Enterprise Software Architect

Job description

Compensation: USD 190,000 - USD 220,000 - yearly

Company Description

Trupanion is a leading provider of medical insurance for cats and dogs in North America. Our mission is to help loving, responsible pet owners budget and care for their pets. At Trupanion, we offer a collaborative, casual, and pet-friendly environment where everyone is encouraged to be themselves.

Job Description

The Enterprise Software Architect is accountable for defining, evolving, and communicating the enterprise’s target-state architecture and technology strategy. This role ensures that software systems, data, platforms, and integration patterns are designed to scale, remain secure, and enable long-term business agility. The Enterprise Architect connects business strategy to technical execution, balancing near-term delivery with long-term architectural health.

This role operates at the intersection of strategy, execution, and influence. Success requires deep technical credibility, strong business acumen, and the ability to guide senior technical leaders and executives toward sound, pragmatic technology decisions. This architecture role is a hands‑on and strategic leadership position, accountable for defining the enterprise future state, ensuring positive business outcomes enabled by that future state, and holding accountability for ensuring implementation aligns with target-state architecture. In doing so, the Enterprise Software Architect demonstrates a clear preference to buy and integrate commercially available or partner-provided solutions over building bespoke systems, making build decisions intentionally and only where they create differentiated business value.

This position is open across the United States with a preference for those in Seattle or the East Coast time zone. Seattle candidates will have a hybrid remote/in‑office schedule where you will work from our casual, pet‑friendly office at least 3 days a week .

Key Outcomes & Impact

The Enterprise Software Architect will:

Establish and maintain a cohesive enterprise architecture vision aligned with business objectives

Reduce complexity and technical debt through intentional simplification and modernization

Enable faster, safer delivery by providing clear standards, patterns, and guardrails

Improve technology investment decisions through roadmaps, governance, and metrics

Elevate architectural maturity across teams via mentorship, influence, and example

Responsibilities

Enterprise Architecture Strategy

Define and continuously evolve enterprise target‑state architectures across application, data, integration, infrastructure, and security domains

Develop and maintain multi‑year architecture roadmaps that balance innovation, cost, risk, and delivery velocity

Translate business strategy into actionable architectural direction for product and platform teams

Ensure architectural decisions prioritize simplicity, scalability, resilience, and security

Leads the selection of new application, data, and infrastructure technologies and validates that selection aligns to target architecture and overall technology direction

Architecture Governance & Standards

Establish, own, and evolve enterprise architecture standards, principles, patterns, and reference architectures

Lead architecture reviews to ensure alignment with target‑state direction while avoiding unnecessary bureaucracy

Partner with engineering leadership to ensure governance is enabling rather than blocking delivery

Promote consistent adoption of standards while allowing for pragmatic, data‑driven exceptions

Document and evangelize utilization of AI technologies such as Codex, Claude, or other AI to support Architectural practices

Ensure usage of AI in support of architectural deliverables meets governance and compliance considerations

Solution Alignment & Delivery Enablement

Collaborate closely with Solution Architects, Principal Engineers, and Engineering Teams to align designs with enterprise strategy

Provide architectural guidance during initiative inception, major design decisions, and complex trade‑off discussions

Support teams in designing cloud‑native, event‑driven, and API‑first solutions where appropriate

Ensure architectural decisions consider operational excellence, observability, and supportability

Modernization & Technical Debt Reduction

Assess legacy systems and define clear modernization and migration strategies

Identify and prioritize opportunities to reduce architectural risk, duplication, and long‑term cost

Guide incremental modernization efforts that minimize disruption while advancing target‑state goals

Technology Evaluation & Innovation

Research and evaluate emerging technologies, platforms, and industry trends

Provides oversight to ensure Enterprise Architecture practices are maintained and continuously improved

Produce clear architecture decision records, whitepapers, and recommendations to support executive decision‑making

Ensure new technology adoption aligns with enterprise standards, skills, and long‑term strategy

Communication & Influence

Clearly communicate architectural intent, trade‑offs, and decisions to technical and non‑technical audiences, including executive leadership

Champion the value of enterprise architecture as a business enabler, not just a technical function

Facilitate alignment across teams, departments, and portfolios in a complex, fast‑moving organization

Communicates technology decisions and standards to the organization, driving understanding and appreciation for the value of architecture governance and standards

Define and track architecture health metrics (e.g., technical debt, standard adoption, system fitness)

Measure and communicate the impact and value of enterprise architecture initiatives

Continuously improve architecture practices, tooling, and ways of working

Mentor and coach Solution Architects and senior engineers

Help grow architectural thinking across engineering teams

Lead by example, modeling strong technical judgment, collaboration, and accountability

Directly manage and develop a small team of architects (1–3 direct reports), setting clear expectations, providing feedback, and supporting career growth

Business Partnership & Strategic Support

Partner with business and technology leaders to ensure architecture enables current and future needs

Provide architectural insight for M&A, vendor selection, and major investment decisions

Contribute to budgeting, forecasting, and cost optimization discussions for technology initiatives

What Success Looks Like

Teams deliver faster and with greater confidence because architectural direction is clear

Technology decisions align consistently with long‑term enterprise goals

Complexity and technical debt decrease over time

Architecture is viewed as a strategic partner and trusted advisor across the organization

Qualifications

Skills & Qualifications

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent experience

7+ years of experience in software engineering, systems design, or architecture roles

3+ years of experience operating at an enterprise or platform‑wide architecture level

Demonstrated experience defining target‑state architectures and technology roadmaps

Strong experience in cloud‑based, distributed, and modern software architectures

Experience working in agile and product‑oriented delivery environments

Proven ability to influence senior technical leaders and executives

Experience modernizing complex, mission‑critical systems

Strong understanding of security, data architecture, and integration patterns

Ability to navigate ambiguity and drive clarity in complex environments

Pragmatic mindset focused on outcomes rather than theoretical perfection

Additional Information

Compensation:

The base salary range for this position is $190,000- $220,000, on a full‑time schedule.

Along with base compensation, Trupanion employees are currently eligible for monthly bonuses.

We want all employees to be invested in Trupanion’s success, so we grant Restricted Stock Units to all new team members. The new hire grants vest over 4 years.

Benefits and Perks:

Full medical, dental, and vision benefits at no cost to the employee

Four weeks of paid time off and 9 paid float holidays (you can decide which days are most important to you!)

Five‑week sabbatical after five years of employment

Open, casual, pet‑friendly, and fun office environment

Free medical health insurance for your pet (1 dog or cat)

Paid time off to volunteer at nonprofit organizations

Seattle Office Amenities: Free on‑site gym, free dog walking services for office pets during business hours, free parking, and paid ORCA cards.

Trupanion is an equal‑opportunity employer and embraces diversity. We are committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, abilities, perspectives, and skills.

We will ensure that individuals are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, perform essential job functions, and receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to request accommodations.

Applicants must be authorized to work for any employer in the U.S. We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment visa at this time.

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Worksite address

seattle, WA, 98127, US

Who can apply

Review the original listing for work authorization, qualifications and employer requirements.