Application Architect

About Us

At Southwest Airlines, we believe that flying should feel like freedom. For over 50 years, we’ve been connecting people to what matters most with low fares, legendary hospitality, and a heart for service. Our culture is built on the principles of fun, friendliness, and family, making us one of the most admired workplaces in the world.

If you’re passionate about making a difference, love working in a fast-paced environment, and want to help millions of travelers reach their destinations with a smile, Southwest Airlines is the place for you. Here, your career can truly take flight.

Job Summary

• Design and oversee the structure, behavior, and interaction of custom and/or vendor applications within one or more enterprise domains, ensuring they align with business goals, technical standards, and non-functional requirements. Collaborate with stakeholders and Solution Architects to translate requirements and conceptual solutions into detailed technical solutions, including system components, integrations, and data flows. Guide and mentor development teams with best practices; ensure applications are secure and maintainable; and evaluate emerging technologies to recommend improvements.
• As an Application Architect – MarTech / Content Supply Chain, you’ll shape the enterprise architecture that connects Adobe, CMS, AWS, ecommerce, security, and DevOps capabilities into a scalable cloud ecosystem. You’ll define target architectures, technology roadmaps, reusable reference patterns, and nonfunctional requirements for large-scale digital marketing and customer-experience platforms.
• You’ll partner with leaders across Marketing, Digital, Product, Security, and Technology to translate strategy into architecture. You’ll establish governance and modernization roadmaps that reduce complexity, improve interoperability, and create a strong foundation for AI-enabled Content Supply Chain innovation.
• The role will work across US and India teams and across interconnected enterprise platforms, balancing business strategy, technical feasibility, operational reliability, security, and cost while driving reusable and sustainable architecture standards.

• Define, design, and maintain the overall application architecture for custom and/or vendor applications, ensuring that resiliency, scalability, performance, compliance, and cost expectations are met
• Partner closely with stakeholders to ensure software solutions meet business intent
• Participate in required solution governance processes, including verbally leading presentations
• Collaborate closely with Technology Team to ensure implemented/deployed solutions stay in alignment with approved solutions
• Act as a bridge and advisor to peer Application Architects to ensure consistency and alignment to enterprise expectations
• Evaluate and recommend appropriate software tools, frameworks, and platforms in alignment with enterprise standards
• Define and enforce software development standards and best practices in alignment with enterprise standards
• Lead the diagnosis and restoration of operations during major incidents, incorporating lessons learned into designing a more resilient architecture
• Ensure software application data is kept up-to-date in the central repository and that both tracking and improving application health is a continuous focus
• Maintain comprehensive architectural documentation, including architecture diagrams and technical specification
• Provide technical guidance, coaching, and mentoring to supported Technology Teams and peer Application Architects
• May perform other job duties as directed by Employee's Leaders
• Define target architectures, technology roadmaps, reference patterns, and nonfunctional requirements for large-scale MarTech, CMS, DAM, and digital-experience platforms.
• Design secure, resilient, observable, and cost-effective AWS solutions using serverless, containers, integration, data, and networking services.
• Architect headful and headless CMS, DAM, and Content Supply Chain capabilities, including metadata and asset flows, authoring-to-publishing patterns, and activation-channel integrations.
• Define integration patterns across AEM, Workfront, Fusion, ecommerce, activation channels, customer-data systems, and enterprise applications.
• Establish architecture patterns for identity, consent, data protection, APIs, networking, compliance, and interoperability across Adobe and cloud platforms.
• Lead architecture governance through design reviews, decision documentation, reusable standards, and technical-debt management.
• Partner with Product, Security, Marketing Technology, Engineering, Platform, and Adobe stakeholders to align architecture with business and platform priorities.
• Guide geographically distributed US and India engineering teams toward consistent application and platform architecture standards.
• Evaluate architecture options and recommend scalable approaches that balance security, reliability, performance, maintainability, and cost.
• Contribute to enterprise modernization initiatives and roadmaps that reduce complexity and enable future AI-powered Content Supply Chain capabilities.
• Influence technical direction across connected domains and communicate architecture decisions clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders.

