Principal Solution Architect

At Northwestern Mutual, we are strong, innovative and growing. We invest in our people. We care and make a positive difference.

Northwestern Mutual (NM) has been helping families and businesses achieve financial security for over 161 years. Through a distinctive, whole-picture planning approach including both insurance and investments, we empower people to be financially confident. We combine the expertise of our financial professionals with a personalized digital experience and leading-edge technology to best serve our clients. To help guide the collaborative effort, we are seeking a Principal Solution Architect

The Solution Architect will report to the Chief Technology Officer and play a critical role in overseeing the design, engineering, and deployment of software that drives our client, financial advisors and home office digital experiences.  The role will partner across levels of Engineering Solution Delivery to assess, develop and deliver modern designs and solutions that accelerate delivery, reduce technical risk, and strengthen business capabilities. The role will operate in a strategic, end-to-end manner to design and deliver applications and services that are well architected, efficient and scalable. The role will be a key contributor to the company’s goal of achieving the Best Digital Execution Engine in Financial Services. 

Responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

• Provide technical oversight and engineering solutions to complex and strategic development projects in the portfolio.
• Establish solution designs and standards both within and across the application environment though an applied approach to software designs, languages, integrations, application components, delivery capabilities, and data sources.
• Work on an end-to-end basis across Engineering Solutions Delivery, assessing opportunities and developing design patterns to simplify, standardize, and improve quality and velocity of software delivery.
• Advise and participate in modernizing engineering development and delivery processes and tools, including design, development and expansion of continuous delivery platforms, integration standards and approaches, programming language standards, and component selection and consolidation.
• Identify and assess software and platform risks, developing recommendations to reduce risk through modernization, replacement and redesign of software applications and components.
• Identify and assess constraints in the application environment, developing recommendations to eliminate barriers through application replacement, redesign, and restructuring as appropriate.
• Oversee design reviews and frameworks for multiple product teams and large portfolios
• Drive adoption of architecture standards to promote operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency and cost optimization into operating norms
• Contributes to technical strategy and direction setting based on business and IT industry trends
• Educate and drive adoption of well-architected frameworks in order to promote Operational Excellence, Security, Reliability, Performance Efficiency, Cost Optimization into cultural norms
• Develop and maintain collaborative and strategic partnerships across engineering, technology and product teams
• Represents Northwestern Mutual's technology organization in community and technology events.
• Mentors, guides and coaches engineers within division for technical and leadership growth.
• Recognized as a thought leader within discipline who influences decisions made by senior leadership and advances the craft of engineering within our organization

Qualifications:

• 15+ years in software engineering languages and tools
• In-depth knowledge of diverse and emerging technologies and new architectural concepts and principles
• Proven track record of optimally developing strategy, establishing design and completing the delivery of large and sophisticated enterprise systems.
• Success working in a matrix environment.
• In-depth understanding of layered solutions and designs; in-depth understanding of shared software concepts and product features, as well as security minded
• Ability to effectively collaborate across levels of the organization with diverse backgrounds
• Proven experience with agile practices and expectations
• Strong desire to drive change, and ability to adapt to change quickly
• Ability to balance the long-term "big picture" and short-term implications of decisions

Technologies/Skills:

• A broad and deep mix of experience across engineering functions:
  • Experience in development and scaling large teams practicing DevSecOps and deploying microservices and containerized applications
  • Experience with web services standards, development languages, and related technologies (HTTP, XML, JSON, REST, SOAP, GraphQL, Springboot, React, Nodejs, Javascript,  WS*) and authentication methods such as OAuth and SAML
  • Experience designing and implementing DevOps and Build Automation – GitLab CI / Jenkins, Maven, Gradle, Terraform
  • Cloud – AWS (S3, Lambda, RDS, EC2, KMS, IAM)
  • Experience with industry standard logging and debugging tools
  • Experience with machine learning, data architecture and ETL tools
  • Familiarity with secure software development and threat modeling best practices
  • Experience implementing messaging or streaming services

Experience with Architecture and Engineering Concepts:

• Object oriented design patterns, Microservices Architecture, Event Driven Frameworks and Service Oriented Architecture
• Experience with API Management Frameworks
• Familiarity with both Batch and Real-time application patterns
• Familiarity with Security Patterns/Frameworks like Secure SDLC, TLS and Secrets Management
• Familiarity with Containers and Container Management (Kubernetes)
• Familiarity with Business Rules Management and Document Management systems

Benefits:

• Tuition reimbursement, commuter plans, and paid time off
• Highly competitive compensation that include base salary plus bonus
• Medical/Dental/Vision plans, 401(k), pension program

Compensation Range:

Pay Range - Start:

$143,360.00

Pay Range - End:

$204,800.00

Please note that this is the standard pay structure. Positions in certain locations (such as California) may provide an increase on the standard pay structure based on the location. Please click here for additional information relating to location-based pay structures.

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We are an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, age or status as a protected veteran, or any other characteristic protected by law.

If you work or would be working in California, Colorado, New York City, Washington or outside of a Corporate location, please click here for information pertaining to compensation and benefits.