** This role is not eligible for sponsorship AND is four days onsite hybrid at our N. Scottsdale office **
Who are we looking for?
Choice Hotels, one of the world's largest lodging franchisors, has an exciting new opportunity as our Principal Enterprise Architect in the Enterprise Architecture team. The Enterprise Architecture team connects business strategy with technology execution by defining architecture direction, standards, roadmaps, and guardrails for enterprise platforms, business capabilities, cloud services, data platforms, integrations, and AI-enabled solutions. As a key member of this team, you will shape enterprise technology strategy, guide modernization, and help Choice adopt scalable, secure, resilient, and future-ready technology capabilities.
Are you a strategic technology leader who can translate business priorities into architecture direction, influence stakeholders, and guide modern platforms, cloud-native solutions, and AI-enabled capabilities? We invite you to apply today for our Principal Enterprise Architect role and #MakeItYourChoice.
Your Responsibilities
- Own enterprise architecture strategy across platforms, business capabilities, and technology domains, ensuring alignment with business priorities, modernization objectives, and long-term technology strategy.
- Define and govern architecture standards, reference architectures, integration patterns, API strategies, cloud service patterns, and enterprise solution guardrails.
- Lead architecture strategy and adoption planning for cloud modernization, platform engineering, developer enablement, data-driven decision making, generative AI, intelligent agents, and automation capabilities.
- Partner with Business Relationship Management, Product, Technology, Security, Privacy, Risk, Data, Engineering, and operational stakeholders to align technology investments with business objectives and governance requirements.
- Establish architecture patterns and guardrails for AI-enabled systems, enterprise AI platforms, intelligent automation, orchestration capabilities, and emerging AI technologies.
- Assess current-state and future-state architectures, identify practical transition states, and define short- and long-term roadmaps for modernization, platform growth, AI adoption, and enterprise capability maturity.
- Drive proof-of-concepts, architectural prototypes, technology assessments, and tradeoff analysis to validate future-state capabilities and inform enterprise investment decisions.
- Serve as a trusted advisor and technical leader for strategic initiatives, architecture reviews, solution direction, stakeholder decision-making, and Enterprise Architecture practice maturity.
Your Experience, Skills & Competencies
- Bachelor's degree in computer science, information systems, engineering, or a related field required; equivalent experience may be considered. Master's degree preferred.
- At least 10 years of relevant experience in software development, information systems, enterprise architecture, solution architecture, or a related technical environment.
- Experience designing and implementing enterprise-class systems, including distributed systems, cloud platforms, API-based architectures, messaging patterns, application boundaries, and non-functional requirements such as scalability, availability, security, resilience, observability, and supportability.
- Experience defining architecture strategy, standards, roadmaps, governance frameworks, and reference architectures across cloud, data, integration, application, platform engineering, modernization, and AI domains.
- Experience with cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, or Microsoft Azure; familiarity with enterprise AI platforms such as AWS Bedrock, OpenAI, Anthropic, Azure AI, Google AI, or similar technologies preferred.
- Strong knowledge of architecture modeling, alternative analysis, tradeoff analysis, portfolio analysis, Agile/Scrum delivery, security and compliance considerations, and modern software delivery practices.
- Technical depth across service APIs, OpenAPI/Swagger, messaging technologies such as Kafka or Java Message Service, relational and non-relational databases, CI/CD pipelines, version control, performance tuning, and cloud deployment patterns.
- Demonstrates strategic thinking, executive communication, collaboration, influence without authority, sound judgment, problem solving, and the ability to lead through ambiguity.
Your Team
This is an individual contributor role that will report to the Director of Enterprise Architecture. You will collaborate with Enterprise Architects, Solution Architects, Product teams, Engineering, Security, Data, Privacy, Risk, operational stakeholders, and technology leaders on a regular basis.
