Costco IT is responsible for the technical future of Costco Wholesale, the third largest retailer in the world with wholesale operations in fourteen countries. Despite our size and explosive international expansion, we continue to provide a family, employee centric atmosphere in which our employees thrive and succeed. As proof, Costco ranks seventh in Forbes “World’s Best Employers”.

This is an environment unlike anything in the high-tech world and the secret of Costco’s success is its culture. The value Costco puts on its employees is well documented in articles from a variety of publishers including Bloomberg and Forbes. Our employees and our members come FIRST. Costco is well known for its generosity and community service and has won many awards for its philanthropy. The company joins with its employees to take an active role in volunteering by sponsoring many opportunities to help others.

Come join the Costco Wholesale IT family. Costco IT is a dynamic, fast-paced environment, working through exciting transformation efforts. We are building the next generation retail environment where you will be surrounded by dedicated and highly professional employees.

The Solution Architect defines the end-to-end architecture and ensures the detailed design and implemented solutions are consistent with the overall architecture. As a problem solver, the Marketing Technology (Martech) Solutions Architect is expected to be able to design, prototype, and debug a large number of issues that may arise while engaged on a client’s project including, but not limited to, communication timing and deliverability issues, duplicate record management, implement responsive design and accessibility for marketing assets, and troubleshoot third-party integrations and synchronization events.

The Martech Solutions Architect team member is a technically focused digital marketer and problem-solver that has a deep curiosity and passion for creating and building software solutions that combine marketing and digital technology with process, automation, and data governance in order to deliver value for Costco members. The Martech Solutions Architect partners with marketers and digital strategists to deliver solutions by leading the design, delivery, and execution of various marketing campaigns. This role is the conversion of business requirements into an architecture and design that will become the blueprint for the solution being created to solve an identified business problem. The conversion is based upon the requirements and objectives of the business and guided by the strategies, design patterns, and best practices aligned with the Enterprise Architecture group, and adapted to the business domain.

If you want to be a part of one of the worldwide BEST companies “to work for”, simply apply and let your career be reimagined.

ROLE

Analyzes the Business-IT environment (run, grow, and transform the business) to detect critical deficiencies and recommends solutions for improvement (systems of record, differentiation, and innovation).

Executes projects and initiatives on the domain roadmap in partnership with Enterprise Architects.

Consults with application and infrastructure development projects; and identifies when it is necessary to modify projects to accommodate the solution architecture.

Ensures cohesiveness of solution designs across various projects/solutions.

Collaborates with Enterprise Architects to balance needs between Solution Architectural Guardrails.

Designs, develops, and directs solution architectures, design exceptions, and governance activities in compliance with target states, reference architectures, architecture standards, technology guardrails, and security and operational guidelines.

Creates non-functional specs for operational agility, disaster recovery, and support.

Establishes solution delivery flow for continuous integration, testing and delivery, and operational deployment in partnership with project managers, solution leads, and other stakeholders.

Conducts design reviews to validate alignment with architecture.

Modifies solution architecture to support changing business or technology requirements.

Documents solutions architecture design and analysis work; and communicates architectural decisions that impact solutions.

Defines the principles, guidelines, standards, and solution patterns to ensure decisions are aligned with the enterprise's future-state architecture vision.

Communicates infrastructure, software, information, and/solution concepts to all levels of management.

Designs methodology that consistently yields the right level of technical design documentation and develops technical solutions that conform both to customer requirements and information development standards.

Adheres to Costco’s Architectural Framework and Governance model.

Assesses all project information to understand the scope, the current IT and business environment, objectives, and priorities.

Defines the proposed, high-level solution, including the use of Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) packages or builds new systems to create Membership, Marketing, and Customer Service solutions.

Analyzes technical risks and advises on risk mitigation strategies.

Identifies teams and shared services needed based on the proposed solution.

Creates the Conceptual Solution Architecture document.

Works with the Product Manager and Delivery Manager to develop a high-level project schedule, resource plan for the project, and project costs.

Participates in Program Increment (PI) planning events.

Defines the various systems’ boundaries within the portfolio.

Establishes a reusable architecture framework for various systems in the portfolio.

Oversees the technical content (architecture and design), integrity, resiliency to business and technology changes, availability, scalability, performance, globalization, and quality of solution.

Establishes an architecture vision (North Star), a 2-5 year roadmap; and identifies key enablers to realize the vision along an architecture runway.

Communicates regularly (e.g. monthly) with the portfolio at large to reinforce the importance of following architectural North Star, highlight progress along the architecture roadmap, and champion implementation successes (i.e. working software) executing the vision.

Maintains a living System Architecture Overview (SAO) for each system in the portfolio using common industry architecture perspectives, articulated along different Domains: business, application, data, and technology.

