Principal AI Business & Process Architect

Here at Discount Tire, we celebrate the spirit of our people with extraordinary pride and enthusiasm. Our business has been growing for over 60 years and now is one of the most exciting times in our history to join us. We continue to expand our footprint and invest heavily in modern digital platforms, data, and artificial intelligence to better serve our customers and team members. We promote from within across both our retail and corporate operations and are seeking talented individuals who are passionate about building innovative, scalable, and impactful technology solutions. 

Working independently and collaboratively, the Principal AI Business & Process Architect is responsible for envisioning, designing, and governing end‑to‑end business processes and operating models that are enhanced by AI. This role focuses on translating strategic business outcomes into measurable process improvements, architecting repeatable patterns for AI-enabled workflows, and ensuring solutions are secure, responsible, and production-ready. The ideal candidate brings strong business and process architecture judgment, deep experience with process modeling and transformation, and the ability to bridge business needs with advanced AI capabilities. 

This role will play a key part in accelerating enterprise adoption of Generative AI and Agents through the design of reliable, high-impact AI-enabled processes, controls, and governance practices across the organization. 

Essential Duties and Responsibilities: 

• Lead discovery and definition of AI-enabled business capabilities, value streams, and end-to-end processes; translate business problems into scalable process designs and measurable outcomes. 
• Define and maintain enterprise process architecture standards, reference models, and reusable patterns for AI-assisted and agent-based workflows. 
• Model current-state and future-state processes using industry-standard notation (e.g., Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN)) and ensure models are consumable by both business and technical stakeholders. 
• Engage stakeholders and support AI use‑case intake, assessment, and prioritization, evaluating proposals based on business value, feasibility, risk, and alignment to enterprise standards and goals. 
• Partner with architecture, product, UX, engineering, data, and platform teams to shape solution intent, requirements, and target architecture for AI-powered experiences (e.g., copilots, intelligent search, summarization, recommendations, and content generation). 
• Define AI workflow orchestration patterns (including human-in-the-loop controls), and guide implementation of AI-enabled services and APIs that support scalable operations. 
• Architect and govern information flows needed for AI use cases, including process-related data capture, event streams, and integration points across systems and teams. 
• Establish best practices for secure-by-design and responsible AI across process designs, including data privacy, model governance, prompt safety, and appropriate risk controls. 
• Apply recognized AI governance and risk management frameworks (e.g., NIST AI Risk Management Framework (AI RMF)) to process and operating-model decisions, ensuring risks and controls are mapped, measured, and managed. 
• Partner with change management, training, and communications teams to ensure process adoption, user readiness, and behavioral change. 
• Define operating rhythms and metrics (KPIs/OKRs) for AI process performance, adoption, quality, and benefits realization; support continuous improvement and optimization across the lifecycle. 
• Collaborate with platform teams to ensure AI solutions are operable at scale (monitoring, incident response, and continuous improvement) and aligned to architectural standards. 
• Participate in architecture reviews and stakeholder workshops; provide mentorship and technical leadership to analysts, architects, and delivery teams. 
• Stay current with emerging trends, patterns, and standards in AI, process architecture, and digital transformation and apply them where appropriate. 
• Other duties as assigned. 

Qualifications: 

• 7+ years of experience in business architecture, process architecture, enterprise transformation, or related disciplines with demonstrated outcomes in complex organizations. 
• 2+ years of experience designing or enabling AI/ML-powered capabilities (including Generative AI) in business workflows and operating models. 
• Strong understanding of modern AI solution patterns, including orchestration, inference, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and agent-based workflows (at the architectural and business-process level). 
• Proficiency in process modeling and analysis; ability to use a standard notation that bridges business design and implementation (e.g., BPMN). 
• Strong understanding of integration and enterprise solution patterns, including RESTful APIs, event-driven architectures, and microservices. 
• Familiarity with data concepts needed for AI and process insights, including structured/unstructured data, metadata, and governance considerations. 
• Knowledge of cloud platforms (AWS and/or Azure) and the ability to collaborate effectively with engineering teams building cloud-native capabilities. 
• Demonstrated experience applying risk, privacy, and responsible AI practices in solution and process design (including secure-by-design principles). 
• Strong communication skills with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders; ability to facilitate workshops and drive alignment. 
• High degree of ownership and accountability for delivered outcomes; strong time-management and organizational skills with the ability to balance multiple priorities. 
• Comfortable working in an agile, fast-paced environment. 
• Preferred Experience 
• Experience establishing or operating an AI management system aligned to standards such as ISO/IEC 42001 (policies, objectives, controls, and continual improvement). 
• Enterprise architecture background and familiarity with EA methods such as TOGAF (including the ability to align business/process architecture to domain and solution architecture). 
• Experience designing governance models for AI use cases, including intake, prioritization, benefit tracking, and lifecycle controls. 
• Experience with process improvement methodologies and certification-backed practices (e.g., Lean / Six Sigma), including measurable cycle-time, quality, and cost outcomes. 
• Familiarity with IT service management concepts and continuous improvement practices (e.g., ITIL 4 Foundation). 
• Experience mentoring architects/analysts and acting as a lead on complex, cross-functional initiatives. 
• Retail, e-commerce, or customer-facing digital platform experience. 

Educational Requirements: 

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience. 
• Advanced degrees or relevant professional certifications (TOGAF, CBPP, ITIL, Lean Six Sigma, and relevant AWS/Azure) are desirable. 

Work Days: 

Normal work days are Monday through Friday.  Occasional Saturdays and Sundays may be necessary. 

Work Hours: 

Normal work hours are 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.  Additional hours may be necessary. 

Discount Tire provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law. 

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