Job Description

One of the best-known names in cruising, Princess is the world’s leading international premium cruise line and tour company, carrying millions of guests each year to hundreds of destinations around the globe.  We give our guests the Medallion Class experience others simply can’t. The Love Boat promises something for everyone. 

The Principal Enterprise Architect, Advanced Performance Monitoring and Middleware serves as the organization’s highest-level professional authority and global thought leader for application performance monitoring, enterprise observability, middleware, integration platforms, and operational telemetry. The role defines and materially shapes the long-term global technology strategy, enterprise architecture, governance model, and innovation agenda for these disciplines across a complex, multinational operating environment.

This position applies broad and comprehensive expertise in leading-edge theories, technologies, and architectural practices to identify and solve the organization’s most complex and consequential technology challenges. The role establishes mandatory enterprise standards and target-state architectures that govern the design, reliability, scalability, security, resilience, and performance of mission-critical services supporting guest-facing, shipboard, shoreside, and corporate operations.

The Principal Enterprise Architect leads the organization’s largest and most strategically significant multidisciplinary architecture and transformation initiatives, with impact across brands, business units, geographies, technology platforms, and external strategic partners. The role proactively identifies emerging technologies and creates innovative architecture models, engineering practices, and industry-leading solutions that influence the future direction of the organization and advance the broader observability and middleware profession.

Operating with substantial autonomy, the role advises senior executives on technology strategy, enterprise risk, platform investments, and long-term capability development. The position represents the organization externally with technology providers, professional communities, industry forums, and strategic partners and is recognized as a leading authority in the field.

Here’s a summary of what Princess is looking for in a Principal Enterprise Architect. Is this you? 

Responsibilities:

Global Enterprise Architecture and Strategy

• Define, own, and materially shape the long-term global strategy, target-state architecture, and innovation roadmap for enterprise observability, application performance monitoring, middleware, integration, and telemetry capabilities.

• Serve as the organization’s highest technical authority for these disciplines, establishing mandatory architecture principles, enterprise standards, reference architectures, governance requirements, and investment priorities.

• Translate enterprise business strategy, operational priorities, and emerging industry developments into multiyear technology strategies that shape the future direction of mission-critical platforms and services.

• Determine the objectives and architectural direction for the organization’s most complex technology assignments and independently design innovative solutions where established methods or industry precedent do not exist.

• Advise senior executives on significant technology investments, strategic risks, emerging capabilities, and decisions affecting the long-term reliability, resilience, scalability, and competitiveness of the business.

• Represent the organization as an external thought leader through strategic technology partnerships, professional forums, industry working groups, and relationships with leading technology providers.

• Create and promote innovative architecture practices and technology capabilities that establish new standards for the organization and contribute to the advancement of the observability, middleware, and enterprise architecture professions.

Advanced Performance Monitoring and Observability

• Set the global architectural direction for enterprise APM, digital experience monitoring, infrastructure monitoring, network observability, log management, distributed tracing, analytics, and operational intelligence.

• Lead the design and evolution of a unified, enterprise-wide observability ecosystem spanning hybrid cloud, multicloud, on-premises, shipboard, shoreside, containerized, and distributed application environments.

• Establish enterprise policies and standards for telemetry architecture, service-level indicators, service-level objectives, performance engineering, data retention, event correlation, predictive analytics, and automated remediation.

• Direct the architectural response to the organization’s most complex and consequential reliability and performance challenges, including issues that cross multiple technology disciplines, business units, platforms, and geographic environments.

• Pioneer the application of artificial intelligence, machine learning, automation, and predictive analytics to identify emerging risks, prevent service disruption, accelerate root cause identification, and improve global operational resilience.

• Ensure observability capabilities are embedded as foundational architectural requirements within cloud engineering, platform engineering, Infrastructure-as-Code, DevSecOps, and CI/CD practices.

Middleware, Integration, and Event-Driven Architecture

• Define the global target-state architecture and strategic roadmap for middleware, messaging, event streaming, API management, enterprise integration, and service-mesh technologies supporting the organization’s most critical business services.

• Establish mandatory enterprise architecture patterns for highly available, scalable, secure, and resilient integration services across business-critical and customer-facing environments.

• Lead major modernization initiatives that transform legacy middleware and integration environments into cloud-native, API-led, and event-driven technology ecosystems.

• Determine the architectural approach for complex cross-platform integration challenges where solutions require the creation of new methods, models, or technical standards.

• Govern platform lifecycle, technology selection, vendor strategy, architectural exceptions, and long-range investment decisions for enterprise middleware and integration capabilities.

• Influence strategic product roadmaps with technology vendors and partners to ensure future capabilities address the organization’s global operational and architectural requirements.

