Job Description
What You'll Do Avalara is an AI-first company. As AI continues to transform Sales, Service, Legal, Finance, and IT, we must ensure our AI capabilities are architected responsibly, securely, and at enterprise scale. The Principal Enterprise AI & Platform Architect defines and governs Avalara’s AI enablement architecture across customer-facing systems, internal operational platforms, and core enterprise technologies including Salesforce, ServiceNow, Finance platforms, Legal systems, and supporting infrastructure. This strategic, cross-functional leadership role translates enterprise AI ambition into operational architecture standards and reusable design patterns. It ensures AI is not deployed as isolated use cases, but embedded into enterprise platforms through scalable integration patterns, governed data foundations, interoperable services, and economically viable models that drive measurable business outcomes. By aligning AI initiatives to clear value creation, reducing redundancy, enabling platform interoperability, and ensuring compliance across regulated workflows, this role protects Avalara’s operational integrity while accelerating AI-driven productivity, efficiency, and revenue impact. What Your Responsibilities Will Be How This Role Elevates Avalara For the Business Enables AI adoption tied directly to revenue growth, operational efficiency, and risk reduction. Reduces duplication of AI initiatives across functions. Ensures AI investments scale across multiple domains. For the Customer Improves customer experience through responsible AI in Sales and Service. Reduces operational friction via automation and predictive insights. Maintains trust through explainable, compliant AI systems. For the Enterprise Establishes AI governance guardrails. Improves platform leverage across Salesforce, ServiceNow, Finance, Legal, and IT systems. Reduces shadow AI and ungoverned experimentation. Key Responsibilities Enterprise Platform & Functional Architecture Own the architectural integrity of enterprise back-office domains including Legal, Finance, IT (ServiceNow), and supporting operational platforms. Define and maintain target-state architecture across enterprise systems to ensure scalability, durability, interoperability, and economic efficiency. Rationalize overlapping tooling and reduce platform redundancy across corporate systems. Establish reusable integration patterns between enterprise systems and core platforms (Salesforce, ServiceNow, ERP, data platforms). Ensure architectural consistency across regulated workflows (contract lifecycle, financial controls, internal IT operations, compliance-driven processes). Partner with Domain Architects to align value stream strategies with enterprise platform capabilities. Operational Architecture & Governance Define architectural standards for system design, integration, data flow, workflow automation, and control mechanisms. Ensure enterprise platforms meet security, compliance, auditability, and financial control requirements. Document architecture decisions and maintain enterprise reference models. Participate in architecture review boards and enforce cross-domain standards. Reduce technical debt and prevent shadow systems within corporate domains. AI Governance & Risk Management Define explainability, traceability, and audit standards for AI-enabled workflows. Ensure AI systems meet security, privacy, regulatory, and financial control requirements. Partner with Legal, Security, Risk, and Compliance teams to establish responsible AI guardrails. Establish architectural review criteria for AI initiatives before production deployment. Ensure AI-enabled processes preserve governance integrity across regulated back-office domains. AI Enablement Within Enterprise Platforms Embed AI capabilities into enterprise systems where they improve measurable operational outcomes. Integrate AI solutions through governed data foundations and reusable enterprise patterns. Align AI initiatives to economic viability, risk posture, and enterprise platform standards. Prevent isolated, duplicative, or unmanaged AI deployments across domains. AI-Driven Operational Impact Enable AI Use Cases That Measurably Improve Sales productivity Case resolution efficiency Legal review cycle time Finance exception handling IT ticket resolution automation Quantify AI performance impact (cost savings, time reduction, quality improvement). Ensure AI improves decision quality and