Senior Solutions Architect
From $12/yr
Senior Solutions Architect, Unified Commerce Solutions Location: Dallas, TX or Akron, OH (Hybrid) Open to Remote POSITION SUMMARY: The Senior Solutions Architect, Unified Commerce Solutions is Signet's most senior architecture role within Unified Commerce, a director-equivalent individual contributor providing portfolio-wide technical leadership across the unified commerce ecosystem. The role establishes a single, durable architectural baseline across eCommerce, DOM, Store, Jewelry Services, and Customer Care platforms; sets architecture direction, standards, and target-state patterns; and informally leads the community of solution architects embedded in each domain to ensure coherent technical decisions across the portfolio. The Senior Solutions Architect partners directly with senior business and technology executives to align technology to customer experience priorities, and accelerates engineering throughput across the team by championing modern, AI-assisted ways of working. This role is intentionally an individual contributor: leadership accountability for delivery remains with the domain leaders, while this role provides the cross-cutting technical view that no single domain can. RESPONSIBILITIES: Portfolio Architecture \& Target-State Strategy * Own the cross-portfolio architectural view of Unified Commerce Solutions, including current-state baseline, capability-to-system mapping, integration inventory, and target-state architecture across a multi-year horizon. * Define and maintain the Unified Commerce technical roadmap in partnership with domain leaders; identify what gets consolidated vs. composed across brands, channels, and platforms. * Establish architecture decision records (ADRs) and decision-gate practices that capture options, trade-offs, rationale, and downstream impact. Architecture Standards, Reference Patterns \& Decision Governance * Set and curate enterprise-aligned architecture standards, reference patterns, integration tiering, non-functional requirements, and quality bars used across all UCS domains. * Maintain durable, low-friction architecture artifacts (e.g., C4 model views, integration inventories, capability maps) that are accessible to engineers, architects, and business partners alike. * Drive consistent architectural rigor across domain solution architects without imposing unnecessary process. * Serve as Unified Commerce Solutions’ primary point of alignment with Signet’s Enterprise Architecture team – bringing the UCS perspective into enterprise architecture activities, decisions, and roadmaps, and translating enterprise direction into coherent UCS standards, patterns, and execution. Architecture Community Leadership (Informal / Matrixed) * Provide informal, peer-level technical leadership to the solution architects embedded across the Unified Commerce domains; act as the connective tissue that aligns their work without owning their reporting line. * Establish and run the Unified Commerce Architecture Community of Practice with operating cadence, working sessions, technical reviews, and shared artifacts. * Mentor architects across the team on craft, communication, decision-making, and stakeholder engagement. Strategic Initiative Architecture \& Hands-On Engagement * Provide deep, hands-on architecture leadership on a small number of high-impact, cross-domain initiatives where portfolio-level technical judgment is essential (e.g., CMS direction, platform modernization, large-scale integration changes). * Translate approved business requirements into architectural specifications, integration designs, and implementation-ready technical direction for delivery teams on those initiatives. * Stay deliberately selective as most domain-specific architecture remains owned by the domain solution architect; this role steps in where the cross-portfolio view changes the answer Innovation, AI Enablement \& Developer Acceleration * Drive the team's evolution toward an AI-assisted, agentic development model equipping engineers and leaders with integrated, end-to-end SDLC AI capability rather than a patchwork of role-specific point tools to amplify their craft, accelerate delivery, and build a small, skilled, nimble team capable of outsized impact, progressively reducing dependence on external contractor capacity in favor of a stronger internal organization * Bring forward a steady, prioritized set of developer-acceleration proposals (tooling, technical direction, quality, observability) with expected benefit, adoption plan, and success measures * Track and apply emerging architectural patterns and technologies relevant to multi-brand, omnichannel commerce Senior Executive Business Partnership \& CX Alignment * Build and maintain trust-based, peer-level relationships with senior executive partners across Digital Product, Marketing, Merchandising, Store Operations, Customer Care, and Finance. * Translate