Enterprise Innovation and Industry Thought Leadership

• Establish and lead the global innovation agenda for observability, performance engineering, middleware, integration, and operational intelligence.

• Identify emerging technologies, theories, and engineering practices with the potential to fundamentally improve business resilience, guest experience, operational performance, and technology economics.

• Develop original architecture models, frameworks, and engineering approaches that address challenges for which external leading practices or established precedents are insufficient.

• Serve as a recognized external thought leader and organizational spokesperson in the discipline, sharing architecture perspectives and innovative practices with industry forums, professional bodies, technology partners, and peer organizations.

• Build strategic relationships with leading technology companies, research organizations, and professional networks to influence product direction, promote innovation, and advance industry practices.

• Maintain the organization’s position at the forefront of global observability, middleware, and enterprise architecture capabilities.

Leadership of Global Multidisciplinary Initiatives

• Lead the organization’s largest and most strategically significant multidisciplinary architecture programs and initiatives, with material impact across brands, business units, countries, technology domains, and operational environments.

• Provide authoritative technical direction to senior architects, engineering leaders, cybersecurity specialists, application teams, cloud teams, infrastructure teams, vendors, and external strategic partners.

• Mobilize and align multidisciplinary stakeholders around complex architecture decisions where priorities, technical perspectives, business requirements, and risk tolerances may conflict.

• Exercise enterprise-level decision authority through architecture governance forums, including approval or rejection of material architecture designs, technology selections, standards exceptions, and platform strategies.

• Establish formal professional networks and communities of practice that advance technical capability, architecture maturity, innovation, and succession depth across the organization.

• Mentor senior technical leaders and recognized experts while defining expectations for professional excellence within the discipline.

Business Impact, Risk, and Investment

• Shape multiyear technology investment strategies and portfolio priorities for enterprise observability, middleware, integration, telemetry, and associated platform capabilities.

• Evaluate and communicate the global business implications of complex architecture decisions, including impacts on guest experience, business continuity, operational resilience, cybersecurity, regulatory compliance, technology cost, and strategic agility.

• Proactively identify systemic risks and future technology constraints that could materially affect the management, direction, or long-term performance of the business.

• Provide independent recommendations to senior executives regarding major investments, technology adoption, enterprise risk acceptance, vendor strategy, and platform modernization.

• Define measurable enterprise outcomes for reliability, resilience, performance, automation, and operational maturity and hold multidisciplinary initiatives accountable for achieving those outcomes.

• Negotiate critical technical and commercial matters with strategic technology providers and materially influence enterprise policies, technology standards, and investment decisions.

Knowledge & Skills:

• Scope: The Principal Enterprise Architect, Advanced Performance Monitoring and Middleware is the highest-level professional individual contributor and recognized technical authority for observability, application performance monitoring, middleware, integration platforms, event-driven architecture, and operational telemetry. The role has global scope across a complex, multinational technology environment and establishes the strategy, standards, target-state architectures, governance requirements, and innovation priorities that guide these capabilities across brands, business units, countries, shipboard operations, shoreside operations, cloud platforms, on-premises environments, and external technology ecosystems. Decisions made by this role shape multiyear technology investments, enterprise platform strategies, architecture policies, and the reliability and resilience of mission-critical business services. The role leads the largest multidisciplinary initiatives within its area of specialization and exercises enterprise influence through technical authority, architecture governance, executive advisory responsibilities, external thought leadership, and strategic relationships with technology providers and industry organizations.

• Problem Solving: The role independently identifies and resolves the organization’s most complex, ambiguous, and unprecedented architecture and technology challenges, including matters with significant implications for business direction, global operations, guest experience, enterprise risk, and long-term technology investment. Solutions frequently cannot be derived from established practices or existing precedent. The role is expected to apply first-principles thinking, broad multidisciplinary expertise, advanced analytical judgment, and original innovation to create new architecture models, engineering methods, and enterprise standards. The Principal Enterprise Architect anticipates systemic risks and future technology constraints before they become operational issues; reconciles conflicting requirements across technology, security, business, regulatory, and operational stakeholders; and determines strategic solutions where available information is incomplete, and the consequences of decisions extend across multiple brands, platforms, geographies, and business functions.

• Impact: The role has significant, long-term impact on the strategic direction, operational resilience, technology economics, and digital capabilities of a complex global business. Architecture decisions and standards established by this position influence the performance, availability, scalability, security, and continuity of mission-critical services supporting guest-facing, shipboard, shoreside, and corporate operations. The role materially influences multiyear investment decisions, global modernization programs, technology-provider strategies, enterprise risk posture, and the adoption of emerging capabilities. Its innovations create new organizational capabilities and are expected to influence leading practices beyond immediate organization. The position’s recommendations are relied upon by senior executives and technology leaders when making decisions with broad financial, operational, strategic, and reputational implications.

