franchisee operations, and overall service delivery through technology.
• Create architecture runway for Product Management and delivery teams, considering the need for new business capabilities, system enhancements, and reducing technical debt.
• Engage in integrated planning with other Enterprise and Solution Architects to ensure seamless and cohesive operation of systems across all domains.
• Contribute consistently to Architecture Governance boards (e.g., Architecture Board, Technology Governance Committee) representing hospitality systems and innovation.

• Stay abreast of the latest technology trends in hospitality and related industries, assessing Choice’s readiness to adopt innovative solutions and integrating them into our ecosystem where valuable.

Your Experience and Education  

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, or related field, from a four-year college or university. Master’s degree or post graduate degree or equivalent work experience preferred. 

• Minimum of 10 years relevant experience in software development, information systems, or equivalent technical environment, inclusive of experience in the development of distributed systems, cloud applications, and API-based architecture, 8 years of related development experience and 4 years of experience serving a development team technical lead/or architecture experience 

• Experience in implementing architectures that satisfy business, systems, information, security, application, and technology architecture requirements as well as support resilience, observability, and supportability requirements. 

• Experience in systems engineering techniques such as architecture modeling, alternative analysis, tradeoff analysis, and portfolio analysis. 

• Experience in business process modeling & reengineering. 

• Exceptional knowledge and experience in designing and implementing enterprise class systems of applications including:

• Designing service APIs.

• Designing systems integrated with messaging solutions with a working knowledge of the service and messaging design patterns.

• Defining application and system boundaries and an understanding of Domain-Driven Design. 

• Defining non-functional requirements such as scalability, availability, and security. 

• Knowledge of Agile/Scrum development methodologies. 

Skills 

• Proven leader with the demonstrated experience of creating technical solutions in large organizations with complex business requirements and constraints. 

• Thought leadership that embodies being innovative, entrepreneurial and is well respected, actively sought out and is considered an authority by peers. 

• High energy and drive. Laser-focused on delivery with strategic-thinking, collaboration, facilitation, negotiation, and motivational skills. 

• Strategic dexterity which includes outstanding situational and flexible thinking with the courage to push difficult or unpopular perspectives. 

• Business/Application Knowledge which demonstrates deep knowledge and expertise in multiple as well as inter-dependent applications and processes. 

• Subject matter expert across multiple technologies, architectures, and business applications with special emphasis on application/systems inter-dependencies. 

• Expert in one or more programming languages with a functional knowledge of multiple languages such as Java, Python, Node.js, Kotlin, and Swift. 

• Expert in development upon major frameworks and libraries such as Spring, Pandas, Angular, and React. 

• Expert in developing applications with data stored in a relational database such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLServer. Experience analyzing and performance tuning database calls. Familiarity with non-relational or NOSQL database technologies. 

• Expert in defining service APIs using standard specifications such as Swagger or OpenAPI. Proficient with messaging integrations using JMS or Kafka. 

• Expert in designing deployments for the cloud environment (AWS, GCP or Azure). Familiarity with distributed system design and an understanding of the related failure conditions. 

• Expert with Jenkins, CI/CD pipelines, and version control with git. Experience with application profiling, performance tuning, and caching strategies. 

• Understanding of Enterprise Architecture frameworks and concepts 

• Knowledge of relevant security, regulatory and compliance matters as they relate to system design (PCI, SOX, GDPR, OAuth, ESAPI/OWASP, SAML etc.). 

• Self-starter who solves complex technology and operational problems/issues with little to no guidance from senior management. Seeks senior management advice and guidance as needed for critical decisions with broad business exposure and high risk. 

• Exceptional oral, written, presentation and listening communication skills. 

• Exceptional interpersonal, persuasion and diplomatic skills. 

• Exceptional reasoning, analytical, and problem-solving skills. 

Abilities 

• Ability to develop technical specifications, designs, and architecture artifacts. 

• Ability to deal with ambiguity during the inception stage of projects. 

• Ability to take ownership of an assignment through to completion and work effectively with people from different departments, companies, and customer organizations. 

• Ability to solve complex problems with multiple complex abstract variables. 

• Ability to effectively lead others in the absence of formal positional power. 

• Ability to communicate technical information in an appropriate manner for widely varied audiences (from senior management to individual contributors on software development teams). 

• Ability to establish relationships with the business and Technology leaders, as well as be technology subject matter experts. 

• Ability to influence strategic direction in partnership with key decision-makers and highly technical resources. 

• Ability to remain unbiased towards any specific vendor or technology choice; is more interested in results than personal preferences. 

• Ability to conduct tradeoff analysis to be able to look at alternative architectural approaches to present pros versus cons and recommendations. 

Desired 

• The ideal candidate will have an extensive background in designing and deploying cloud applications with autoscaling, resilience, and sustainability in mind. 

• Broad understanding of a spectrum of cloud infrastructure technologies including network, hardware, and operating systems. 

• Innovative mindset. Ability to marry emerging technology trends with business or technical problems and opportunities. 

Your Team 

This is an individual contributor role that will report to the Senior Director, Enterprise Architecture. You will have four peer teammates and collaborate with cross functional departments on a regular basis.

Your Work Location 

As our Enterprise Architect, Principal, you will be based in our beautiful, state-of-the-art technology hub in Scottsdale, AZ. In October 2021, Choice opened a newly constructed world class technology center. 

About Choice 

Choice Hotels International, Inc. (NYSE: CHH) is one of the largest lodging franchisors in the world. With nearly 7,500 hotels, representing nearly 630,000 rooms, in 46 countries and territories, with a range of high-quality lodging options from limited service to full-service hotels in the upper upscale, upper mid-scale, midscale, extended-stay, and economy segments. We’re the hotel company for those who choose to bet on themselves – the underdog, the dreamer, the entrepreneur – because that’s who we are, too.

At Choice, we are united by the simple belief that tomorrow will be even better than today – for associates, our company, and our franchisees. At our worldwide corporate headquarters in North Bethesda, MD and St. Louis Park, MN as well as our technology center in Scottsdale, AZ, and through our associates around the globe, every voice is heard, and every idea is listened to, no matter what area of the company they come from. We are united in supporting the entrepreneurial dreams of our more than 18,000 franchise owners, which propels us forward – giving our work at Choice a purpose larger than our business. 

*** PLEASE NOTE: This role is not eligible for sponsorship ***