Sr. Staff Architect

Role overview

Sr. Staff Architect at Gap Inc.

As a Senior Staff Architect, you are a high-impact individual contributor responsible for designing robust and scalable solutions within a domain stream.

You bring deep technical and functional expertise and partner with cross-functional teams to define and implement architecture that supports business and technical objectives.

Department: Enterprise Architecture

Role : Senior Staff Enterprise Solution Architect

Responsibilities

• Solution design & documentation
• Design and document end-to-end solutions for key initiatives within your domain, ensuring alignment with enterprise architecture standards and business needs.
• Project architecture leadership
• Lead architecture for individual projects and features, guiding engineering teams through solution execution and well-reasoned technical trade-offs.
• Cross-functional collaboration
• Partner with strategy teams, product managers, architects and engineers to translate requirements into scalable, maintainable architecture complaining to EA guidelines.
• Provide architectural input across multiple simultaneous initiatives.
• Quality, feasibility & integration alignment
• Ensure technical feasibility, performance, and integration alignment of solutions with adjacent systems and domains.
• Participate in defining, enhancing and ensuring design and code reviews to uphold architectural quality.
• Architecture framework & reusability
• Contribute to the evolution of architecture frameworks, reusable components, and reference implementations that raise the bar across the engineering organisation.
• Planning, estimation & technology evaluation
• Engage in early project planning and estimation through an architecture lens.
• Stay current with emerging technologies and help evaluate their applicability within your domain.
• AI ADOPTION
• Identify and drive opportunities to integrate AI and ML capabilities into enterprise domain solutions to enhance business value and operational efficiency .
• Serve as a strategic advocate for responsible, ethical, and compliant AI adoption across the domain architecture landscape.
• Lead the execution and advancement of enterprise architecture strategies in alignment with the vision and direction established by Principal Architects.
• ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE COLLABORATION
• Hands-on solution design and delivery within a domain stream.
• Operationalises enterprise guidance into project-level architecture.
• Alignment with Principal & Sr Principal Architects :
• Engage regularly with Principal and Senior Principal Architects to ensure domain-level solutions are grounded in enterprise architecture strategy.
• Consume and operationalise enterprise standards, patterns, and guardrails into project-level designs, and surface domain-specific insights that inform broader strategic decisions.
• Cross-domain architecture reviews :
• Participate in architecture review boards and cross-domain design forums facilitated by Principal Architects.
• Represent your domain's perspective, highlight integration touch-points, and collaborate on solutions that span multiple domain streams.
• Feedback loop & pattern sharing :
• Maintain a continuous feedback loop with the EA team — sharing reusable patterns, lessons learned, and implementation experiences from domain delivery that can be elevated into enterprise-wide frameworks and reference architectures.
• Strategic roadmap contribution :
• Contribute domain-level input to enterprise technology roadmaps and strategic initiatives led by Senior Principal Architects.
• Help bridge the gap between long-term architectural vision and near-term delivery realities within your domain.
• SaaS Vendor Product Evaluations:
• Collaborate with Principal Architects and product stakeholders to ensure recommended SaaS choices are grounded in both domain delivery needs and long-term enterprise architecture direction.
• Who You Are
• Seasoned technologist with strong architectural thinking and a solid background in hands-on software or platform engineering.
• Deep understanding of at least one architectural Product to Market domain stream, with the ability to contribute meaningfully to cross-domain conversations.
• Able to manage and prioritise multiple concurrent initiatives, providing architectural support from planning through to delivery.
• Experienced engaging with senior architecture leadership — comfortable consuming enterprise strategy from Principal and Senior Principal Architects and translating it into grounded, deliverable domain solutions.
• Skilled at producing technical documentation and architecture artifacts that clearly communicate design intent to both Strategy, Business, Engineering and non-technical stakeholders.
• Collaborative and delivery-oriented, with a track record of working closely with cross-functional product and engineering teams.
• Strong attention to detail with a passion for quality, performance, and reusability; capable of independently solving architectural challenges and escalating when cross-functional coordination is needed.
• SaaS Vendor Evaluations - Translate SaaS market evaluations into well-reasoned architectural recommendations with clear trade-off analysis : Cost & TCO over time, Scalability & performance, Integration complexity, Vendor maturity & stability, Enterprise standards alignment, PoC / reference validation
• Eager to learn, grow, and actively contribute in defining and adopting enterprise architectural practices and patterns across the organisation.
• Comfortable navigating the nuances of responsible AI adoption — including data privacy, model governance, and balancing innovation with risk.
• A trusted voice within the EA community — able to represent domain interests in broader architecture forums while remaining open to enterprise-wide direction and standards.
• Curious about AI and its practical application in enterprise architecture — whether through predictive analytics, generative AI, ML-powered features, or AI-augmented engineering workflows.

Employment details

• Employment Type : Full- Time
• Location: Hyderabad, India (HDC)
• This role is focused on hands-on solution design, documentation, and delivery — with increasing influence across products, platforms, and governing teams.
• You bring deep expertise in retail and consumer goods, partnering with cross-functional business, product, and engineering teams to define and implement architecture that is robust, scalable, and aligned to both business and technical objectives.
• You serve as a bridge between architecture and engineering leadership, ensuring consistency, quality, and performance of solutions.
• As AI reshapes how software is designed and delivered, you will play an active role in embedding AI-driven thinking into architecture practices and championing adoption across your domain.
• Location: Spoke - Hyderabad [India]