**This role is not eligible for sponsorship**
Choice prioritizes our associate wellbeing by offering a comprehensive benefits program that is both competitive and flexible to help you achieve your wellbeing goals - here are just a few:
- Competitive compensation and benefits, including medical, dental, and vision coverage
- Leave and paid time-off for holidays, vacation, personal, family, volunteer, sick, jury duty, bereavement, military, and religious observance
- Financial benefits for retirement and health savings
- Employee recognition programs
- Discounts at Choice hotels worldwide
About Choice
Choice Hotels International, Inc. (NYSE: CHH), is one of the largest lodging franchisors in the world. With 7,500 hotels in 45+ countries and territories, we offer a range of high-quality lodging options in the upper upscale, upper midscale, midscale, extended stay, and economy segments. We’re the hotel company for those who choose to bet on themselves — the striver, 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, Maryland, at our technology center in Scottsdale, Arizona, 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 thousands of franchise owners, which propels us forward — giving our work at Choice a purpose larger than our business.
Our corporate office locations:
North Bethesda, MD — Located at Pike & Rose, our worldwide headquarters is less than 15 miles from Washington, D.C., one block away from the North Bethesda Metro station, with easy access to I-495, complimentary parking, electronic charging stations, restaurants and retail.
Scottsdale, AZ — Located at the northwest corner of Loop 101, the Scottsdale office is home to our technology, eCommerce and customer service organizations, with easy access to complimentary parking, electronic charging stations, restaurants and retail.
Minneapolis, MN — Select roles are based in our Minneapolis office on Highway 394, near the intersection with Highway 100, only five minutes from downtown.
Field/Remote — Select roles designated as field/remote will require associates to work from a home office, connecting virtually with Choice team members and leadership on Zoom, with possible required travel depending on the role.
Choice’s Cultural Values
Welcome and Respect Everyone | Be Bold | Be Quick | Listen | Be Curious | Show Integrity
Choice’s Leadership Principles
Act with Intention | Lead with Authenticity | Grow & Deliver
Skills Required
- Bachelor's degree in computer science or related field (Master's preferred)
- Minimum of 10 years relevant experience in software development or information systems (including distributed systems, cloud, API-based architecture)
- At least 8 years related development experience and 4 years serving as a development team technical lead or in architecture role
- Experience implementing architectures addressing business, systems, information, security, application, resilience, observability, and supportability requirements
- Experience with systems engineering techniques: architecture modeling, alternative analysis, tradeoff analysis, portfolio analysis
- Experience in business process modeling and reengineering
- Experience designing service APIs and defining application/system boundaries
- Experience designing systems integrated with messaging solutions and knowledge of service and messaging design patterns
- Understanding of Domain-Driven Design and defining non-functional requirements (scalability, availability, security)
- Knowledge of Agile/Scrum development methodologies
Choice Hotels International Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Choice Hotels International and has not been reviewed or approved by Choice Hotels International.
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Healthcare Strength — Benefits are described as broad, including medical, dental, and vision coverage alongside telehealth and an Employee Assistance Program. Wellness programs and related wellbeing offerings are also explicitly included in the package.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Time-off support is positioned as extensive, spanning paid vacation, personal and sick leave, and paid family care leave. Backup child and elder care, adoption assistance, and designated “wellbeing days” add breadth beyond standard PTO.
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Retirement Support — Retirement and financial programs include a 401(k) and Roth 401(k) as well as HSA options and financial education resources. Bonuses and referral bonuses are also listed as part of the broader rewards mix.
Choice Hotels International Insights
What We Do
Choice Hotels International, Inc. (NYSE: CHH) is one of the world’s largest and most successful lodging franchisors. On August 11, 2022, Choice acquired Radisson Hotels Americas, adding nine brands and approximately 67,000 rooms to its portfolio in the United States, Canada, Latin America, and the Caribbean. With 22 brands, Choice Hotels has more than 7,500 hotels and nearly 650,000 rooms in 46 countries and territories as of August 11, 2022. The Choice® family of hotel brands provides business and leisure travelers with a broad 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. At our worldwide corporate headquarters in the Washington metropolitan area (North Bethesda, MD), our IT center in Scottsdale, AZ, and St. Louis Park (MN), and through our associates across the globe, we keep those hotels humming by serving as a champion for our franchisees. When you #MakeItYourChoice, you will have the environment, the tools, and the momentum to drive your career and organizational success
