Solution Architect

Position Title:Solution Architect

Position Type: Regular - Full-Time

Requisition ID: 44959

ROLE PURPOSE

The HR Solution Architect operates at the intersection of HR strategy, process and experience design, enterprise data, and technology architecture. The role is the discipline-keeper for how HR ideas become solutions, ensuring that decisions begin with a clearly defined business problem and are evaluated through a consistent, evidence-based solutioning approach.

This role evaluates the full range of pathways, including process redesign, native SaaS capability, AI agents and automation, enterprise data platforms, API integration, custom applications, and hybrid approaches. It is platform-agnostic and vendor-neutral, with accountability for recommending solutions that are valuable, scalable, secure, responsible, human-centered, and aligned with enterprise standards.

The HR Solution Architect is a bridge role, not a platform administrator and not a pure enterprise architect. The role translates business needs into end-to-end workflows and architecture choices, builds the case for the recommended approach, and guides the solution through architecture, data, security, privacy, legal, and delivery governance. The role must communicate with equal credibility in an HR leadership discussion and a technical architecture review.

Guiding principle: Start with the business problem and the work to be redesigned, not the technology.

CORE RESPONSIBILITIES

PROBLEM-FIRST SOLUTION DESIGN

Lead structured discovery, blueprinting, and solution design engagements that define the business problem, intended outcomes, user needs, process constraints, data needs, and value measures before identifying technology options.

Evaluate process redesign, native SaaS capability, AI or agentic solutions, enterprise data platforms, custom applications, integrations, and hybrid approaches using a consistent framework for fit, value, risk, complexity, security, data readiness, and change impact.

Create clear solution recommendations, decision records, target-state designs, and business cases that explain why the selected path is preferred and what trade-offs were considered.

DYNAMIC WORK AND EXPERIENCE DESIGN

Analyze HR services and workflows end to end before recommending technology.

Map employee, candidate, manager, HR, and shared-service experiences across process steps, handoffs, channels, decisions, controls, and data flows.

Distinguish work that requires human judgment, empathy, accountability, or exception handling from work suited to automation or AI-led execution.

Design human-in-the-loop controls and escalation paths, especially where outcomes may materially affect employees or candidates.

AI SOLUTIONING, EXPERIMENTATION, AND ORCHESTRATION

Assess AI opportunities across HR with practical rigor and responsible experimentation.

Determine whether a use case is best addressed through human-process redesign, embedded HCM AI, enterprise AI capabilities, third-party agents, internally developed agents, or a combination.

Define time-boxed proofs of concept with explicit success measures, data boundaries, security reviews, user validation, monitoring, and exit criteria before broader deployment.

Evaluate agent behavior and solution risks, including incorrect or fabricated outputs, bias, confidentiality, inappropriate autonomy, control failure, and performance drift.

Design how agents, applications, people, and data services work together across an end-to-end HR experience.

INTEGRATION AND INTERFACE ARCHITECTURE

Own and evolve the integrated architecture for HR applications, data services, APIs, interfaces, events, automations, and agents.

Define solution patterns for secure interoperability, data exchange, orchestration, exception handling, observability, and lifecycle management.

Ensure proposals align with enterprise architecture, cyber security, privacy, identity, integration, infrastructure, and data standards.

Promote reusable interfaces and services that reduce duplication, point-to-point complexity, and vendor lock-in.

HR DATA GOVERNANCE AND RESPONSIBLE AI

Be a core architecture voice for protection and responsible use of employee and candidate data.

Embed privacy, security, data minimization, access control, retention, transparency, auditability, and regulatory requirements into solution design from the start.

Partner across HR, Data, IT, Cyber Security, Privacy, Legal, Risk, and Ethics to establish decision rights and ongoing governance for AI-enabled HR solutions.

Treat data quality, lineage, completeness, representativeness, and permitted use as prerequisites for AI and analytics deployment.

Ensure appropriate human review for high-impact HR decisions, including pay, performance, employment, discipline, and workforce actions.

CROSS-DISCIPLINE ARCHITECTURE PARTNERSHIP

Act as the HR architecture partner to enterprise, security, data, integration, infrastructure, solution, and platform architects.

Represent HR requirements in the design of enterprise AI platforms, data products, integration services, identity models, and technology standards.

Participate in the Architecture Review Board and other governance forums, translating HR needs into architecture language and enterprise requirements into practical HR solution choices.

Enable product managers and delivery teams to design solutions that are extensible, reusable, secure, compliant, reliable, cost-conscious, operationally effective, and performant.

BUSINESS TRANSLATION AND STAKEHOLDER PARTNERSHIP

Turn complex architecture choices into clear business language and decision-ready narratives.

Facilitate working sessions with HR leaders, centers of excellence, product managers, business users, technology teams, and vendors.

Explain the reason for a recommendation, expected value, data implications, risks, change impact, dependencies, and decision points in a way that supports informed leadership choices.

Use active listening, structured diagnosis, and influence without authority to navigate competing priorities and perspectives.

ARCHITECTURE EVOLUTION AND PORTFOLIO ROADMAPPING

Maintain a current and future view of HR solution architecture aligned to HR strategy, product roadmaps, enterprise technology direction, and the evolving AI landscape.

Monitor the current portfolio for aging technology, fragmented experiences, control gaps, duplication, weak interoperability, unmet business needs, and opportunities to simplify.

Maintain architecture documentation covering business capabilities, experiences, processes, applications, data, integrations, agents, standards, risks, and transition roadmaps in approved portfolio tools.

Monitor market and vendor direction without allowing a vendor roadmap to substitute for McCain business strategy or architecture judgment.

KEY QUALIFICATIONS AND CAPABILITIES

EXPERIENCE AND EDUCATION (REQUIRED)

15+ years of progressive experience in HR technology, enterprise technology, solution architecture, product management, technical consulting, or a closely related field, including delivery of large-scale or complex solutions.

5+ years of combined experience shaping solution architecture, technical roadmaps, enterprise designs, or cross-platform technology strategies.

Relevant degree or equivalent practical experience.

TECHNICAL AND ARCHITECTURE ACUMEN (REQUIRED)

Demonstrated experience across cloud, API and event design, integration architecture, data engineering fundamentals, identity and security principles, and AI or automation platforms.

Understanding of enterprise integration patterns, including REST APIs, event-driven integration, middleware, data pipelines, and emerging approaches for agent interoperability.

Ability to develop conceptual and logical architectures and evaluate solutions at design level. Software engineering depth is useful but not required.

Knowledge of solution delivery methods, including agile, DevOps, incremental delivery, p

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