Principal Digital Architect

• Own and define solution and platform architectures for large-scale distributed systems from concept through production.
• Create architecture that meets high standards for scalability performance resilience and security.
• Partner closely with business leaders product owners engineering managers and delivery teams to ensure architectural alignment with business outcomes.
• Assess select and introduce new technologies including proof-of-concept development and architectural spikes.
• Establish and enforce architectural standards patterns and best practices across platform teams.
• Provide architectural guidance and mentorship to engineering teams ensuring high-quality implementation.
• Ensure solutions meet security compliance and regulatory requirements.
• Produce and maintain clear architecture documentation including rationale and trade-offs.
• Continuously evolve platform architecture to improve developer productivity system reliability and cost efficiency.

• Architectural Thinking: Ability to decompose complex problem spaces and develop pragmatic architecture options with clearly articulated trade-offs.
• Technical Leadership: Influence without authority; guide teams through architectural decisions and implementation challenges.
• Communication: Clearly articulate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Requirements Analysis: Translate business and non-functional requirements into scalable technical designs.
• Platform & Application Architecture: Strong foundation in designing modern application and platform architectures using established patterns and standards.

• Experience defining AI reference architectures and standards for enterprise adoption.
• Ability to explain and defend architectural trade-offs between classical ML LLM-based approaches and non-AI solutions.
• Proven experience taking AI systems from proof-of-concept to scaled production use.
• Strong programming background in Python and Java with the ability to reason at code level.
• Proven experience designing and building enterprise-scale distributed systems.
• Hands-on experience with cloud-native architectures including AWS services containerization and orchestration (Docker Kubernetes).
• Deep understanding of data architecture: SQL and NoSQL databases data warehouses (Snowflake specifically) data modeling replication and sharding.
• Experience with modern DevOps practices: CI/CD infrastructure-as-code observability and automated testing.
• Strong API design experience (REST GraphQL gRPC) including versioning and documentation.
• Ability to evaluate and introduce emerging technologies aligned to business goals.

• This position requires the candidate to be based in either Chicago IL or Peoria IL
• Relocation assistance is NOT available for this position
• Visa sponsorship is NOT available with this position.

• Medical dental and vision benefits*
• Paid time off plan (Vacation Holidays Volunteer etc.)*
• 401(k) savings plans*
• Health Savings Account (HSA)*
• Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs)*
• Health Lifestyle Programs*
• Employee Assistance Program*
• Voluntary Benefits and Employee Discounts*
• Career Development*
• Incentive bonus*
• Disability benefits
• Life Insurance
• Parental leave
• Adoption benefits
• Tuition Reimbursement

What We Do

Cat Digital is the digital and technology arm of Caterpillar Inc. responsible for bringing digital capabilities to our world-famous yellow iron. With over 1.5M connected assets worldwide our teams use data technology advanced analytics and AI capabilities to help our customers build a better world.

Why Work With Us

The Cat Digital team is at the forefront of Caterpillar’s evolution. We take pride in solving complex problems by building new systems from the ground up. On our team you’ll leverage data from across our entire enterprise to find solutions that open a new world of possibilities for our customers and dealers. Join us in building a better tomorrow.

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