• Leadership: The Principal Enterprise Architect leads through recognized expertise, strategic vision, architecture authority, and organizational influence. Although the position has no direct reports, it provides authoritative direction to senior architects, engineers, technology leaders, vendors, and multidisciplinary teams working across organizational and geographic boundaries. The role leads the organization’s largest and most strategically significant initiatives within its disciplines, creates alignment among senior stakeholders with competing priorities, and negotiates critical architecture, investment, risk, and policy matters. It chairs or provides final technical authority within relevant architecture governance forums and establishes the standards by which enterprise solutions are evaluated. The role also serves as a key external spokesperson for the organization, builds formal professional networks, influences strategic technology partners, and advances the organization’s reputation and capabilities within the broader technology profession.

For all roles:

• Knowledge: Understanding of workplace policies and procedures / Familiarity with team collaboration tools and techniques.

• Skills: Strong time management and organizational skills

• Abilities: Ability to maintain reliable and consistent attendance / Capacity to be punctual and meet deadlines / Ability to collaborate effectively with colleagues and work as part of a team / Demonstrated professionalism in all interactions and tasks.

• Problem solving: Handles complex, high-stakes guest issues requiring rapid, independent decision-making and creative solutions. Balances company interests with guest satisfaction, often under time-sensitive and high-pressure conditions.

• Impact: Directly influences guest satisfaction metrics (NPS), financial outcomes, and company reputation. Sets precedents for future guest relations and compensation practices

• Leadership: Provides leadership and guidance to both shipboard and shoreside teams during incidents. Manages cross-departmental collaboration and ensures consistent implementation of senior leadership directives

Essential/Minimum Qualifications:

Essential qualifications and experience

• Demonstrated success defining enterprise technology strategy and leading large, multidisciplinary transformations with impact across business units, geographic regions, and technology domains.

• Demonstrated record of creating innovative architecture solutions, frameworks, or engineering practices for complex problems where established precedent was unavailable or insufficient.

• Recognized thought leadership within the observability, middleware, integration, performance engineering, or enterprise architecture profession.

• Experience advising senior executives and influencing material technology investments, enterprise policies, platform strategies, and risk decisions.

• Experience representing an organization with strategic vendors, professional bodies, industry forums, or external technology communities.

Preferred qualifications

• Relevant advanced certifications in enterprise architecture, cloud architecture, Kubernetes, observability, middleware, or performance engineering.

• Published thought leadership, professional presentations, standards contributions, patents, recognized innovations, or leadership in relevant industry communities.

Essential experience required:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or related field.

• 12+ years of experience in enterprise infrastructure, application architecture, middleware engineering, or performance monitoring.

• 15+ years of experience in enterprise architecture or senior technical leadership roles.

• Deep expertise in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and observability platforms.

• Extensive experience designing and supporting enterprise middleware environments.

• Strong understanding of distributed systems, networking, cloud architecture, and system performance optimization.

• Experience with enterprise-scale monitoring, logging, alerting, and telemetry platforms.

• Proven ability to lead large-scale technology transformation initiatives.

Preferred qualifications

• Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related discipline.

Travel: Less than 25% non-shipboard travel likely

Work Conditions:  Work primarily in a climate-controlled environment with minimal safety/health hazard potential.

Physical Demands: Work beyond normal business hours or on weekends may be required occasionally to support business needs, projects, or operations.

**This position is classified as “hybrid.”  As an in-office role, it requires employees to work from a designated Princess location Mondays through Thursdays.  On Fridays you can work from home.

Princess provides comprehensive and innovative benefits to meet your needs, including:

What You Can Expect

• Cruise and Travel Privileges for You and Your Family 
• Health Benefits 
• 401(k)  
• Employee Stock Purchase Plan  
• Training & Professional Development 
• Tuition & Professional Certification Reimbursement 
• Rewards & Incentives  

Our Culture… Stronger Together

Our highest responsibility and top priority is compliance, environmental protection and the health, safety and well-being of our guests, the people in the communities we touch and serve, and our shipboard and shoreside employees.  Please visit our site to learn more about our Culture Essentials, Corporate Vision Statement and our Core Values at: princess.com/en-us/company-information

Princess is an equal-opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances. 

Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)

Princess will provide reasonable accommodation with the application process, upon your request, as required to comply with applicable laws.  If you have a disability and require assistance in this application process, please contact careers@carnival.com. 

#PCL 

#LI-Hybrid

#LI-GS1