Principal Architect
Onetrust
$196,500 - $294,750 / year
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Description
Strength in Trust
OneTrust’s mission is to enable innovation through the responsible use of data and AI. We believe that ensuring data is trusted shouldn’t slow teams down—it should accelerate what’s possible. This led us to develop the first technology platform for responsible data use in 2016. Today, with AI representing the latest and most impactful expansion of data yet, OneTrust is once again redefining what responsible innovation looks like. OneTrust, the AI‑Ready Governance Platform™, unifies regulatory intelligence, automation, and connected governance workflows so businesses can continue to move at the speed of AI while ensuring good governance to prevent data misuse at scale. Trusted by thousands of organizations worldwide, OneTrust is shaping the future where trusted data becomes a transformative force for business and society.
The Challenge
We're looking for a Principal Architect to set technical direction across OneTrust's product platform as part of Architecture Services, our central architecture team. Principal Architects are among the most senior individual-contributor technologists in R&D. They shape multi-year architecture strategy, work across product domains on problems no single team can solve alone, and represent architecture in the most consequential technical decisions facing R&D.
Your Mission
Architecture Strategy & Technical Direction
- Lead the multi-year architecture strategy across OneTrust's product domains, working with domain architects to align their technical plans into one platform direction.
- Lead resolution of cross-domain architectural challenges and align stakeholders on platform-wide technical direction.
Cross-System Integrity & Feasibility
- Set direction for the platform's non-functional requirements, including security, privacy, reliability, performance, scalability, and cost.
- Take part early in product discovery and roadmap planning to assess feasibility and identify risks before designs are final.
Standards & Governance
- Propose R&D-wide architecture standards, reference architectures, and patterns to the Architecture Guild, which owns and adopts them.
- Guide the design documentation process, and apply governance that doesn't block delivery wherever possible.
AI-Native Architecture Enablement
- Turn standards, reference architectures, and decision records into machine-readable context that AI coding agents use to follow our patterns.
- Build and guide the adoption of automated architectural checks, such as fitness functions, architecture-as-code, and AI-assisted design review.
- Build feedback loops that turn design decisions, review findings, and incident lessons into reusable context and patterns for future work.
- Design standards and agent context that work across tools, and back them with evals that catch regressions against our architectural standards. Help teams keep their delivery gains through tool changes and failed experiments.
- Stay hands-on with prototypes, reference implementations, and design work. Use AI agents to draft and test designs, explore trade-offs, and shorten feasibility work from weeks to days. Maintains technical credibility and leadership through prototypes, reference implementations, architecture automation, and hands-on experimentation.
Architecture Community & Guild Enablement
- Develop domain and squad architects through mentoring and design coaching, and help define how architects grow in scope and influence at OneTrust.
- Support R&D's Guilds, including the Architecture and AI Enablement Guilds, as centers of excellence that own and evolve engineering standards. Provide the structure, facilitation, and hands-on help they need to define, pilot, and roll out those standards.
- Lead the Architecture Guild as a community of practice through regular forums, design clinics, and retrospectives that share knowledge and bring systemic problems to light.
- Define architecture scorecards for system health and standards adoption, and work with Developer Experience to build scorecards, templates, and catalog ownership into the developer workflow.
Executive & Cross-Functional Partnership
- Partner with Engineering, Product, and UX leadership on R&D's key technical decisions, and represent architecture in executive forums.
- Advise leadership on trade-offs in cost, risk, and delivery speed, and make the business case for architecture investments.
You Are
A senior technical leader responsible for architecture direction across multiple domains. You think strategically, you're equally credible with engineers and executives, and your work shapes how OneTrust builds software for years to come. You lead through influence and enablement, and you help the architects around you grow. Your customers are OneTrust's engineering teams, and you succeed when they do.
Your Experience Includes
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field
- 16+ years of professional software engineering experience
- Demonstrated impact on organization-wide technical strategy across multiple products or domains
- Deep expertise in distributed, cloud-native architecture, including microservices, microfrontends, event-driven integration, and API design
- Track record defining non-functional requirements and architecture governance at platform scale
- Experience designing for security, privacy, and compliance requirements in enterprise SaaS
- Hands-on experience using AI-assisted development tools (e.g., Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, or similar), and a track record of helping teams adopt AI-native engineering practices
Bonus Points For
- Experience with compliance frameworks such as GDPR, SOC 2, and ISO/IEC 27001 or 27701
- Experience applying Team Topologies or similar operating models to architecture functions
For California, Colorado, Connecticut, Nevada, New York, Rhode Island, and Washington-based candidates: the annual base pay range for this role is listed below. Within this range, individual pay is determined by several factors, including location, job-related skills, work experience, and relevant education and/or training. This role may also be eligible for discretionary bonuses, equity, and/or commissions, as well as benefits.
