Principal Digital Architect (Autonomy)

Career Area:

Job Description:

Your Work Shapes the World at Caterpillar Inc.

When you join Caterpillar, you're joining a global team who cares not just about the work we do – but also about each other.  We are the makers, problem solvers, and future world builders who are creating stronger, more sustainable communities. We don't just talk about progress and innovation here – we make it happen, with our customers, where we work and live. Together, we are building a better world, so we can all enjoy living in it.

Job Summary:
We are the Platform Architecture team responsible for defining, evolving, and governing the architecture of large-scale, mission-critical digital platforms that enable and support key business capabilities.

As a Principal Digital Architect for the Autonomy Program, you will lead the design of end-to-end technical solutions that power autonomous equipment and systems, bridging the digital and physical worlds. You will be accountable for architecting scalable, secure, and resilient platforms that integrate edge, embedded, and cloud technologies.

In this role, you will work extensively with diverse sensor and telemetry data streams—including images, LiDAR, and other real-time signals—to enable perception, decision-making, and control systems for autonomous operations. You will collaborate across engineering, data science, and product teams to translate business objectives into robust technical architectures and ensure alignment with enterprise standards.

Core Responsibilities:

• Own and define solution and platform architectures for large‑scale, distributed systems from concept through production.
• Create architecture that meets high standards for scalability, performance, resilience, and security.
• Partner closely with business leaders, product owners, engineering managers, and delivery teams to ensure architectural alignment with business outcomes.
• Assess, select, and introduce new technologies, including proof‑of‑concept development and architectural spikes.
• Establish and enforce architectural standards, patterns, and best practices across platform teams.
• Provide architectural guidance and mentorship to engineering teams, ensuring high‑quality implementation.
• Ensure solutions meet security, compliance, and regulatory requirements.
• Produce and maintain clear architecture documentation, including rationale and trade‑offs.
• Continuously evolve platform architecture to improve developer productivity, system reliability, and cost efficiency.

What You Will Have:

• Architectural Thinking: Ability to decompose complex problem spaces and develop pragmatic architecture options with clearly articulated trade‑offs.
• Technical Leadership: Influence without authority; guide teams through architectural decisions and implementation challenges.
• Communication: Clearly articulate complex technical concepts to both technical and non‑technical stakeholders.
• Requirements Analysis: Translate business and non‑functional requirements into scalable technical designs.
• Platform & Application Architecture: Strong foundation in designing modern application and platform architectures using established patterns and standards

Consideration for top candidates:

• Experience architecting real-time, high-throughput data pipelines for low-latency decision systems using streaming platforms and event-driven patterns.
• Experience designing architectures that process and filter high-volume sensor or telemetry data across edge and cloud environments.
• Experience designing closed-loop systems where real-time data ingestion drives continuous decisioning and feedback into the system.
• Strong understanding of temporal and spatial data modeling, including time-series processing and geospatial data handling.
• Experience designing systems that support simulation, testing, and validation of autonomous behaviors at scale
• Strong programming background in Python and Java, with the ability to reason at code level.
• Proven experience designing and building enterprise‑scale, distributed systems.
• Hands‑on experience with cloud‑native architectures, including AWS services, containerization, and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Deep understanding of data architecture: SQL and NoSQL databases, data warehouses (Snowflake specifically), data modeling, replication, and sharding
• Strong API design experience (REST, GraphQL, gRPC), including versioning and documentation.

Additional Details:

• This position requires the candidate to be based in either Chicago, IL or Peoria, IL
• Relocation assistance is NOT available for this position
• Visa sponsorship is NOT available with this position.

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Summary Pay Range:

Compensation and benefits offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factors, job level, market location, job-related knowledge, skills, individual performance and experience. Please note that salary is only one component of total compensation at Caterpillar. 

Benefits:

Subject to plan eligibility, terms, and guidelines. This is a summary list of benefits.

• Medical, dental, and vision benefits*

• Paid time off plan (Vacation, Holidays, Volunteer, etc.)*

• 401(k) savings plans*

• Health Savings Account (HSA)*

• Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs)*

• Health Lifestyle Programs*

• Employee Assistance Program*

• Voluntary Benefits and Employee Discounts*

• Career Development*

• Incentive bonus*

• Disability benefits

• Life Insurance

• Parental leave

• Adoption benefits

• Tuition Reimbursement

* These benefits also apply to part-time employees

Posting Dates:

Any offer of employment is conditioned upon the successful completion of a drug screen.

Caterpillar is an Equal Opportunity Employer, Including Veterans and Individuals with Disabilities.  Qualified applicants of any age are encouraged to apply.

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