About the role
Senior Principal Architect
About the Role
The Senior Principal Architect is a critical architecture role within AvidXchange and serves as a strategic technology leader responsible for shaping the company's long-term architectural direction.
This role operates at the intersection of Enterprise Architecture, AI Enablement, Platform Strategy, and Product Delivery, ensuring technology investments align with business priorities and create measurable value.
The Senior Principal Architect partners closely with Engineering, Product, Data, Security, Infrastructure, and Sr. Leadership to define architectural roadmaps, establish enterprise standards, accelerate AI-driven software delivery, and guide modernization efforts across the organization.
Success in this role requires balancing strategic vision with execution discipline, influencing decisions across multiple portfolios, and driving architectural excellence through scalable patterns, governance, and technical leadership.
What You'll Do
Enterprise Architecture
- Define and drive the enterprise architecture strategy, target-state architecture, and multi-year technology roadmap aligned to business objectives and Value Creation Plan (VCP) priorities.
- Establish enterprise architecture principles, guardrails, and standards that improve consistency, scalability, resiliency, and operational efficiency across the technology landscape.
- Lead technology strategy for critical modernization initiatives including platform transformation, application rationalization, data architecture evolution, and AI enablement.
- Serve as the architecture authority for the most complex and high-impact technical decisions across the organization.
AI-Enabled Architecture & Delivery Transformation
- Drive the adoption of AI-assisted software delivery practices across Architecture, Product Development, and Engineering teams.
- Define architecture patterns and guardrails for AI-powered applications, agentic workflows, intelligent automation, and Generative AI solutions.
- Partner with engineering organizations to accelerate adoption of AI-first SDLC practices that improve developer productivity, architectural consistency, and delivery speed.
- Establish frameworks that enable architecture artifacts, specifications, governance controls, and design standards to be leveraged by AI-enabled development tools and agents.
Portfolio & Solution Architecture
- Lead architecture for strategic initiatives spanning multiple business domains, products, teams, and technology platforms.
- Design distributed, cloud-native solutions leveraging microservices, event-driven architecture, API-first design, and domain-driven design principles.
- Define enterprise integration patterns, canonical data models, and platform capabilities that promote reuse and reduce technology fragmentation.
- Ensure architecture decisions support long-term maintainability while enabling rapid business growth and innovation.
Architecture Governance & Risk Management
- Establish governance processes that improve architectural quality, delivery predictability, risk management, and dependency visibility.
- Lead Architecture Review Boards and Architecture & Design reviews for major initiatives and strategic investments.
- Drive reduction of technical debt through modernization roadmaps, standardization efforts, and measurable engineering quality improvements.
- Ensure solutions meet security, compliance, reliability, resiliency, and operational excellence requirements.
Technical Leadership & Talent Development
- Mentor Principal Architects, Senior Architects, and engineering leaders, helping elevate architecture capabilities across the organization.
- Contribute to architecture career development, competency frameworks, interviewing standards, and technical leadership growth programs.
- Build reusable architecture assets, reference architectures, decision frameworks, and best practices that can be leveraged across teams.
- Serve as a trusted advisor to senior leadership while fostering a culture of engineering excellence, innovation, and continuous improvement.
Innovation & Technology Strategy
- Evaluate emerging technologies and industry trends including AI, cloud-native platforms, platform engineering, developer productivity tooling, and intelligent automation.
- Identify opportunities to leverage technology investments to improve business outcomes, operational efficiency, customer experience, and scalability.
- Guide strategic platform and build-versus-buy decisions through architectural and financial analysis.
What We're Looking For
Experience
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, or a related field; advanced degree preferred.
- 15+ years of experience in software engineering, enterprise architecture, solution architecture, or technical leadership roles.
- Proven success leading architecture strategy for large-scale, enterprise-grade platforms and distributed systems.
- Experience influencing technology direction across multiple products, business domains, and engineering organizations.
Technical Expertise
- Deep knowledge of enterprise architecture frameworks and architecture governance practices.
- Strong experience designing cloud-native systems on AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud.
- Expertise in microservices, event-driven architectures, APIs, distributed systems, container platforms, and modern integration patterns.
- Strong understanding of data architecture, modern data platforms, data streaming, AI/ML enablement, and analytics ecosystems.
- Experience building highly scalable, highly available, secure systems in complex enterprise environments.
- Familiarity with platform engineering, developer experience (DevEx), and modern software delivery methodologies.