Where we Work
We are embracing an office-first culture, encouraging three days a week in office for most roles, with meaningful opportunities to collaborate and celebrate in person.
Each role may have specific requirements or flexibility depending on the scope of the position, so we encourage you to verify this with your recruiter during your first interview.
Benefits
As an employee at OneTrust, you will be part of the OneTeam. That means you’ll receive support physically, mentally, and emotionally so that you can do your best work both in and out of the office. This includes comprehensive healthcare coverage, flexible PTO, equity RSUs, annual performance bonus opportunities, retirement account support, 14+ weeks of paid parental leave, career development opportunities, company-paid privacy certification exam fees, and much more. Specific benefits differ by country. For more information, talk to your recruiter or visit onetrust.com/careers.
Resources
Check out the following to learn more about OneTrust and its people:
Your Data
You have the right to have your personal data updated or removed. You also have the right to have a copy of the information OneTrust holds about you. Further details about these rights are available on the website in our Privacy Overview. You can change your mind at any time and have your personal data removed from our database. In order to do this you must contact us and let us know you wish to be removed. The request should be made on the Data Subject Request Form.
Recruitment fraud warning: OneTrust is aware of scams involving false offers of employment with our company. The fraudulent jobs, interviews and job offers use fake websites, email addresses, group chat and text messages. Be aware that we never ask candidates for personal information, IDs or bank information during the interview process. We do not interview prospective candidates via instant message or group chat, and do not require candidates to purchase products or services, or process payments on our behalf as a condition of any employment offer. Please note that any legitimate interview availability requests will come directly from a OneTrust recruiter with an "@onetrust.com" email address. You may also receive legitimate emails from "@us.greenhouse-mail.io". Recruiters will only reach out to candidates who have applied for a role through our ATS (Greenhouse) or prospects via LinkedIn InMail. Job offers will come from a recruiter and may have a "@docusign.net" email address. For more information or if you have been targeted please reach out to askrecruiting@onetrust.com.
Our Commitment to You
When you join OneTrust you are stepping onto a launching pad — the countdown has begun. The destination? A career without boundaries working alongside a diverse and inclusive crew who is passionate about doing meaningful work. As a pioneer, your voice and expertise will help chart the direction of an entirely new category. Our commitment to putting people first starts with you. Your growth is part of the mission. Our goal is to give you the power to embark on the next phase of your uniquely, unique career.
OneTrust provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by local laws.
Benefits
- OneTrust Careers on YouTube
- @LifeatOneTrust on Instagram
About this role
OneTrust is seeking a Principal Architect to lead multi-year technical strategy across its AI-Ready Governance Platform, working from Atlanta in a full-time, in-office role. This is a senior individual-contributor position within Architecture Services, where you'll shape platform direction across multiple product domains, resolve cross-system challenges that no single team can tackle alone, and represent architecture in R&D's most consequential decisions. The role demands someone equally credible with engineers and executives, capable of influencing without direct authority and helping architects around you grow.
Your core responsibilities span four interconnected areas. You'll establish architecture standards, reference architectures, and governance patterns that balance rigor with delivery speed, while turning those standards into machine-readable context for AI coding agents. You'll set direction for non-functional requirements—security, privacy, reliability, performance, scalability, cost—and assess feasibility early in product discovery to surface risks before designs lock in. You'll develop domain architects through mentoring and design coaching, support the Architecture and AI Enablement Guilds as centers of excellence, and lead the Architecture Guild community through forums and retrospectives. Finally, you'll partner with Engineering, Product, and UX leadership on key technical decisions, advising on trade-offs between cost, risk, and delivery speed.
This role requires 16+ years of software engineering experience, a degree in Computer Science or related field, and deep expertise in distributed, cloud-native architecture including microservices, event-driven integration, and API design. You'll need a proven track record defining non-functional requirements and governance at platform scale, hands-on experience with AI-assisted development tools, and demonstrated success helping teams adopt AI-native practices. Experience with compliance frameworks like GDPR and SOC 2, plus familiarity with operating models like Team Topologies, is valued. The salary range is $196,500–$294,750.
How this employer is doing
solid
- Leadership Change
- Expanding
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Pay for this role
$196,500 to $294,750 per year
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