Principal Architect (Enterprise Architecture/ Application Mordernization)

Job description

About this role: - Wells Fargo is seeking a Principal Architect. - This position will be as part of Commercial and Corporate & Investment Banking Technology (CCIBT) to oversee the architecture and design of modernizing platforms serving commercial lending products. The Principal Architect will drive the technical vision and strategy for high‑volume, high‑availability transaction processing systems, translate business demands into scalable product capabilities, and develop a target-state modernization roadmap that supports commercial clients. - This role will lead experienced architects and engineers in defining application, integration, and platform architecture. The Principal Architect will also work closely with Product Owners and Product Managers to shape the technical aspects of product design, ensuring solutions align with client needs, regulatory expectations, and enterprise standards. - The ideal candidate is a strategic thinker with deep experience negotiating, collaborating, and influencing change across business, product, and technology teams in complex, regulated environments.

In this role, you will: - Act as an advisor to senior leadership to develop the architectural framework & delivery for highly complex business and technical needs across multiple groups - Lead the strategy and resolution of highly complex and unique challenges requiring in-depth evaluation across multiple areas or the enterprise, delivering products and solutions that are long-term, large-scale, and require vision, creativity, innovation, advanced analytical and inductive thinking - Provide vision, direction, and expertise to senior leadership on implementing the transformation strategy describing the current state, target state, and transition architecture - Develop and influence strategic plans, investment planning, and execution on cutover strategies to target - Strategically engage with all levels of professionals and managers across the enterprise and serve as an architectural domain expert advisor to leadership  - Drive target investments towards target technologies and rationalize spending, total cost of ownership, and return on investment - Ensure applications adhere to established Wells Fargo standards, policies, methodologies, and industry best practices as it transforms toward target state architecture - Drive the definition, establishment, selection of strategic tools, and application of architecture frameworks - Maintain knowledge of industry best practices and new technologies and recommend innovations that enhance operations or provide a competitive advantage to the organization and can influence internal and vendor roadmaps in a significant capacity

Required Qualifications: - 7+ years of architecture experience, or equivalent demonstrated through one or a combination of the following: work experience, training, military experience, education

Job Expectation: - Act as a trusted advisor to leadership on the architecture and modernization of systems, including highly complex business and technical needs across multiple groups - Lead the strategy and solutions for modernizing commercial lending platforms - Translate deep technology experience into pragmatic, scalable engineering solutions - Provide architectural vision and direction on end‑to‑end loan lifecycle stages - Maintain knowledge of industry trends and recommend innovations that improve client experience, operational efficiency, or competitive differentiation - Strategically engage with senior leaders, product teams, and engineering organizations across the enterprise and serve as a recognized architecture authority - Required to work in the office as per the organization’s in‑Office Adherence / Return‑to‑Office policy - This position is not eligible for Visa sponsorship - Relocation assistance is not available

Desired Qualifications - 7+ years of experience producing architecture roadmaps and implementation plans that enable business and technology strategies - 5+ years of experience within financial services, with direct exposure to payments processing, commercial deposits, treasury services, or customer liquidity management - Experience creating product‑aligned architectures in partnership with Product Managers and Product Owners - Strong background in transactional systems, including resiliency, scalability, security, and regulatory considerations