• Advanced knowledge of architectural patterns, software patterns, integration patterns, and distributed system design
• Advanced knowledge of the software delivery lifecycle, development tools, and Agile project management methodology
• Advanced knowledge of a modern cloud platform (e.g. AWS, Azure, GCP, etc.)
• Advanced knowledge of multiple modern programming languages (e.g. Java, Python, JavaScript, Go, .Net, etc.)
• Skilled in architecture design tools (e.g. Draw.io or other approved enterprise diagramming tools)
• Strong analytical skills and ability to problem solve and reason with limited information
• Ability to apply sound logic and structured reasoning to critically evaluate trade-offs across alternative solutions and approaches, arriving at well-justified conclusions
• Ability to influence stakeholders through effective verbal and non-verbal communication to drive alignment on architectural decisions.
• Strong enterprise solution and application architecture experience across large-scale digital marketing, customer-experience, CMS, or platform ecosystems.
• Deep AWS cloud architecture expertise across secure, resilient, observable, and cost-effective cloud-native services.
• Strong understanding of CMS, DAM, and Content Supply Chain architecture, including headful/headless models, asset flows, metadata, authoring, publishing, and activation.
• Strong security, governance, and integration architecture skills across identity, consent, data protection, APIs, networking, compliance, and interoperability.
• Ability to define architecture roadmaps, reusable reference patterns, nonfunctional requirements, and technical standards.
• Strong architecture governance and technical leadership capability, including design reviews, architectural decision records, and technical-debt management.
• Ability to work across distributed teams and influence Product, Security, Marketing Technology, Engineering, and Platform stakeholders.
• Strong systems-thinking and problem-solving skills across interconnected enterprise technology ecosystems.
• Ability to balance business strategy, technical feasibility, operational reliability, security, and cost when making architecture decisions.

• Required: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems or related field and/or equivalent formal training

• Required: Expert level experience, expansive and far reaching knowledge in:
  • Architecture design and implementation of large-scale distributed systems
• 8-15 years of relevant work-related experience
• 7–10+ years of AWS cloud architecture experience designing secure, resilient, observable, and cost-effective solutions using serverless, containers, integration, data, and networking services.
• 6–8+ years designing CMS, DAM, and Content Supply Chain architectures, including headful/headless content platforms, metadata and asset flows, authoring-to-publishing patterns, and integrations across AEM, Workfront, Fusion, ecommerce, and activation channels.
• 6–8+ years defining security, governance, and integration architecture across identity, consent, data protection, API, networking, compliance, and interoperability patterns.
• 3+ years leading architecture governance, design reviews, technical decisions, technical-debt management, and alignment across distributed US and India teams.
• Demonstrated experience defining target architectures, technology roadmaps, reference patterns, and nonfunctional requirements for complex enterprise platforms.

Preferred Experience

• AWS Solutions Architect – Professional, TOGAF, or comparable enterprise architecture certification.
• Deep familiarity with Adobe AEM, Workfront, Fusion, DAM governance, headless CMS, or enterprise Content Supply Chain platforms.
• Experience with AI-enabled platforms, customer-data integrations, edge delivery/CDN, multi-region systems, or architecture cost optimization.
• Experience leading architecture governance across distributed teams, vendors, and multiple product or platform domains

• Must meet confidentiality expectations as to confidential, proprietary and sensitive Company information
• Ability to work extended hours as needed.
• Ability to work onsite approximately 3 days per week and as required by the business.

Why This Role

• Architect the future of enterprise MarTech by connecting Adobe, CMS, AWS, ecommerce, security, and DevOps in one scalable cloud ecosystem.
• Shape MarTech strategy at enterprise scale by partnering with leaders across Marketing, Digital, Product, Security, and Technology.
• Create reusable architectural advantage through standards and roadmaps that reduce complexity and enable AI-powered Content Supply Chain innovation.