Principal Automation Engineer

PLEASE NOTE: Bitovi has been engaged by Avalara to lead initial and technical interviews for this role. While Bitovi will conduct the early rounds, the final interview and hiring decision will be made by Avalara directly.

What You'll Do

Role Summary

As Avalara continues to scale its AI-first enterprise systems, workflows, and automation footprint, we must ensure our AI automation and transformation architecture is intentional, governed, and built for long-term scale. This role exists to define and drive enterprise architecture for AI automation and business transformation, reduce fragmentation across workflow, agent, and integration solutions, and enable faster, more reliable delivery of automation initiatives that support business growth and operational excellence.

This is a senior individual contributor lead role responsible for shaping scalable AI automation architectures, improving solution resilience and governance, and ensuring platform strategy supports measurable business outcomes across the company. This role will work extensively with business stakeholders, AI Automation engineers and BSAs to turn business transformation opportunities into durable, enterprise-grade architectural patterns.

How This Role Elevates Avalara

This role directly strengthens Avalara's enterprise AI automation and transformation ecosystem by increasing architectural rigor, scalability, reuse, and long-term sustainability across business workflows, platforms, and enterprise systems.

This Principal Solution Architect will:

• Improve operational efficiency, resilience, and process quality by establishing scalable AI automation architecture standards and governance guardrails
• Accelerate transformation delivery and reduce rework through clear design frameworks, decision models, and reusable automation patterns
• Enhance employee and customer experience by reducing manual work, process fragmentation, and automation risk
• Embed AI-first architectural practices that improve automation scale, decision quality, and measurable business outcomes

Bar Raiser Expectations

As a Bar Raiser, this role is expected to elevate the performance of the organization — not simply maintain it. This includes:

• Holding high standards for architectural clarity, quality, and accountability
• Using data and measurable impact to guide enterprise technical decisions
• Simplifying complex, cross-system and cross-workflow challenges into scalable and sustainable designs
• Guiding AI Automation Engineers, BSAs, and solution designers to raise automation maturity and talent density
• Challenging assumptions respectfully and improving execution rigor across teams
• Leaving every system, process, and architectural framework stronger than it was before

This role does not only design solutions — it improves how the organization thinks about, governs, and executes AI automation and transformation at scale.

What Your Responsibilities Will Be

Integration Strategy & Platform Governance

• Lead evaluation of AI automation, agentic workflow, and transformation initiatives across the organization
• Define architectural decision frameworks and long-term platform strategy for n8n, Boomi, APIs, event-driven orchestration, and AI services to reduce duplication and increase reuse
• Establish governance guardrails for AI-enabled workflows, agents, prompts, models, data flows, and human-in-the-loop controls to ensure scalability, reliability, auditability, and responsible use
• Anticipate growth, compliance, security, and operational risks across automation platforms and transformation programs before they materialize
• Influence cross-functional roadmaps with AI Automation Engineers, BSAs, and business leaders based on architectural trade-offs, platform fit, and measurable outcomes

Enterprise Solution Architecture

• Translate enterprise capability needs into clear, implementable technical designs that accelerate AI automation delivery
• Create architectural blueprints for intelligent workflows, agentic process patterns, and cross-system orchestration that reduce ambiguity and minimize rework
• Design secure, scalable, and resilient automation patterns across SaaS systems, internal platforms, APIs, data ecosystems, and AI/ML services
• Drive API-first, event-driven, and human-in-the-loop architecture standards that improve interoperability, control, and long-term maintainability
• Lead architecture reviews and represent AI automation and transformation strategy in executive and cross-functional forums

Cross-Functional Technical collaboration

• Partner across business, platform, data, security, and engineering functions to create shared clarity from concept through execution for transformation initiatives
• Work closely with AI Automation Engineers and BSAs to turn business process opportunities into governed, implementation-ready automation architectures
• Communicate trade-offs, sequencing, and architectural decisions using data, business impact, risk, and cost considerations
• Solve ambiguous, high-complexity challenges spanning workflows, systems, AI agents, process controls, and enterprise change

Standards, Scalability & Operational Excellence

• Define enterprise standards, reference architectures, documentation templates, and best practices for AI automation and transformation initiatives
• Establish performance, reliability, observability, and cost-management benchmarks for deterministic and AI-enabled workflows
• Reduce automation and architectural debt through proactive platform direction, reusable patterns, and rationalization of fragmented solutions
• Improve resilience, scalability, governance, and long-term maintainability across automation platforms and cross-functional process architectures

Mentorship & Organizational Impact

• Provide architectural oversight on high-impact AI automation and business transformation initiatives
• Mentor AI Automation Engineers, BSAs, and solution designers, raising overall automation architecture maturity and cross-functional execution quality
• Guide contractor and vendor alignment to enterprise standards for automation, agentic workflows, governance, and platform use
• Elevate organizational AI automation capability through durable architectural principles, reusable patterns, and clear decision frameworks

