Principal Architect

About The Role
As Principal Architect – Digital Velocity & Engineering, you will be the catalyst for driving next-generation DevOps, DevSecOps, and AI-enabled engineering practices across all digital delivery channels of the airline. Reporting to the Head of Architecture, you will shape architecture strategy, product/tool selection, engineering adoption, and embed AI-powered automation across the SDLC. This leadership role requires deep hands-on expertise combined with architectural vision—empowering development, testing, and operations teams to deliver secure, intelligent, and agile digital experiences at scale.

Key Responsibilities
Architecture & Strategy

• Define and evolve the digital architecture blueprint that enables agility, automation, and security across web and mobile channels.
• Translate business transformation goals into technology reference architectures focusing on scalability, velocity, and AI-first engineering adoption.
• Partner with enterprise and platform architects to embed DevOps, security, and automation principles into the overall IT strategy.

Product Selection & Engineering Excellence

• Evaluate, select, and integrate best-in-class DevOps, DevSecOps, and AI-driven tools in collaboration with startups, hyperscalers, and established vendors.
• Promote product engineering standards, ensuring selected tools and platforms are secure, scalable, and developer-friendly.
• Drive adoption of modern software engineering practices including containerization, IaC, and cloud-native delivery frameworks.

Adoption Across the SDLC

• Influence all digital delivery teams (developers, testers, QA engineers, release managers, and SREs) to adopt centrally deployed DevOps and DevSecOps platforms.
• Build enterprise-wide frameworks that embed AI agents and intelligent automation into each stage of the SDLC—from planning, coding, testing, and deployment to observability and remediation.
• Lead cultural transformation to make AI and automation integral to daily engineering practices, increasing release frequency, quality, and security.

AI-Driven Velocity & Innovation

• Partner with new-age AI startups and enterprise AI platforms to bring innovation into release pipelines, quality assurance, operations monitoring, and predictive analytics.
• Implement AI-powered agents for automated code reviews, test generation, vulnerability detection, compliance checks, and proactive incident management.
• Develop feedback loops across delivery teams to demonstrate measurable improvements in speed, security, and reliability using AI tools.

Required Experience & Skills

• 10–15 years of progressive experience in architecture and solution delivery, with a background in digital-native or high-scale product organizations.
• Demonstrated hands-on expertise in DevOps and DevSecOps engineering, including CI/CD, IaC, Kubernetes, container security, SAST/DAST, secrets management, and compliance automation.
• Enterprise-level architecture experience, with proven ability to design scalable, secure digital platforms supporting web and mobile applications.
• Strong track record of selecting and integrating best-fit products and platforms, balancing startup innovation with enterprise reliability.
• Hands-on experience driving AI/ML adoption in SDLC—intelligent code quality tools, AI testing automation, predictive monitoring, and agent-based delivery orchestration.
• Comfortable shaping product engineering standards and fostering adoption across development, QA, and operations communities.
• Excellent collaboration and influence skills; able to engage delivery leadership, engineers, and partners to drive organizational change.

Who Can Apply

• Professionals from digital-native companies or high-scale tech-driven organizations who have scaled architecture or delivery transformations.
• Technology leaders with proven contributions to DevOps/DevSecOps and SDLC modernization.
• Individuals who have worked closely with AI-driven engineering tools, startups, or product ecosystems.
• Leaders who bring thought leadership in automation, platform engineering, and secure agile delivery.