NielsenIQ: Principal Architect | Strategic Enterprise Architecture — Pune, India

About NielsenIQ

NielsenIQ, also known as NIQ, works in consumer intelligence and retail measurement. Its employer material describes using market information, consumer insights and analytics to help businesses understand buying behaviour. Its data operations address the accuracy and completeness of information behind client reports, while analytical services interpret that information. The business connects details about products and retail activity with broader views of markets, giving organisations evidence for understanding demand and making commercial decisions.

The position and its setting

NielsenIQ lists Principal Architect | Strategic Enterprise Architecture in Pune, India, under reference R26_0021186|IN. The details below separate the work described by the employer from essential conditions, preferred experience and practical preparation advice.

• Employment type: Full-time
• Employer listing date: 12 October 2026
• Brands: NielsenIQ
• Job Family: IT Architecture (Systems Design)

Responsibilities and work described

• Our NielsenIQ Technology teams are building and evolving Connect, a unified, global, open data ecosystem powered by AI, cloud and on-premises technologies
• Clients around the world rely on NielsenIQ data and insights to innovate and grow
• As a Principal Architect within the Enterprise Architecture team, you will define architecture for key components and capabilities across NIQ platforms, ensuring alignment with business strategy, product objectives, technology standards, and the long-term platform vision
• Partner with architecture peers, Product and Operations leaders, engineering leaders, and development teams to take solutions from initial requirements through design, delivery, and production operation
• A key focus of this role is shaping the responsible adoption of Artificial Intelligence, Generative AI, and agentic AI across the enterprise
• Combine broad enterprise architecture experience with practical knowledge of AI-enabled systems and will grow into an end-to-end platform architect as their knowledge of NIQ's platforms expands
• Role Mandate: Act as the strategic Enterprise Architecture partner and single point of architecture accountability for an assigned NIQ product portfolio
• The role connects business and product strategy to target-state architecture, capability ownership, technology roadmaps, governed standards, and delivery feedback
• It is intentionally strategic while remaining close enough to Product, Engineering, Solution Architecture, and Architecture Practice teams to ensure that direction is actionable and produces measurable outcomes
• Own and maintain the portfolio target-state architecture and rolling three-year technology roadmap, aligned with business priorities, product strategy, engineering plans, and enterprise transformation goals
• Serve as the named strategic architecture partner and single point of EA accountability for the assigned portfolio, building trusted working relationships with Product, Engineering, Operations, Data Science, Security, and business leadership
• Create and maintain business-capability, domain, application, data, and platform maps that expose ownership, dependencies, duplication, maturity gaps, lifecycle risk, and opportunities for simplification or growth
• Translate strategic priorities into clear architecture outcomes, transition states, investment options, sequencing recommendations, and measurable decision criteria
• Technical guidance: platform-placement and build-versus-buy decisions, balancing enterprise reuse and standards with appropriate portfolio autonomy, speed, cost, resilience, and client commitments
• Define and contribute reusable reference architectures, patterns, guardrails, and decision trees, including patterns for AI, Generative AI, agentic AI, data, integration, cloud, security, and observability
• Drive adoption of approved architecture standards and bring standards, reference architectures, major exceptions, and cross-functional decisions through the lightweight EA governance process for ratification

