Senior Solution Architect

Our vision for the future is based on the idea that transforming financial lives starts by giving our people the freedom to transform their own. We have a flexible work environment, and fluid career paths. We not only encourage but celebrate internal mobility. We also recognize the importance of purpose, well-being, and work-life balance. Within Empower and our communities, we work hard to create a welcoming and inclusive environment, and our associates dedicate thousands of hours to volunteering for causes that matter most to them.

Chart your own path and grow your career while helping more customers achieve financial freedom. Empower Yourself.

The Senior Solutions Architect provides technical leadership and designs complex solution architectures that support business strategy and streamline technology-enabled workflows. This role partners closely with business owners, product, data, and engineering teams to document current-state systems and design scalable, resilient, and secure cloud-based solutions. This position focuses on emerging technologies, including AI, Generative AI, and machine learning, and guides solutions from research and analysis through architecture, delivery support, and operational readiness.

What you will do:

• Lead discovery with business and technology partners to understand objectives, constraints, current-state systems, and integration points.

• Document current-state architecture and define target-state designs including system context diagrams, component designs, integration patterns, and data flows.

• Design and modernize applications into cloud-compatible or cloud-native architectures using microservices, serverless, and event-driven patterns where appropriate.

• Create strategies, roadmaps, and migration designs for transitioning applications and data workloads to cloud platforms.

• Design AI and ML-enabled solutions, including model integration into products and business processes, and patterns for scalable inference and low-latency serving where needed.

• Design Generative AI solution patterns, such as retrieval-augmented generation, tool and API integration, prompt and context management, and evaluation approaches.

• Define reference architectures for AI platforms and enabling capabilities, such as data pipelines, feature and embedding generation, vector storage, model endpoints, and integration with enterprise APIs.

• Define integration patterns for agent toolchains using standards and common approaches such as Model Context Protocol (MCP), skills and plugin manifest standards, function calling with JSON Schema tool definitions, OpenAPI-based tool specifications, and event-driven or message-based tool execution patterns. Ensure integrations address authentication and authorization, data minimization, auditability, and isolation boundaries.

• Incorporate security-by-design practices into architectures, including identity and access controls, encryption, secrets management, secure networking, and audit logging.

• Partner with governance and risk stakeholders to ensure responsible AI considerations are incorporated, including privacy, explainability, safety, compliance, and model risk controls as applicable.

• Drive alignment and adoption of proposed solutions by clearly communicating tradeoffs, risks, and value and obtaining stakeholder alignment and governance approvals. Selling means internal alignment and decision support, not external pre-sales.

• Support teams responsible for testing and validation and help triage and resolve design-related issues found during development, UAT, or production.

• Perform other duties as assigned

What you will bring:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, Mathematics, Business, or equivalent practical experience.

• 5+ years of experience in agile software delivery environments with increasing architecture and design responsibility.

• Demonstrated experience designing distributed systems using microservices and or serverless patterns.

• Experience designing and integrating AI and ML capabilities into applications, including model serving considerations and data dependencies.

• Experience with one or more languages such as Java, Python, Node.js, or Scala.

• Experience with data persistence technologies across SQL and NoSQL.

• Experience with at least one major cloud provider, AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud, and core cloud design patterns.

• Working knowledge of CI/CD pipelines and DevOps practices, including automated testing and deployment automation.

• Strong communication skills and ability to translate business needs into clear technical direction.

What will set you apart:

• Hands-on experience with GenAI and LLM solutions, including retrieval-augmented generation, embeddings, evaluation, and production monitoring.

• Experience with AI and ML platforms or services, such as AWS SageMaker, Amazon Bedrock, Azure AI, Azure OpenAI, or Google Vertex AI.

• Familiarity with MCP-based integrations and related agent tool standards, including skills and plugin manifests, function calling schemas, and OpenAPI-defined tools, plus secure enterprise integration patterns.

• Container and orchestration experience, such as Docker and Kubernetes, and cloud container platforms like ECS or EKS.

• Experience with vector databases and search technologies and associated indexing and retrieval patterns.

• Experience with enterprise observability, including centralized logging, tracing, metrics, alerting, and operational readiness.

• Database and procedural development experience, including PL/SQL, and strong data modeling concepts.

• Familiarity with responsible AI practices, governance controls, and security considerations specific to AI systems.

We are an equal opportunity employer with a commitment to diversity.  All individuals, regardless of personal characteristics, are encouraged to apply.  All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, race, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, pregnancy, religion, physical or mental disability, military or veteran status, genetic information, or any other status protected by applicable state or local law.