Distinguished Architect, Building Design Products

Position Overview: Distinguished Architect, Building Design Products

Autodesk is revolutionizing the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry by helping customers achieve sustainability, adopt outcome-based design, create digital twins, and more. We are re-imagining our applications with advanced cloud-native capabilities, including data at scale, edge computing, AI-based solutions, and cutting-edge 3D modeling and graphics. This transformation applies to flagship products like Revit, an industry-leading building information model software used globally, as well as tools for structural analysis, detailing, MEP fabrication, and sustainability analysis.

This role supports Autodesk’s hybrid-first approach, with a location option of Remote United States or Hybrid.

We are seeking a Distinguished Architect, Building Design Products to establish the technical vision for the Building Design product portfolio, lead a team of Software Architects, and coordinate across the broader AEC portfolio and Autodesk. Your primary responsibility will be to create a compelling technical vision and a strategic roadmap to deliver significant customer value and achieve business outcomes. This involves managing a diverse portfolio of products at various stages of their lifecycle and strategizing their future evolution. Your leadership will be instrumental in fostering core technologies that empower the AEC industry to build a better, more sustainable world.

Responsibilities

Technical Vision & Strategy

• Synthesize and communicate a compelling technical vision covering desktop computing evolution, data strategy, scalable distributed computation, and AI technologies, while devising pragmatic, incremental plans.
• Apply architectural and system knowledge to influence strategy, planning, and execution.
• Take direct accountability for technology decisions and drive decision-making among architects and stakeholders.
• Lead efforts to build secure, private systems meeting reliability, performance, and operational goals.
• Drive re-use of platform capabilities and contribute to the Autodesk platform.

Architectural Design & Standards

• Define and evolve components, relationships, and governing principles for system architecture.
• Apply strong interface and data modeling design skills, focusing on coupling and cohesion.
• Ensure establishment and execution of standards for software design; define views, diagrams, and formalisms.
• Maintain expert, up-to-date knowledge of relevant architectural patterns and technologies.
• Create trustworthy technology by ensuring application and architecture performance, quality, and responsiveness.

Collaboration & Strategic Problem Solving

• Keep strategic priorities central, aligning architectural work to support goals.
• Collaborate with other software architects, product managers, and UX leaders on complex problems and system interactions.
• Consistently demonstrate sound technical judgment, soliciting feedback and weighing factors.
• Work with peers across Autodesk to understand technology landscape, articulate opportunities, and evangelize change.
• Maintain one-on-one relationships to understand challenges, articulate opportunities, and promote change.
• Lead or participate in company-wide technical working groups.

Communication & Knowledge Sharing

• Communicate effectively and proactively on technical topics to varied audiences, including executive leadership and customers.
• Write and speak internally on your work, with an option for external communications.
• Master complex ideas, conveying them concisely and impactfully.
• Possess excellent verbal, written communication, and presentation abilities for architectural strategy.
• Foster a culture of knowledge sharing among software architects and technical leaders.
• Play a leading role in Autodesk technical conferences and forums.
• Travel at least four times annually for conferences, forums, and team meetings.

People Leadership & Team Development

• Lead, inspire, coach, and manage a team of Software Architects across a global organization.
• Ensure cohesiveness and excellence in software architecture practice and technical excellence.
• Be a role model for internal stakeholder and customer communication, from strategy to alignment and challenging situations.
• Ensure self and team are recognized as trusted partners at all levels.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, or equivalent experience.
• Minimum 10 years as a software architect, with at least 5 years in cloud software.
• Track record of delivering desktop and cloud software across products and industries.
• Ability and desire to get things done without external deadlines or daily oversight.
• Proven ability to organize and delegate design and execution of large-scale systems.
• Sought out by other teams, leaders, and customers for expertise.
• Recognized for innovative work (patents, publications).
• Demonstrated ability to transform software architecture practices for groups of architects and engineers.

Preferred Qualifications

• Advanced degree in computer science.
• Experience transforming enterprise-level desktop applications to cloud.
• Experience leading or managing an architecture team.
• Experience in AI/ML.
• Industry expert and contributor to software architecture practice.
• Experience in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction industry.

Key skills/competency

• Software Architecture
• Cloud Computing
• AEC Industry
• Technical Vision
• Team Leadership
• Distributed Systems
• AI/ML
• Data Strategy
• 3D Modeling
• Desktop Transformation