Work Location: - Bangalore or Hyderabad, India

In this Role, You Will - Act as a trusted advisor to senior executives and technology leadership in defining architecture strategy and delivering highly complex business and technology solutions across multiple organizations. - Lead the architecture vision, modernization roadmap, and target-state strategy for Commercial Lending platforms and supporting capabilities. - Drive enterprise-scale transformation initiatives involving cloud adoption, platform modernization, application rationalization, API enablement, event-driven architectures, and resiliency engineering. - Lead the analysis and resolution of highly complex technology challenges requiring broad architectural expertise, innovative thinking, and cross-organizational collaboration. - Define current-state, target-state, and transition architectures that support long-term business objectives and technology modernization goals. - Influence strategic planning, investment decisions, technology roadmaps, and execution strategies to accelerate delivery of future-state capabilities. - Collaborate with senior leaders across business, product, engineering, security, risk, and operations organizations to align technology strategy with business outcomes. - Drive technology investments toward modern platforms and architectural patterns while optimizing total cost of ownership, operational efficiency, and return on investment. - Establish and govern architecture standards, design patterns, reference architectures, and technology frameworks across the portfolio. - Ensure solutions align with Wells Fargo standards, security requirements, regulatory obligations, and industry best practices. - Lead adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Generative AI, intelligent automation, and advanced analytics capabilities that improve customer experience, operational efficiency, risk management, and developer productivity. - Evaluate and define AI architecture patterns, governance controls, Responsible AI practices, and enterprise integration approaches for AI-enabled solutions. - Influence enterprise and vendor technology roadmaps and identify emerging technologies that provide strategic business value and competitive advantage. - Mentor and develop architects and engineering leaders while fostering a culture of innovation, technical excellence, and continuous modernization.

Required Qualifications - 10+ years of architecture experience, or equivalent demonstrated through one or a combination of the following: work experience, training, military experience, or education. - Extensive experience defining target-state architectures, modernization roadmaps, and enterprise technology strategies. - Deep expertise designing and delivering highly available, scalable, secure, and resilient distributed systems. - Experience leading large-scale transformation initiatives involving cloud, platform modernization, APIs, integration platforms, and modern engineering practices. - Experience influencing senior executives, technology leaders, and cross-functional stakeholders within complex organizations.

Job Expectations - Serve as a strategic technology advisor to leadership on architecture, modernization, innovation, and emerging technology adoption. - Lead architecture strategy and modernization efforts across CB/GPL/CIB. - Translate complex business challenges into scalable, resilient, and maintainable technology solutions. - Provide architectural leadership across the entire commercial lending lifecycle, ensuring alignment to business capabilities and strategic objectives. - Drive adoption of cloud-native architectures, platform engineering, API-first strategies, event-driven architectures, and engineering best practices. - Champion AI and Generative AI adoption opportunities, identifying capabilities that improve client experience, operational efficiency, decision-making, risk management, automation, and software delivery productivity. - Define architecture standards and governance models for AI-enabled solutions, including Responsible AI principles, security controls, model governance, and operational observability. - Maintain awareness of industry trends and emerging technologies, recommending innovations that improve business outcomes and competitive differentiation. - Collaborate with senior business leaders, product teams, engineering organizations, risk management, architecture councils, and enterprise stakeholders to drive strategic alignment. - Serve as a recognized architecture authority across the enterprise. - Required to work in the office as per the organization's Return-to-Office policy. - This position is not eligible for Visa sponsorship. - Relocation assistance is not available.

Desired Qualifications - 10+ years of experience developing architecture roadmaps, modernization strategies, and implementation plans aligned to business and technology objectives. - 5+ years of financial services experience, including exposure to commercial lending, payments processing, treasury services, commercial deposits, liquidity management, or related banking platforms. - Experience partnering with Product Managers and Product Owners to develop product-aligned architectures and technology strategies. - Strong background in transactional systems, resiliency engineering, scalability, security, regulatory compliance, and operational excellence. - Experience leading cloud transformation and modernization initiatives across large enterprise environments. - Experience evaluating and implementing AI, Generative AI and Agentic AI solutions. - Knowledge of AI governance, Responsible AI practices, model lifecycle management, and enterprise AI architecture patterns. - Strong executive communication, influence, negotiation, and stakeholder management skills. - Demonstrated ability to lead and influence technology strategy across multiple organizations and architecture domains - Experience leading large-scale application modernization and migration initiatives to Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform (OCP), Kubernetes, or other enterprise container platforms.

Work Location: - Bangalore or Hyderabad, India

Posting End Date:

22 Sep 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.

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