Vistra Corporate Services Company · Irving, Texas, United States
Join Vistra as a Principal Application Architect to lead enterprise architecture, cloud strategy, and automation initiatives that drive cost efficiency and business value across global IT operations. You’ll define technical standards, lead digital labor initiatives, and mentor teams to deliver scalable, innovative solutions in a high-impact, hybrid work environment.
About the Role
As a Principal Application Architect at Vistra, you’ll play a pivotal role in shaping the future of enterprise technology. You’ll oversee application and solution architecture, cloud strategy, and automation adoption across the organization, ensuring alignment with business goals and cost efficiency. You’ll engage with business unit leaders to define technology roadmaps, design cloud-native infrastructure, and establish governance practices. This is a leadership role that demands technical excellence, strategic vision, and the ability to mentor and empower teams. Vistra values accountability, collaboration, and innovation — and you’ll be at the heart of driving these values forward. If you’re a seasoned architect with a passion for building scalable, resilient systems and leading cross-functional teams, this is your opportunity to make a lasting impact.
What You Will Do
Oversee the architecture and platforms for all applications and information architecture.
Engage business unit leaders to define technology solutions and roadmaps in their domain.
Define the Guiding Principles, Standards and Roadmap for all applications.
Design and solution infrastructure, and cloud architecture to meet business requirements while complying to technology standards.
Define and communicate the Enterprise Architecture and Tech Governance Practice including: Principles, Models, Standards, Best Practices, and the roles and responsibilities of the architecture community.
Drive a culture of accountability, communication, clarity, and collaboration with specific focus on business value, return on investment, and cost management.
Recommend, implement, manage, and maintain the technology platforms that enable Digital Labor.
Create and maintain a reference architecture that enforces standards, guidelines, and leading practices.
Lead, support, and guide counselees within the Digital Labor Center of Excellence and increase competency of Automation Engineers.
What We Are Looking For
8+ years minimum; 12+ years preferred.
5+ years experience managing/supervising teams.
Working knowledge of technology best practices, methodologies and processes (e.g., ISO 9000, ITIL, Cloud, Agile, Scrum, DevOps, TOGAF).
Working knowledge of relevant project and program management concepts and techniques.
Experience gained through college degree programs and/or certifications is applicable to above skills.
Energy & Utilities Domain - US Power Trading/Commercial experience (ERCOT/PJM/MISO/SPP). Day-ahead/real-time bidding, forward curves, CRRs, ETRM, commercial optimization. Plant-side systems (PI, GADS, CEMS, Maximo) a plus.
Cloud-Native Data Lake & Market Data Architecture - Delivered unified data lakes ingesting commodity feeds (ICE/CME), ISO pricing/LMPs, forward curves (ZEMA/Morningstar/Platts), historians, and ETRM. ISO data extraction across major RTOs. Enterprise integration (MuleSoft, Active MQ, Rabbit MQ) with event-driven/batch/CDC patterns. AWS pipelines (Glue, Step Functions, Lambda, MWAA, Kinesis) and consumption layers (Athena, Redshift, Lake Formation). Sound build-vs-buy judgment.
AWS Architecture & Strategy - Enterprise architecture for event-driven pipelines (Lambda, Step Functions, Event Bridge, Kinesis, MSK), AI/ML (Bedrock, SageMaker), multi-database (RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB, Redshift, Fabric). Delivers reference implementations, ADRs, and governance frameworks.
Polyglot Technical Leadership & Execution (Java/Spring Boot, Python, Groovy, complex multi-engine SQL, modern web frameworks).
If you’re ready to lead with technical authority and strategic vision, apply now to shape the future of enterprise technology at Vistra.