Views Business Process, System Context, N-Tier, System Use Case, Process/Task/Entity/Utility Service layers, conceptual/logical/physical data, network, and security.

Identifies new technologies and development tools as required.

Collaborates closely with the System Architects in calculating the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for each system in the portfolio.

Analyzes available assets (frameworks, reference architectures, etc.) to bridge the gap between the as-is architecture and the to-be architecture.

Works with the Product Manager to define use cases, including alternate flows as needed.

Establishes a Center-of-Excellence (CoE) within the portfolio to elicit, harvest, validate, and collaborate with System Architects and Full Stack Engineers (FSEs) to reach a consensus on key architecture decisions across systems in the portfolio.

Moderates a Solution Architecture Review Board (SARB) at the portfolio level to approve the CoE’s key architecture decisions.

Works closely with PMO to scope and assist in implementation.

Defines system/technical use cases and requirements.

Evaluates non-functional requirements for testability and technical acceptance criteria.

Addresses compliance requirements such as Payment Card Industry (PCI), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Personally Identifiable Information (PII), and Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX).

Creates high-level models that guide solution architecture, including component, context, data-flow security, data, services, infrastructure, deployment, and integration viewpoints.

Refines those high-level models based on ever-changing requirements.

Creates transitional architecture views as part of solution design.

Adheres to IT standards.

Defines and documents the actions needed to close architecture gaps in support of business objectives.

Participates in reviews of the designs, prototypes, and other technical deliverables to ensure they fulfill requirements and meet standards.

Oversees estimating development effort.

Operates in a fast-paced environment while driving multiple marketing opportunities in parallel.

REQUIRED

10+ years’ professional Information Technology experience in marketing/digital stack, focused on the Adobe ecosystem.

7+ years’ hands-on architecture with broad COTS package integration experience.

Knowledge of IT Application architecture, Design methodologies across multiple platforms.

Strong leadership in designing and building cloud applications using cloud technologies (PaaS, IaaS), database query languages, and web programming languages under general direction.

Proficient at modeling at 3 levels of abstraction: conceptual, logical, physical.

Proficient in modeling languages: Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN), Decision Modeling Notation (DMN), Unified Modeling Notation (UML), specifically the following UML diagrams: Use Case diagrams, Statemachine diagrams, Class diagrams, Component diagrams, Sequence diagrams, Communication diagrams, Deployment diagrams.

Excellent verbal and written communication skills (facilitation, negotiation, conflict resolution) at all levels, including Executives.

Ability to translate technical ideas/designs to business language.

Commitment to quality.

Thorough understanding of and experience with multiple SDLC methods.

Ability to build good relationships with stakeholders and teams.

Strong interpersonal, negotiation, and coordination skills.

Excellent leadership skills; technical team leadership experience.

Team player; proven ability to work effectively within a large organization that operates using a matrix organization.

Ability to communicate trade-offs and transactional states with technical and business teams.

Ability to make architecture changes in a dynamic agile environment.

Able to support off-hours work as required, including weekends and holidays.

Recommended

Solution Architecture Professional Certification (e.g., IASA CITA-F, CITA-A or higher).

Other architecture certifications (e.g. TOGAF 9 certification, SEI, SAFe, ScrumAlliance).

Microsoft Azure certification preferred.

Proficient in service oriented architecture (SOA), micro-service-architecture (MSA), messaging, object-oriented programming concepts, multi-tiered distributed component based technology, relational and non-relational databases, infrastructure-as-a-service capabilities, legacy infrastructure platforms and technologies, and enterprise service bus.

Strong facilitation/negotiation skills. Ability to interface with and influence people at multiple levels within the organization.

Domain knowledge of Retail industry desired.

Required Documents

• Cover Letter

• Resume

California applicants, please click here to review the Costco Applicant Privacy Notice.

Pay Ranges:

Level 2 - $120,000 - $155,000, Bonus and Restricted Stock Unit (RSU) eligible

Level 3 - $145,000 - $155,000, Bonus and Restricted Stock Unit (RSU) eligible

Level 4 - $175,000 - $230,000, Bonus and Restricted Stock Unit (RSU) eligible

We offer a comprehensive package of benefits including paid time off, health benefits - medical/dental/vision/hearing aid/pharmacy/behavioral health/employee assistance, health care reimbursement account, dependent care assistance plan, short-term disability and long-term disability insurance, AD&D insurance, life insurance, 401(k), stock purchase plan to eligible employees.

Costco is committed to a diverse and inclusive workplace. Costco is an equal opportunity employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard of race, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, protected veteran status, disability, age, or any other legally protected status. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request to IT-Recruiting@costco.com

If hired, you will be required to provide proof of authorization to work in the United States.