Senior Solutions Architect - Enterprise Architecture

At American Express, our culture is built on a 175-year history of innovation, shared values and Leadership Behaviors, and an unwavering commitment to back our customers, communities, and colleagues. As part of Team Amex, you’ll experience this powerful backing with comprehensive support for your holistic well-being and many opportunities to learn new skills, develop as a leader, and grow your career.

Here, your voice and ideas matter, your work makes an impact, and together, you will help us define the future of American Express.

Joining Amex Tech means discovering and shaping your contribution to something big. Here, you can work alongside talented tech teams and build a unique career with the Powerful Backing of American Express. With a range of opportunities to work with the latest technologies, and a commitment to back the broader engineering community through open source, our mission is to power your success. Because Amex Tech is powered by our technology, our culture, and our colleagues.

The Chief Technology Officer Organization's vision is to set the standard for technical excellence, talent, strategy, and standards across Technology. It also seeks to cultivate and foster technical innovation, amplify the technical heartbeat of the organization, and deliver great experiences to all American Express colleagues.

Enterprise Architecture is an organization within the Chief Technology Office at American Express and it is a key enabler of the company’s technology strategy. The four pillars of Enterprise Architecture include:

Architecture as Code: this pillar owns and operates foundational technologies that are leveraged by engineering teams across the enterprise.

Architecture as Design: this pillar includes the solution and technical design for transformation programs and business critical projects which need architectural guidance and support.

Governance: this pillar is responsible for defining technical standards, and developing innovative tools that automate controls to ensure compliance.

Colleague Enablement: this pillar is focused on colleague development, recognition, training, and enterprise outreach.

Responsibilities:

Ensures Technology Platform solutions are aligned with the corresponding Platform Blueprint and Company Platform roadmaps; may be called on to be the Technology Platform Single Point of Contact (SPOC)

Focuses on cross-platform integration to use and optimize platform capabilities

Ensures the engineered environment meets the specification in terms of business requirements, application design and infrastructure requirements, i.e. accountable for the platform integration performance and efficiency

Performs hands-on solution architecture design work and actively participates in design and code reviews to ensure both delivery of desired business outcomes and alignment to enterprise standards

Provides input and functional direction to the Technology Platform’s API strategy and implementation roadmap

Works with Business and Data Architects to align and incorporate their input into platform solutions

Responsible for coaching and mentoring engineering resources on solution architecture, providing advice, mentorship and assistance to less experienced colleagues as required

Identifies technical solutions and business process improvements in support of the business and IT strategic direction

Finds opportunities to embrace innovative technologies

Interacts with business partners and product engineering teams to share and direct architecture practices that may affect business solution delivery

Provides architectural governance, reviewing projects to ensure alignment to architectural and technical strategy by driving Technology Platform to Platform Architecture Review (PAR) approval level

Advises product delivery resources on the best time to engage dependent teams (for example, database engineering teams)

Ensures accurate asset information is documented and recorded in the appropriate repositories for the assigned portfolio

Qualifications:

4-5 years of hands-on programming experience meaningful to the assigned Technology Platform in a professional environment and/or comparable experience such as:

Advanced hands-on experience with application solution architecture design and end-toend software development of complex distributed (multi-tiered) systems

Prior experience in multiple IT disciplines with a confirmed understanding of architectural concepts (business, data, technical and solution) and track record of implementation

Extensive experience using a systems analysis and design methodology that is applicable to an agile product environment

Bachelor’s Degree in computer science, engineering, information systems or related field required; advanced degree preferred

Prior hands-on experience with one or more core technology stack components within the assigned portfolio, such as relevant frameworks and/or programming languages

Advanced to authoritative level knowledge and understanding of solution architecture, complex application systems design and platform integration via modern approaches (i.e. RESTful APIs, event-driven layered Architecture, Message brokers )

Experience integrating with core banking systems, payment gateways, fraud/risk platforms, and external bank rails.

Proven understanding of relevant supporting architecture domains required to align and deliver solutions (business, information, application, technical, etc.)

Ability to perform system design reviews to ensure selection of appropriate technology, efficient use of resources, and alignment to strategic platform roadmaps

Channel-specific solution architecture skills as required by the assigned platform, such as web, mobile, voice or interactive media

Advanced skills with Open Source components, frameworks and complex systems integration

Full understanding of Service Oriented Architecture design principles, execution patterns and performance optimization techniques

Able to participate in the prevention, diagnosis, and resolution of system outages as a leader in the underlying architecture

Experienced level understanding of relevant SDLC methodologies, practices and compliance policies/procedures

Deep business capability domain knowledge relative to the assigned portfolio

Able to acquire results with an emphasis on reducing cycle time and growing the speed to market of new products

Excellent interpersonal skills (verbal and written), as well as effective consultative and influential leadership skills

Well versed in current industry best practices regarding solution delivery disciplines

Strong business insight with the ability to identify key issues and their impact in a broad business context