AI & Modern Delivery
- Demonstrated experience leveraging AI-enabled development practices and AI-assisted SDLC capabilities.
- Understanding of Generative AI architectures, LLM integration patterns, Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), AI agents, and responsible AI principles.
- Experience enabling organizations to adopt AI-driven engineering practices that improve delivery speed, quality, and developer productivity.
Leadership & Influence
- Exceptional communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to influence executives, engineering leaders, architects, and product teams.
- Demonstrated ability to drive organizational alignment across competing priorities and complex enterprise initiatives.
- Strong strategic thinking, systems thinking, and decision-making skills.
- Proven ability to lead through influence rather than direct authority.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience in fintech, payments, accounts payable automation, SaaS platforms, or highly regulated industries.
- Experience leading architecture for large-scale digital transformation initiatives.
- Experience supporting mergers, platform rationalization, or enterprise modernization efforts.
- TOGAF, AWS, Azure, GCP, or equivalent architecture certifications.
- Experience defining architecture standards and operating models for AI-enabled software organizations.
About AvidXchange
AvidXchange is a leading provider of accounts payable (“AP”) automation software and payment solutions for middle-market businesses and their suppliers. By trade, we are a technology company, but if you ask anyone who works here, they’ll tell you our people are at the core of who we are. At AvidXchange, mindset is everything. We are Connected as People, Growth Minded, and Customer Obsessed. These three mindsets represent our culture – who we are, who we’ve always been, and they guide us to improve every day. Since our founding in 2000 in Charlotte, NC, we’ve created a company of over 1,500 teammates working across the U.S., or remotely. AvidXchange is proud to be Certified™ as a Great Place to Work®. The prestigious recognition is based on anonymous data from our teammates and makes official what our teammates have known for years – that AvidXchange is a Great Place to Work®.
Who you are:
- A go-getter with an entrepreneurial mindset – that means you are not afraid of taking risks, winning big or facing the unknown.
- Someone who understands that business is people centric. Connecting with others as humans first allows you to develop mutually beneficial working relationships.
- Focused on making a difference for our customers. AvidXchange exists to help solve complex problems for our customers so we can all realize our potential.
What you’ll get:
AvidXchange teammates (we call them AvidXers) get the perks and prestige of a growing tech company paired with the flexibility of a founder-led startup. We help our AvidXers develop as professionals and as human beings, providing work/life balance, development programs, and competitive benefits. At AvidXchange, we are building more than a tech company – we are building an experience. We remain committed to a culture where you can fully be 'you’ – connected with others, chasing big goals, and making a meaningful impact. If you want to help us grow while realizing your potential and creating stories you’ll tell for years, you’ve come to the right place.
AvidXers enjoy:
- 18 days PTO*
- 11 Holidays (8 company recognized & 3 floating holidays)
- 16 hours per year of paid Volunteer Time Off (VTO)
- Competitive Healthcare
- High Deductible Heath Plan Option that has $0 monthly premium for teammate-only coverage
- 100% AvidXchange paid Dental Base Plan Coverage
- 100% AvidXchange paid Life Insurance
- 100% AvidXchange paid Long-Term Disability
- 100% AvidXchange paid Short-Term Disability
- Employee Assistance Program (EAP) - Provides counseling services, legal and financial consultations and health advocacy for Teammates and their eligible dependents
- Onsite Health Clinic with Atrium Health - available to Teammates and their eligible dependents
- 401(k) Match: 100% match on the first 3% of your salary, plus 50% match on the next 2%
- Parental Leave: 8 weeks 100% paid by AvidXchange**
- Discounts on Pet, Home, and Auto insurance
- WeeCare Childcare Service: helps teammates find affordable daycare, childcare, and tutors 40% less expensive than traditional daycare centers
- Perks at Work: free discount program that provides teammates the opportunity to save on items from electronics, movie tickets, car buying, vacations, and more
- Onsite gym fitness center, yoga studio, and basketball court
- Tuition Reimbursement up to the federal maximum of $5,250***
- Hybrid Workplace Flexibility
- Free parking
*Fully granted from beginning of year, pro-rated if hired mid-year
**Must be full-time for at least 3 months
***Must be full-time for at least one year
Equal Employment Opportunity
AvidXchange is an equal opportunity employer. AvidXchange is committed to equal employment opportunity in accordance with applicable federal, state, and local laws. AvidXchange will not discriminate against applicants for employment on any legally recognized basis. This includes, but is not limited to veteran status, race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, age and physical or mental disability.
