Principal Software Architect

Principal Architect
Job Description:
Morningstar Retirement is seeking a hands-on Principal Architect to shape the architectural direction of our Fiduciary Services business. This role is for technologists with deep domain expertise who can tackle complex challenges, guide advanced system design, and translate business needs into scalable technical solutions, helping turn our growing AI ambitions into practical, production-ready capabilities.
The Principal Architect will design resilient, flexible, and secure architectures that support growth while maintaining the reliability and trust required for Fiduciary platforms. This includes modernizing legacy systems, building the foundations for AI-enabled products, and ensuring our cloud-based platforms operate with stability, performance, and operational efficiency.
Qualifications:
10+ years of experience in enterprise architecture or large-scale system design. Experience communicating with technical and non-technical audiences, including leadership level, through training and workshops. Expertise in infrastructure, application architecture, platforms, and data systems. Ability to influence internal business decision-makers as a technical thought leader and to communicate effectively across an increasingly diverse set of internal and external audiences. Hands-on experience with AWS ecosystems (e.g., Bedrock, AgentCore, and SageMaker) to set up secure, private-network AI environments, and practical experience implementing Retrieval-Augmented Generation using embeddings, vector stores, and semantic search optimization. Hands-on experience with Terraform for Infrastructure as Code and development using technologies such as Java, Python, and Vue.
What you will do:
Design and evolve scalable, cloud-native architectures that support asset growth and new plan onboarding. Lead modernization efforts, including database alignment and system refactoring. Influence architecture decisions across multiple engineering teams and drive alignment on long-term platform strategy. Translate business strategy into deliverable, measurable, production-ready technical roadmaps. Establish architecture standards, reference patterns, and governance models across engineering teams. Anticipate future scale and risk challenges, embedding performance, security, disaster recovery and compliance in design decisions. Partner closely with Product, Engineering, and Operations leaders to drive clarity and alignment. Serve as a technical thought leader by producing architectural guidance, enabling content, and internal workshops. Convert AI product ambitions into operational programs with clear pipelines, evaluation guardrails, and lifecycle management. Build scalable AI infrastructure that supports business initiatives in production environments.
What Sets This Role Apart
This is not a theoretical architecture role. It requires hands-on depth and real-world production experience. The Principal Architect must be comfortable:
Refactoring complex systems Designing end-to-end cloud architectures Guiding teams through modernization while protecting live revenue systems Standing up AI pipelines that scale Embedding reliability, evaluation, and governance into AI systems.
If you receive and accept an offer from us, we require that personal and any related investments be disclosed confidentiality to our Compliance team (days vary by region). These investments will be reviewed to ensure they meet Code of Ethics requirements. If any conflicts of interest are identified, then you will be required to liquidate those holdings immediately. In addition, dependent on your department and location of work certain employee accounts must be held with an approved broker (for example all, U.S. employee accounts). If this applies and your account(s) are not with an approved broker, you will be required to move your holdings to an approved broker.
Morningstar's hybrid work environment gives you the opportunity to collaborate in-person each week as we've found that we're at our best when we're purposely together on a regular basis. In most of our locations, our hybrid work model is four days in-office each week. A range of other benefits are also available to enhance flexibility as needs change. No matter where you are, you'll have tools and resources to engage meaningfully with your global colleagues.
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