Software Platform Architect

DTE is one of the nation’s largest diversified energy companies. Our electric and gas companies have fueled our customer’s homes and Michigan’s progress for more than a century. And as Michigan’s largest source of renewable energy, we’re creating a cleaner, healthier environment to power our future. We’re also serving communities beyond Michigan, where our affiliated businesses offer renewable energy, emission control technologies, and energy services to industries in 19 states.

But we’re more than a leading energy company... and working at DTE is more than just a job. At DTE, we take great care of each other and our customers, and we use our energy to be a force for growth and prosperity in our communities. When you join us, you’ll be part of a team that welcomes, recognizes, and celebrates differences and values everyone’s health, safety, and wellbeing. Are you ready to make that kind of difference? Bring your energy to DTE. Together, we can achieve great things.

Testing Required: Not Applicable

Hybrid Role: This role is hybrid, with an established schedule of in-person work required at an assigned work location. Any remote work is expected to be performed from an employee’s primary residence, unless allowed (or prohibited) through the Company’s remote work guidelines.

Emergency Response: Yes – Must be available to perform a primary assignment in support of DTE’s emergency response to storms or other events that impact service to our customers.

Job Summary

Enables the organization to meet its technology needs by providing architectural direction and leadership throughout the technology planning and delivery lifecycle, specifically for the Internal Developer Platform (IDP) and Developer Experience. This role develops technology roadmaps, solution architecture specifications, and technology recommendations that empower application teams through self-service access and automated infrastructure provisioning. The Architect will oversee the design of "golden paths" that reduce manual toil and increase engineering velocity while ensuring compliance with security, scalability, and organizational standards. As an individual contributor, you will bridge the gap between high-level company strategy and the hands-on implementation of Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) and CI/CD pipelines in a containerized, microservice-driven environment.

Key Accountabilities

• Conceptualizes, designs, and enables the construction of software applications and platform hosting environments, including hosting, security, scalability, and functional requirements in compliance with the company's technology strategy.
• Develops technology roadmaps and architecture transition plans that guide technical resources in implementing "paved roads" and "golden paths" for cloud application deployment and infrastructure provisioning.
• Provides direction and leadership to the ITS community across multiple teams to ensure software products are consistent with business environments and that teams follow architectural direction.
• Drives engineering velocity and reduces manual toil by embedding security, compliance, and policies directly into platform workflows using reusable GitHub Actions and SARIF-based reporting.
• Articulates the architectural vision by creating models, diagrams, and component documents, specifically utilizing C4 system context models to document system interactions and example workflows.
• Provides technical advice and risk quantification to business partners, specifically regarding distributed systems issues such as state, transactional integrity, availability, and data consistency.
• Maintains awareness of emerging trends in modern platform engineering and the software development lifecycle (SDLC) to guide the adoption of new guardrails that reduce developer cognitive load while keeping the platform modern.
• Assists project teams in making critical software architecture decisions, validates architecture against requirements, and assists with the resolution of complex technical problems.

Minimum Education & Experience Requirements

This is a dual-track base requirement job; education and experience requirements can be satisfied through one of the following two options:

• Bachelor's degree in information systems discipline and 5 years of information technology experience; OR
• High School diploma and 9 years of related information technology experience

Other Qualifications

Preferred:

• Technical lead or architecture experience designing and guiding complex software systems.
• Distributed systems and cloud experience, including Azure and AWS, cloud PaaS, APIs, microservices, and integrations (5+ years).
• Expert‑level infrastructure automation experience using Terraform (HCL), OPA, and GitHub Actions.
• Strong container and orchestration expertise, including Docker, Kubernetes, and workflow tools such as Helm or ArgoCD.
• Experience building self‑service platform blueprints using TypeScript, YAML, or JSON‑based APIs.
• Experience integrating monitoring and logging solutions (e.g., Dynatrace, Grafana, Splunk) into automated pipelines.
• Industry‑recognized architecture or cloud certification (e.g., TOGAF, AWS Certified Solutions Architect, Azure Solutions Architect).

Other Requirements:

• Advanced experience with web‑based technologies and architectural patterns, including cloud PaaS, middleware, event streaming/queuing, relational and NoSQL databases, and system modeling (C4 or UML).
• Strong command of modern software engineering practices, including DevOps, Agile, and CI/CD methodologies.
• Advanced knowledge of emerging technologies and industry standards, including open‑source ecosystems, systems design, and systems integration.
• Deep understanding of distributed systems challenges, including state management, transactional integrity, availability, performance, and data consistency.
• Demonstrated business and leadership skills, including planning, communication, decision‑making, problem-solving, and professional development.

Additional Information

Incumbents may engage in all or some combination of the activities and accountabilities, and utilize a variety of the competencies cited in this description depending upon the organization and role to which they are assigned. This description is intended to describe the general nature and level of work performed by incumbents in this job. It is not intended as an all-inclusive list of accountabilities or responsibilities, nor is it intended to limit the rights of supervisors or management representatives to assign, direct and control the work of employees under their supervision.

At DTE Energy, we are committed to providing an inclusive workplace where everyone feels welcome and a sense of belonging. We seek individuals with a heart for service, a passion to help our communities prosper, and ideas to help shape the future of energy. We are proud to be an equal opportunity, employer that considers all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, religion, disability, national origin, citizenship, height, weight, genetic information, marital status, pregnancy, protected veteran status or any other status protected by applicable federal and/or state laws.