Principal Enterprise Architect, Business Systems & Data (R5535)
Shield AI is a venture-backed defense-tech company with the mission of protecting service members and civilians with intelligent systems. Its products include Hivemind autonomy software, V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft, and Aechelon simulation and synthetic reality technologies. With offices and facilities across the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific, Shield AI ’s technology actively supports operations worldwide. For more information, visit www.shield.ai. Follow Shield AI on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and YouTube.
Job Description:
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.