customer experience strategy and brand-level priorities into a coherent target architecture and roadmap; anchor architectural decisions in customer outcomes rather than technical preference. * Communicate technical reality, risks, and trade-offs to senior business leaders in business terms; represent the Unified Commerce technical agenda in executive forums. POSITION QUALIFICATIONS: * Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related discipline. * Master's degree (technical Master's or MBA) preferred. * 12+ years of progressive technology experience, including 8+ years in solutions architecture roles in eCommerce, omnichannel, or consumer-facing retailtechnology. * Architectural pedigree rooted primarily in hands-on solutions architecture – the majority of career experience spent designing, integrating, and shipping production systems alongside engineering teams. Backgrounds dominated by enterprise architecture governance, strategy-only, or framework-administration roles are not a fit; this role calls for an applied, practitioner architect who is comfortable in the technical detail. * Demonstrated experience as a senior or principal architect responsible for cross-domain or cross-portfolio architecture, not solely a single application or platform. * Demonstrated multi-brand experience, ideally across a portfolio of distinct consumer brands sharing common platform infrastructure. * Strong command of modern integration architecture, API and event-driven patterns, microservices, and headless / composable commerce concepts. * Track record of authoring durable architecture artifacts — capability maps, C4 / equivalent diagram sets, integration inventories, ADRs, and target-state architectures — that practitioners actually use and maintain. * Demonstrated focus on customer experience outcomes — not solely technical excellence — including partnering with Product and Design leaders to translate CX strategy into architectural direction. * Proven comfort and effectiveness operating in a matrixed environment — both for technology delivery (across shared platforms, infrastructure, security, and SI partners) and across multiple senior business partners with competing priorities; able to drive aligned outcomes without direct authority. * Demonstrated ability to lead a community of peer architects informally — earning influence through clarity of thought, technical credibility, and collaboration rather than reporting structure. * Strong financial fluency — able to frame architectural choices in TCO, capex/opex, and vendor-economic terms. Preferred Experience: * Multi-national experience supporting eCommerce or omnichannel operations across more than one country. * Hands-on architectural depth with SAP Commerce Cloud (v2 / Composable) and IBM Sterling Order Management at production scale. * Experience with a headless / decoupled CMS in a commerce context. * Experience with Oracle Xstore Point-of-Sale at production scale in a multi-brand or multi-banner retail environment. * Experience with Adobe Real-Time CDP (or comparable customer data platform) integrated into a commerce, marketing, and personalization stack. * Experience with Salesforce Sales Cloud and Service Cloud, particularly in consumer retail, contact center, or clienteling contexts. * Specialty retail or jewelry experience. * Experience adopting AI-assisted, end-to-end SDLC tooling at team or organization scale. * Experience with formal architecture frameworks or modeling notations (TOGAF, C4 Model, ArchiMate, or equivalent) used pragmatically. * Experience leading platform consolidation, brand harmonization, or multi-country rollouts. Technical Skills Required: * Strong command of modern cloud architecture, API and integration patterns, event-driven architecture, microservices, and headless / composable commerce concepts. * Strong visual architecture communication skills — C4 Model, sequence and integration diagrams, capability maps — that scale from engineer to executive audiences. * Familiarity with CMS platforms (Adobe Experience Manager, Contentful) and site-search platforms (Unbxd or equivalents). * Strong executive-level written and verbal communication; able to frame technical content in business terms for senior leaders and Board-adjacent audiences. * Demonstrated ability to navigate a complex matrixed organization — influencing peers, aligning shared services, and integrating delivery across business partners and technology functions outside of direct reporting lines. * Proficient with documentation and collaboration tools (Confluence, Lucidchart / draw.io or equivalent, Jira) and Microsoft Office Suite (Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams). BENEFITS \& PERKS: * Competitive healthcare, dental \& vision insurance * 401(k) matching after one year of employment * Generous time off + company holidays * Merchandise discount * Learning \& Development programs * Much more!