About this role:

Wells Fargo is seeking a Principal Architect to serve as a senior technical leader responsible for defining and advancing the target state architecture for platforms and products within COO Technology. This role acts as a strategic bridge between business objectives and technical execution, ensuring architectural integrity, innovation, and delivery excellence. You will support product strategy for Shared Services and Payment Operations initiatives and enable domain-aligned engineering teams through architectural governance and design authority.

In this role, you will:

• Define and evolve target state architecture across business, application, data, and technology domains, ensuring alignment with enterprise strategy and capability models.
• Develop and maintain architecture roadmaps and transition states that support CIO-approved strategies and product portfolio objectives.
• Act as a strategic advisor to senior leadership, shaping enterprise architecture strategies for highly complex business and technical needs.
• Lead build vs. buy assessments and influence investment planning through architecture decision records and strategic reviews.
• Guide engineering teams on architectural decisions, patterns, and implementation strategies, ensuring traceability to Architecture Specifications and alignment with product backlogs.
• Ensure compliance with non-functional requirements (NFRs), SRE principles, and security standards, embedding these into engineering and testing practices.
• Drive modernization initiatives including cloud migration, application rationalization, and microservices adoption, with a focus on portfolio optimization.
• Provide comprehensive architecture governance, including assurance reviews, risk posture monitoring, and participation in forums such as ACAB and Architecture Council.
• Integrate AI/ML and LLM capabilities into enterprise workflows to support intelligent automation and agentic systems, and lead innovation through POCs and emerging tech evaluations.
• Contribute to reusable architectural patterns, frameworks, and tooling that support federated architecture enablement and standardization across domains.
• Collaborate with product, engineering, and business stakeholders to translate strategic objectives into actionable technical solutions, and mentor Domain Design Authorities to foster architectural alignment and delivery excellence.
• Maintain deep knowledge of emerging technologies and recommend innovations that deliver competitive advantage and influence vendor roadmaps.

Required Qualifications:

• 7+ years of engineering experience with a strong foundation in systems design and enterprise architecture.
• 7+ years of experience in strategic planning and architectural leadership within large-scale environments.
• 7+ years of experience in leading complex technical initiatives and delivering scalable, resilient solutions.

Desired Qualifications:

• Expertise in enterprise architecture frameworks (e.g., TOGAF, COBIT, IT4IT).
• Deep experience with cloud-native technologies (e.g., Kubernetes, OpenShift, Docker).
• Preferred experience within the Payment Operations domain.
• Pega Architecture experience 
• Strong background in microservices architecture, distributed systems, and platform engineering.
• Experience with AI/ML frameworks (e.g., TensorFlow, PyTorch) and LLM platforms.
• Familiarity with agentic AI systems and autonomous decision-making architectures.
• Proficiency in modeling tools such as UML, ArchiMate, or similar.
• Strong communication, influencing, and cross-functional collaboration skills.
• Experience in application security, performance optimization, and resiliency engineering

Job Expectations:

• This position is not eligible for Visa sponsorship.
• This position offers a hybrid work schedule.
• Relocation assistance is not available for this position
• Ability to travel up to 5% of the time

Job Posting Locations:

300 S Brevard St., CHARLOTTE, North Carolina 28202

1301 Solana Blvd., Westlake, Texas 76262

2600 S Price Rd., CHANDLER, Arizona 85286

Posting End Date: 

12 Feb 2026

*Job posting may come down early due to volume of applicants.

We Value Equal Opportunity

Wells Fargo is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, status as a protected veteran, or any other legally protected characteristic.

Employees support our focus on building strong customer relationships balanced with a strong risk mitigating and compliance-driven culture which firmly establishes those disciplines as critical to the success of our customers and company. They are accountable for execution of all applicable risk programs (Credit, Market, Financial Crimes, Operational, Regulatory Compliance), which includes effectively following and adhering to applicable Wells Fargo policies and procedures, appropriately fulfilling risk and compliance obligations, timely and effective escalation and remediation of issues, and making sound risk decisions. There is emphasis on proactive monitoring, governance, risk identification and escalation, as well as making sound risk decisions commensurate with the business unit’s risk appetite and all risk and compliance program requirements.

Candidates applying to job openings posted in Canada: Applications for employment are encouraged from all qualified candidates, including women, persons with disabilities, aboriginal peoples and visible minorities. Accommodation for applicants with disabilities is available upon request in connection with the recruitment process.

Applicants with Disabilities

To request a medical accommodation during the application or interview process, visit Disability Inclusion at Wells Fargo.

Drug and Alcohol Policy

 

Wells Fargo maintains a drug free workplace.  Please see our Drug and Alcohol Policy to learn more.

Wells Fargo Recruitment and Hiring Requirements:

a. Third-Party recordings are prohibited unless authorized by Wells Fargo.

b. Wells Fargo requires you to directly represent your own experiences during the recruiting and hiring process.