The Principal Enterprise Architect is a senior individual contributor responsible for shaping the enterprise systems and data landscape across business domains, with particular focus on regulated, multi-environment architecture and long-range technology rationalization. It defines how enterprise systems, data platforms, and domain technologies should work together across commercial and future government-hosted environments, in partnership with the cloud/infrastructure team and domain leaders.
This role is intended to establish the enterprise architecture practice within Enterprise Data & Architecture. It will lead efforts such as assessing domain technology stacks, defining target-state architecture and integration patterns, and guiding decisions about where systems, platforms, and sensitive data should reside based on business capability, regulatory constraints, and long-term maintainability.
What you'll do:
- Define and evolve the target-state enterprise systems and data architecture across major business domains, including G&A, product, engineering, operations, and supply-chain-adjacent capabilities. dataforest+4
- Lead the discovery and rationalization of function-level and shadow IT stacks, documenting current-state architectures, identifying overlap and risk, and proposing a phased roadmap toward a more coherent enterprise landscape.
- Design and govern architecture patterns for regulated multi-environment operations, including commercial and future government-hosted systems, with clear principles for data zoning, system placement, and cross-environment interaction.
- Partner with the Cloud & Infrastructure and Security & Compliance teams on the infrastructure and security implications of architectural decisions, while remaining focused on system, data, and integration architecture.
- Define approved integration patterns between business systems, data platforms, and domain technologies, including API, event-driven, and batch data movement approaches where appropriate.
- Guide decisions about where sensitive, controlled, or regulated data and workloads should live, and how enterprise systems should interact without violating policy or creating unsustainable architecture debt.
- Provide architectural oversight and decision support for major cross-domain, strategic programs such as ERP implementation, data platform modernization, domain onboarding, and future product/engineering data initiatives.
- Establish architecture review practices, reference architectures, and reusable standards so teams can move faster without solving the same structural problems repeatedly.
- Coach software engineering teams on enterprise architecture principles, design standards, and system trade-offs through design reviews, architecture forums, and hands-on guidance that raises architectural maturity across the organization
- Act as a strategic partner to the Sr. Director of Enterprise Data & Architecture, helping extend leadership coverage across domains and enabling a durable enterprise architecture practice.
Required qualifications:
- 15+ years of relevant experience in enterprise architecture, solution architecture, or senior architecture roles spanning multiple business domains and technology platforms.
- Demonstrated experience shaping enterprise technology landscapes across applications, data platforms, and integration patterns, not just designing one platform in isolation.
- Experience in regulated, security-sensitive, or government-adjacent environments with meaningful architectural constraints around sensitive data handling, segmentation, and compliance.
- Experience working in hybrid or multi-environment architectures, such as commercial plus government-hosted, cloud plus on-prem, or otherwise segregated environments.
- Strong understanding of enterprise integration patterns and the architectural trade-offs between APIs, eventing, batch movement, replication, and system coupling.
- Ability to engage effectively with technical teams, business stakeholders, security/compliance, and infrastructure leaders.
- Strong judgment, communication, and facilitation skills in ambiguous environments with incomplete information and competing priorities.
Preferred qualifications:
- Experience with Oracle ERP, SAP, or another major enterprise platform in finance, supply chain, manufacturing, or product-adjacent environments.
- Experience with modern cloud data platforms such as Databricks, Snowflake, or similar, sufficient to guide enterprise architecture decisions affecting data and analytics platforms.
- Experience leading architecture rationalization or modernization efforts across decentralized organizations.
- Experience in defense, aerospace, federal, or another environment with highly controlled data and systems.
Skills Required
- 15+ years of relevant experience in enterprise architecture, solution architecture, or senior architecture roles spanning multiple business domains and technology platforms.
- Demonstrated experience shaping enterprise technology landscapes across applications, data platforms, and integration patterns.
- Experience in regulated, security-sensitive, or government-adjacent environments with meaningful architectural constraints around sensitive data handling, segmentation, and compliance.
- Experience working in hybrid or multi-environment architectures (commercial plus government-hosted, cloud plus on-prem, or segregated environments).
- Strong understanding of enterprise integration patterns and trade-offs between APIs, eventing, batch movement, replication, and system coupling.
- Ability to engage effectively with technical teams, business stakeholders, security/compliance, and infrastructure leaders.
- Strong judgment, communication, and facilitation skills in ambiguous environments with incomplete information and competing priorities.
- Experience with Oracle ERP, SAP, or another major enterprise platform in finance, supply chain, manufacturing, or product-adjacent environments.
- Experience with modern cloud data platforms such as Databricks, Snowflake, or similar.
- Experience leading architecture rationalization or modernization efforts across decentralized organizations.
- Experience in defense, aerospace, federal, or another environment with highly controlled data and systems.
What the Team is Saying
Shield AI Compensation & Benefits Highlights
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Healthcare Strength — Healthcare coverage includes medical, dental, vision, and mental-health support, with company materials describing excellent coverage. Feedback suggests these offerings are comprehensive and consistently highlighted across official and third-party benefit lists.
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Equity Value & Accessibility — Equity is granted to all full-time hires, with RSU structures and tools like Carta Tax intended to improve understanding and tax timing. Feedback suggests this broad-based ownership approach is a notable component of total rewards.
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Parental & Family Support — Benefits include paid parental leave, fertility support, childcare benefits, family medical leave, and onsite resources such as a Mother's Room. Feedback suggests the family-oriented offerings are more expansive than basic coverage.
Shield AI Insights
What We Do
At Shield AI, you won't wait years to see your work reach the field. You'll build hardware and software that operates in the real world right now, in the hands of the people who depend on it. Hivemind, our AI pilot, has been flying since 2018. It has flown more than 30 platforms, including an F-16, and it now sits under a U.S. Air Force production contract for Collaborative Combat Aircraft. When you write code or shape a system here, you contribute to technology with a proven flight record and a clear production future. V-BAT flies intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions with an operational record that stretches from Ukraine to the Indo-Pacific. It delivers eyes where they matter most, in the most demanding conditions on earth. The teams behind it watch their work get tested where the stakes are real. X-BAT takes its first flight this year. It's an AI-piloted fighter that needs no runway, built to operate where traditional aircraft can't. Join now and you help shape a program at its earliest, most formative stage. That's the kind of ground-floor work that defines a career. Do the most impactful work of your life, on problems that matter. Autonomy at this level asks a lot of you. You'll take on problems in perception, planning, and control that few teams anywhere are equipped to solve. You'll work across disciplines, from aerospace and robotics to machine learning and systems engineering, alongside people who hold themselves to an exacting standard and expect the same from you. Our mission is clear: protect service members and civilians with intelligent systems. That purpose runs through every decision, every design review, and every deployment. It's why the work here carries a weight you can feel. Ready to join our mission? Explore our open roles and find where you fit.
Why Work With Us
Founded in 2015 by a former Navy SEAL, Shield AI builds AI pilots and uncrewed aircraft. Veterans aren't an afterthought here, they're at every level. It's why the work carries weight: AI pilots and uncrewed aircraft flying real missions, from Ukraine to the Indo-Pacific, protecting service members and civilians.
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Hybrid Workspace
Employees engage in a combination of remote and on-site work.