Essential requirements and candidate background

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience
• 10+ years of progressive experience across software engineering, solution architecture, platform architecture, or enterprise architecture, including significant experience with enterprise-scale products and data platforms
• Define target-state architectures and multi-year technology roadmaps, and to connect them to business capabilities, product objectives, investment decisions, and executable transition plans
• Experience operating as a strategic advisor to senior Product, Engineering, Technology, Operations, or business leaders, with evidence of influencing decisions across multiple organizations and geographies
• Knowledge: capability-based planning, domain and platform mapping, application rationalization, technology lifecycle management, technical debt, and architecture risk management
• Experience creating and driving adoption of enterprise standards, reference architectures, reusable patterns, architecture decision records, and governance processes that are pragmatic and lightweight
• Understanding: modern cloud, data, integration, API, security, resilience, observability, and distributed system architecture, preferably in Microsoft Azure and hybrid environments
• Knowledge: AI, Generative AI, and agentic AI architectures, including model and tool integration, retrieval augmented generation, orchestration, context and memory, evaluation, guardrails, observability, human oversight, and Responsible AI controls
• Assess emerging technologies and develop clear build-versus-buy, adoption, migration, and total-cost of-ownership recommendations
• Experience partnering with Solution Architecture and delivery teams on architecturally significant initiatives while preserving a strategic, portfolio-wide perspective
• Written, visual, and verbal communication skills, including the ability to express complex architecture choices as concise options, trade-offs, decisions, roadmaps, and executive-level narratives
• Facilitation, stakeholder management, negotiation, and conflict-resolution skills, with the ability to establish accountability and progress in a matrixed organization
• Experience: data, analytics, measurement, consumer intelligence, retail, media, or other information intensive product environments
• Knowledge: ArchiMate, capability-based planning methods, and enterprise architecture repositories such as ADOIT
• Experience: product operating models, agile delivery, portfolio planning, FinOps, and outcome-based technology investment governance
• Experience supporting technology due diligence, post-merger integration, platform consolidation, or large-scale modernization and simplification programs
• Hands-on engineering or architecture experience with APIs, Python, databases, data pipelines, cloud-native platforms, MLOps or LLMOps, or enterprise AI platforms such as Azure AI Foundry and Azure OpenAI
• Thinks in business capabilities, portfolios, platforms, and multi-year outcomes rather than isolated projects
• Successful Profile:
• Balances enterprise consistency with purposeful autonomy and avoids governance for its own sake

Location, schedule and contract conditions

• Work arrangement: Hybrid
• Advertised location: Pune, India

Benefits mentioned by the employer

• Flexible working environment
• Volunteer time off
• LinkedIn Learning
• Employee-Assistance-Program (EAP)
• NIQ may utilize artificial intelligence (AI) tools at various stages of the recruitment process, including résumé screening, candidate assessments, interview scheduling, job matching, communication support, and certain administrative tasks that help streamline workflows
• These tools are intended to improve efficiency and support fair and consistent evaluation based on job-related criteria
• All use of AI is governed by NIQ’s principles of fairness, transparency, human oversight, and inclusion
• Final hiring decisions are made exclusively by humans
• NIQ regularly reviews its AI tools to help mitigate bias and ensure compliance with applicable laws and regulations
• If you have questions, require accommodations, or wish to request human review were permitted by law, please contact your local HR representative
• For more information, please visit NIQ’s AI Safety Policies and Guiding Principles: https://nielseniq.com/global/en/info/niqs-ai-safety-policies/

Pay and application dates

A verified salary figure is not established in this article. An online estimate for another Principal Architect | Strategic Enterprise Architecture vacancy is not an offer for reference R26_0021186|IN; use the employer’s own pay disclosure and recruitment communication.

A closing date is not confirmed in this article. Check the current employer page before submitting: an undated posting can change or be withdrawn.

How to apply to NielsenIQ

Applications follow the official employer page linked below.

Open the official NielsenIQ posting below and match the title and reference R26_0021186|IN.

Compare your qualifications and experience with the essential conditions for the Pune, India position, then read the preferred criteria separately.

Prepare an accurate CV and the supporting items requested in that employer’s application. Provide only information and documents you are authorised to share.

Use the employer’s application option, complete the required fields and review the submission. Retain the acknowledgement when one is provided. Job Alerts World does not receive the application.

Practical preparation: Python

Python work is easier to assess through a concrete example than a list of libraries. Explain the problem, the input data, the parts you implemented and how you checked the output. Include a repository or a short technical note when you can share it.

Relevant skills

• Python
• Azure
• APIs
• AI/ML
• ISO
• AI
• investment
• portfolio management
• risk management
• stakeholder management