Logo
IBM

Principal Architect, Financial Intelligence Platforms

IBM, San Jose

Save Job

Overview

Introduction: We are seeking an accomplished Principal Application Architect to serve as a strategic technical leader, shaping the future of our cloud-native SaaS applications, enterprise data platform, and AI capabilities. This role will play a pivotal part in bringing together Apptio, Cloudability, and Targetprocess into a unified portfolio of applications that delivers actionable financial intelligence to customers. The architect will drive large-scale architectural decisions, optimize our cloud data platforms, and embed AI/ML-powered capabilities into enterprise-grade solutions. This is a senior, high-impact role requiring deep expertise in architecting mission-critical SaaS systems, governing cross-product integrations, and building next-generation financial intelligence platforms. You will influence executives and product leaders, mentor senior engineers, and ensure our solutions are scalable, secure, cost-efficient, and future-ready.

Key Responsibilities

  • Architect, deliver and govern a unified financial intelligence platform for integrating Apptio, Cloudability, and Targetprocess.
  • Define and govern enterprise-wide architecture frameworks for multi-tenant SaaS, data platforms, and AI-enabled capabilities.
  • Align technology decisions with business objectives, influencing executives, product leadership, and engineering stakeholders.

Data Platform & AI/ML Enablement

  • Architect a common data layer to unify financial and operational data across the portfolio, standardizing services, APIs, and governance.
  • Design and scale Snowflake-based data environments for large-scale analytics, AI/ML, and LLM workloads.
  • Define and drive implementation of differentiated AI-driven features such as natural language financial insights, anomaly detection, and automated data mapping.
  • Partner with data science teams to productize AI models using MLOps best practices.
  • Leverage cloud-native AI services (including IBM AI and LLM models) to deliver intelligent platform capabilities.

Application & Platform Modernization

  • Evolve legacy and monolithic systems into microservices-based, API-first, and AI-enabled architectures.
  • Drive strategies for high-volume, low-latency financial workloads while optimizing for cost efficiency.
  • Implement architecture, tooling, and automation to accelerate development speed, improve operational agility, and reduce manual overhead.

Security, Compliance & Trust

  • Champion secure-by-design architectures with tenant isolation, encryption, data privacy controls, and compliance with GDPR, HIPAA, SOC 2, and other regulatory frameworks.
  • Ensure financial intelligence solutions meet the highest standards of auditability, reliability, and trust.

Mentorship & Innovation

  • Coach principal engineers and architects, raising AI, SaaS, and data platform expertise across the organization.
  • Evaluate and integrate emerging SaaS, AI, LLM, and financial intelligence technologies to maintain competitive advantage.

Education & Qualifications

Preferred Education : Master\'s Degree

Required Experience & Technical Skills

  • 12+ years in software architecture and enterprise application development.
  • 5+ years as a principal, lead, or staff-level architect delivering multi-tenant SaaS on AWS, Azure, or GCP.
  • Proven experience architecting portfolio-level integrations across multiple SaaS products.
  • Large-scale Snowflake architecture, governance, and cost-optimization expertise.
  • Track record of designing, deploying, and scaling AI/ML-powered features in production.
  • Hands-on experience with AI/ML frameworks, LLM integration, prompt engineering, MLOps tooling, and cloud AI services.

Technical Skills

  • Deep understanding of Snowflake internals and advanced SQL performance tuning.
  • Strong grasp of SaaS architecture patterns (tenant isolation, metering/billing, API security).
  • Proficiency in Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform, Pulumi) for provisioning SaaS and AI/data environments.

Additional Information

Seniority level : Mid-Senior level

Employment type : Full-time

Job function : Design, Art/Creative, and Information Technology

Industries : IT Services and IT Consulting

Location : Palo Alto, CA

Salary : $200,000.00-$275,000.00

Note: This description reflects a consolidation of the information provided prior to refinement and omits non-essential or duplicate content to ensure clarity and focus on responsibilities and qualifications.

#J-18808-Ljbffr