Enterprise Software Architect

Company: Trupanion

Location: United States (Preference for Seattle or East Coast time zone)

About Trupanion:
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.

About the Role:
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 is a hands-on and strategic leadership position, accountable for defining the enterprise future state, ensuring positive business outcomes, and holding accountability for implementation alignment with target-state architecture. We prefer to buy and integrate commercially available or partner-provided solutions over building bespoke systems.

Key Outcomes & Impact:

• 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 evolve target-state architectures across application, data, integration, infrastructure, and security domains. Develop multi-year roadmaps, translate business strategy into architectural direction, and ensure decisions prioritize simplicity, scalability, resilience, and security. Lead technology selection validation.
• Architecture Governance & Standards: Establish and evolve enterprise architecture standards, principles, patterns, and reference architectures. Lead architecture reviews, partner with engineering leadership, and promote consistent standard adoption with pragmatic exceptions. Document and evangelize AI technology usage for architectural practices.
• Solution Alignment & Delivery Enablement: Collaborate with Solution Architects and Engineering Teams to align designs with enterprise strategy. Provide architectural guidance during initiative inception and complex trade-off discussions. Support cloud-native, event-driven, and API-first solutions.
• Modernization & Technical Debt Reduction: Assess legacy systems and define modernization strategies. Identify and prioritize opportunities to reduce architectural risk, duplication, and long-term cost.
• Technology Evaluation & Innovation: Research emerging technologies and platforms. Produce architecture decision records and recommendations for executive decision-making.
• Communication & Influence: Clearly communicate architectural intent and decisions to technical and non-technical audiences. Champion the value of enterprise architecture and facilitate alignment across teams.
• Metrics, Reporting & Continuous Improvement: Define and track architecture health metrics. Measure and communicate the impact of architecture initiatives.
• Leadership & Mentorship: Mentor Solution Architects and senior engineers. Lead by example and manage a small team of architects (1-3 direct reports).
• Business Partnership & Strategic Support: Partner with business and technology leaders. Provide architectural insight for M&A and vendor selection.

What Success Looks Like:

• Teams deliver faster and with greater confidence due to clear architectural direction.
• Technology decisions consistently align with long-term enterprise goals.
• Complexity and technical debt decrease over time.
• Architecture is viewed as a strategic partner and trusted advisor.

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 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.
• Pragmatic mindset focused on outcomes.

Compensation:

• Base Salary Range: $190,000 - $220,000 per year.
• Eligible for monthly bonuses.
• Restricted Stock Units (RSUs) granted to new team members, vesting 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.
• 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.
• Seattle Office Amenities: Free on-site gym, free dog walking services, free parking, and paid ORCA cards.