Senior Principal Software Architect

This position is incentive eligible.
Last year our HCA Healthcare colleagues invested over 156,000 hours volunteering in our communities. As a Senior Principal Sware Architect with HCA Healthcare you can be a part of an organization that is devoted to giving back!
Job Summary And Qualifications
Position Summary
The Senior Principal Software Architect is a Director-level technology leader responsible for shaping and executing the enterprise architecture, engineering strategy, and adoption model for Artificial Intelligence across Software Engineering. This leader will build and lead a team of AI engineers and architects who create reusable AI platforms, agentic engineering capabilities, reference architecture, and guardrails that enable software teams to design, build, test, secure, deploy, and operate solutions more effectively.
Operating across organizational boundaries, this role translates enterprise priorities into a multi-year AI enablement roadmap, establishes technical standards and governance, and partners with senior technology leaders to scale trusted AI adoption. The position combines people leadership, enterprise architecture, platform strategy, and selective hands-on technical depth, with accountability for measurable improvements in engineering productivity, quality, security, reliability, and developer experience.
Key Responsibilities
Enterprise Architecture & Technical Authority
Define and own the enterprise architecture and multi-year technical strategy for AI enablement across the software engineering lifecycle.
Establish reference architectures, reusable patterns, standards, and decision frameworks for generative AI, large language models, retrieval-augmented generation, agentic systems, evaluation, observability, and AI lifecycle management.
Serve as a senior technical authority for high-impact architecture decisions spanning multiple products, platforms, and engineering organizations.
Continuously assess technology shifts and evolve the architecture to reduce fragmentation, manage technical debt, and preserve enterprise flexibility.
AI-Enabled Software Engineering Transformation
Lead the strategy and delivery of AI capabilities that improve requirements, architecture, coding, testing, security, DevSecOps, reliability, modernization, and engineering knowledge workflows.
Create scalable adoption models, paved roads, reusable agents, and platform capabilities that help engineering teams move from experimentation to secure production use.
Partner with software engineering leaders to redesign workflows around human and AI collaboration while maintaining clear accountability, review, and control points.
Define outcome measures and feedback loops for adoption, engineering velocity, quality, security, developer experience, reuse, and business value.
People Leadership and Organizational Capability
Build, lead, coach, and develop a high-performing team of AI engineers and architects; establish clear goals, operating mechanisms, and accountability for outcomes.
Create a talent strategy that attracts, develops, and retains advanced AI engineering and architecture capabilities.
Provide technical and career leadership through architecture reviews, mentoring, succession planning, and development opportunities.
Foster an inclusive culture of innovation, disciplined experimentation, continuous learning, engineering excellence, and responsible decision-making.
AI Platforms, Agents, and Engineering Foundations
Guide the architecture and evolution of enterprise-scale AI platforms and agentic systems that integrate safely with developer tools, enterprise systems, data, and software delivery workflows.
Establish patterns for model selection, grounding, orchestration, context management, tool integration, prompt and agent lifecycle management, evaluation, telemetry, and resilience.
Ensure platform capabilities are reusable, interoperable, cost-conscious, observable, supportable, and designed for enterprise-scale adoption.
Remain selectively hands-on in complex areas to validate technical direction, unblock teams, and de-risk critical initiatives.
Governance, Security, and Responsible AI
Embed security, privacy, compliance, responsible AI, data protection, human oversight, and auditability into architecture and engineering practices.
Define technical controls for model and tool access, sensitive data handling, identity, secrets, content safety, evaluation, traceability, and third-party integration.
Partner with Security, Risk, Privacy, Legal, Data, and Architecture stakeholders to establish practical governance that enables innovation while protecting the enterprise.
Ensure solutions comply with enterprise architecture standards, approved technology patterns, and applicable organizational policies.
Executive Partnership and Enterprise Influence
Advise senior leaders on AI opportunities, architectural tradeoffs, investment priorities, delivery risks, build-versus-buy decisions, and organizational readiness.
Translate complex AI and software engineering concepts into clear recommendations, roadmaps, and value narratives for executive and business audiences.
Align cross-functional leaders around shared platforms, standards, priorities, and adoption plans; resolve competing technical directions and dependencies.
Represent the organization’s AI-enabled software engineering vision in internal forums and with strategic technology partners when appropriate.
Portfolio Execution and Value Realization
Own an integrated portfolio of AI engineering initiatives from strategy and incubation through adoption and operational maturity.
Establish planning, prioritization, architecture review, risk management, financial stewardship, and delivery mechanisms for the team.
Use measurable outcomes to guide investment decisions, discontinue low-value approaches, and scale capabilities that demonstrate enterprise impact.
Practice and adhere to the organization’s Code of Conduct, Mission, and Values, and perform other duties as assigned.
Education & Experience:
Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience. Required
12–15+ years of progressive experience in software engineering, enterprise architecture, platform engineering, cloud, data, or AI/ML, including significant leadership responsibility. Required
Demonstrated success architecting and influencing enterprise-scale platforms with long operational lifespans. Required
Proven ability to affect technical direction across multiple teams, portfolios, or lines of business. Required
Proven success defining and delivering enterprise-scale architecture or platform strategies across multiple business or technology organizations. Required
Demonstrated experience moving generative AI, machine learning, or agentic capabilities from experimentation into governed, production-scale adoption. Required
Minimum 5 years of experience managing engineering organizations and technical teams. Required
Licenses, Certifications, & Training:
Advanced cloud or AI certifications (e.g., GCP Professional ML Engineer, Cloud Architect) preferred.
Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, Behaviors:
Deep mastery of Generative AI architectures, including LLMs, RAG, agentic systems, and vector search. Required
Expert-level understanding of cloud-native AI platforms, especially Vertex AI and large-scale distributed systems. Required
Exceptional systems thinking with a focus on leverage, longevity, and platform impact. Required
Ability to operate independently with minimal guidance while aligning tightly with executive intent. Required
Influence through credibility, clarity, and technical excellence rather than formal authority. Required
Demonstrated growth mindset with industry leading curiosity, continuously identifying, evaluating, and defining adoption strategies for emerging AI technologies, frameworks, and paradigms with multiyear enterprise impact. Required
Ability to frame entirely new technical problem spaces, set precedent where none exists, and establish clarity for the organization in environments of extreme ambiguity Required
Operates as a trusted technical authority whose judgment materially influences executive technology decisions. Required
Recognized enterprise expert in GCP Vertex AI and Generative AI platforms, including Gemini, Vertex AI Studio, and foundational-model orchestration; establishes reference architectures and standards consumed across multiple teams. Required
Domain-defining expertise in Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) architectures, including evaluation methodologies, governance models, cost optimization, scalability, security, and regulatory alignment. Required
Owns the enterprise strategy for Vector Stores, embedding models, indexing patterns, and lifecycle management; sets long term direction and deprecates antipatterns. Preferred
Authoritative expertise in grounding strategies, including data contracts, schema evolution, traceability, reliability guarantees, and factuality enforcement at scale. Preferred
Enterprise level ownership of MLOps strategy, including platform governance, CI/CD at scale, observability, lineage, drift detection, and reliability engineering across AI systems. Required
Mastery of cloud native architecture for AI platforms spanning serverless, containerized, hybrid, and multi cloud solutions; anticipates operational and financial tradeoffs years in advance. Required
Defines and reviews architecture artifacts (e.g., Visio, reference diagrams, platform blueprints) used to align engineering, security, and executive stakeholders. Required
Strategic leadership in interoperability frameworks, including the Model Context Protocol; defines adoption models, extension points, and governance for cross platform LLM integration. Required
Expert-level understanding of Agentic AI systems, including autonomous, multi agent, and tool driven architectures; evaluates readiness and risk for production grade deployment. Required
Architectural level fluency across enterprise stacks, with responsibility for defining integration patterns across:
SQL and NoSQL databases (e.g., SQL Server, CosmosDB, MongoDB)
Large-scale ETL and data platforms (e.g., GCP DataFlow, Azure Data Factory)
Event-driven and streaming systems (e.g., Azure EventHub, GCP Pub/Sub, Kafka)
Distributed microservice environments (Docker/Kubernetes, Java, Python, NodeJS, C#) Required
Defines enterprise integration strategies for AI systems within CRM, ERP, eCommerce, and EMR/EHR platforms, including security boundaries, compliance, and data stewardship. Preferred
Authoritative understanding of Agile and modern SDLC practices, with a track record of influencing delivery models at organizational scale without direct authority. Required
Exceptional executive level communication ability, capable of translating deeply technical concepts into strategic options, risks, and tradeoffs for senior leadership. Required
Serves as a technical steward for the engineering community, leading architecture councils, internal AI forums, and cross organizational technical initiatives. Required
Elite problem-solving capabilities, consistently addressing the organization’s hardest, highest impact technical challenges. Preferred
Expert in diagnosing systemic failures across distributed AI systems, including deep troubleshooting, performance bottlenecks, and large-scale reliability analysis. Preferred
Leads through technical influence rather than authority, shaping outcomes across multiple teams, portfolios, or business units. Preferred
Exceptional systems thinking, understanding how code, platforms, data, humans, and business objectives interact over long-time horizons. Preferred
Occasional travel required
Benefits
HCA Healthcare, offers a total rewards package that supports the health, life, career and retirement of our colleagues. The available plans and programs include:
Comprehensive benefits for medical, prescription drug, dental, vision, behavioral health and telemedicine services
Wellbeing support, including free counseling and referral services
Time away from work programs for paid time off, paid family leave, long- and short-term disability coverage and leaves of absence
Savings and retirement resources, including a 401(k) Plan with a 100% match on 3% to 9% of pay (based on years of service), Employee Stock Purchase Plan, flexible spending accounts, preferred banking partnerships, retirement readiness tools, rollover support and financial wellbeing counseling
Education support through tuition assistance, student loan assistance, certification support, dependent scholarships and a partnership with Galen College of Nursing
Additional benefits for fertility and family building, adoption assistance, life insurance, supplemental health protection plans, auto and home insurance, legal counseling, identity theft protection and consumer discounts
Learn More About Employee Benefits
Note: Eligibility for benefits may vary by location.
HCA Healthcare has been recognized as one of the World's Most Ethical Companies® by the Ethisphere Institute more than ten times. In recent years, HCA Healthcare spent an estimated $3.7 billion in cost for the delivery of charitable care, uninsured discounts, and other uncompensated expenses.
"There is so much good to do in the world and so many different ways to do it."- Dr. Thomas Frist, Sr.
HCA Healthcare Co-Founder
Be a part of an organization that invests in you! We are reviewing applications for our Senior Principal Sware Architect opening. Qualified candidates will be contacted for interviews. Submit your application and help us raise the bar in patient care!
We are an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.