12-Month Success Signals

Within the first 12 months, this role will have:

• Established documented architectural decision frameworks adopted across major AI automation and transformation initiatives
• Reduced automation-related rework, architectural escalations, or solution fragmentation across cross-functional programs
• Standardized AI-enabled orchestration, API-first, event-driven, and human-in-the-loop patterns across new enterprise initiatives
• Implemented measurable governance, observability, and cost-management standards for automation platforms and AI-enabled workflows
• Influenced platform and solution decisions that improve scalability, business value, and long-term cost efficiency
• Elevated architectural rigor and alignment across business, BSA, and AI Automation Engineering teams

What You'll Need to be Successful

AI Expectations

As an AI-first company, Avalara expects this role to embed AI into architectural strategy and delivery.

This role will:

• Design and govern AI-enabled automation patterns, agentic workflows, and transformation architectures that improve speed, scale, and decision quality
• Evaluate and incorporate AI-driven orchestration, prompt and model governance, and human-in-the-loop decision frameworks into enterprise architecture
• Use AI tools to improve architectural documentation, process analysis, impact assessment, and scenario modeling
• Identify AI opportunities tied to measurable business outcomes (efficiency, cycle-time reduction, reliability, employee experience, customer impact, risk reduction)
• Apply AI responsibly, with attention to governance, security, compliance, auditability, and cost control

Demonstrating applied AI impact — not casual familiarity — is required.

What You Bring

• B.S. in Computer Science or Engineering (required)
• 10+ years of experience in solution, enterprise, or platform architecture roles
• Strong hands-on experience with modern automation and integration platforms (iPaaS and workflow orchestration tools)
• Experience architecting for platforms such as n8n, Boomi or similar platforms like mulesoft/workato, or comparable automation ecosystems
• Experience designing AI-enabled, API-driven, and event-based architectures for enterprise workflows and transformation initiatives
• Deep understanding of automation patterns, middleware, data transformation, agent orchestration, and human-in-the-loop workflow design
• Strong knowledge of REST, webhooks, OAuth, SSO, API security, and governance best practices for AI-enabled systems
• Experience with cloud-native architectures and AI/ML services (AWS, Azure, or GCP)
• Proven ability to influence enterprise-wide technical direction and partner effectively with AI Automation Engineers, BSAs, and cross-functional leaders

Pay Range Details

The base pay range(s) below are provided in compliance with state specific laws. Pay ranges may be different in other locations.

Colorado $153,300-$203,100 (annually)

Washington $153,300-$279,600 (annually)

California $153,300-$306,300 (annually)

NYC $185,500-$306,300 (annually)

The pay range above is the general base pay range for a successful candidate in the state listed. The successful candidate's actual salary/wage may be based on various factors, such as geographic location, candidate experience and qualifications, as well as market and business considerations. This role is eligible for an annual bonus based on individual and company performance, depending on the terms of the applicable plan and the employee's role.

Avalara is an AI-first Company

AI is embedded in our workflows, decision-making, and products.  Success here requires embracing AI as an essential capability.

• You’ll bring experience using AI and AI-related technologies, ready to thrive here.

• You’ll apply AI every day to business challenges - improving efficiency, contributing solutions, and driving results for your team, our company, and our customers.

• You’ll grow with AI by staying curious about new trends and best practices, and by sharing what you learn so others can benefit too.

How We'll Take Care of You

Total Rewards 

In addition to a great compensation package, paid time off, and paid parental leave, many Avalara employees are eligible for bonuses. 

Health & Wellness 
Benefits vary by location but generally include private medical, life, and disability insurance. 

Inclusive culture and diversity 
Avalara strongly supports diversity, equity, and inclusion, and is committed to integrating them into our business practices and our organizational culture. We also have a total of 8 employee-run resource groups, each with senior leadership and exec sponsorship. 

What You Need To Know About Avalara

We’re defining the relationship between tax and tech.

We’ve already built an industry-leading cloud compliance platform, processing over 54 billion customer API calls and over 6.6 million tax returns a year. Our growth is real - we're a billion dollar business - and we’re not slowing down until we’ve achieved our mission - to be part of every transaction in the world.

We’re bright, innovative, and disruptive, like the orange we love to wear. It captures our quirky spirit and optimistic mindset. It shows off the culture we’ve designed, that empowers our people to win. We’ve been different from day one. Join us, and your career will be too.

We’re An Equal Opportunity Employer

Supporting diversity and inclusion is a cornerstone of our company — we don’t want people to fit into our culture, but to enrich it. All qualified candidates will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, age, gender, national orientation, disability, sexual orientation, US Veteran status, or any other factor protected by law. If you require any reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, please let us know.