Solutions Architect - AI & Procurement

The IS Specialist - Procurement & AI Architecture provides technical leadership for the design, governance, and delivery of scalable digital solutions across Caterpillar's Guided Buy and Coupa ecosystem. This role serves as the end-to-end solution architect, accountable for alignment across upstream and downstream applications, integrations, data, and business processes within the Source-to-Pay landscape.

As Caterpillar advances AI-enabled and agentic capabilities, this role also functions as an AI Architect, partnering with agile delivery teams to design, review, and govern AI-driven solutions - including agents, automation, and decision-support capabilities-while ensuring compliance with enterprise architecture standards, security requirements, and Caterpillar Responsible AI principles.

What You Will Do

Solution & Enterprise Architecture

• Serve as the end-to-end solution architect for Guided Buy and Coupa platforms, ensuring cohesive design across requisitioning, sourcing, purchasing, invoicing, supplier enablement, and downstream financial systems.
• Design and govern integrations between Coupa/Guided Buy and upstream/downstream systems such as ERP, finance, supplier systems, middleware, data platforms, and reporting tools.
• Define scalable, secure, and reusable architectural patterns for APIs, event-based integrations, data flows, and platform extensions.
• Ensure architectural alignment with enterprise standards, IT controls, security, and SOX compliance requirements.

AI & Agentic Architecture

• Act as AI Architect for procurement and purchasing platforms, designing how AI capabilities are embedded into Guided Buy and Coupa to improve user experience, compliance, efficiency, and insights.
• Provide architectural guidance for building AI agents, copilots, and automation solutions, including prompt strategy, orchestration patterns, data grounding, and decision boundaries.
• Establish and enforce AI governance practices, including design reviews, risk assessments, Responsible AI alignment, and lifecycle management of AI agents and models.
• Perform code and solution reviews for AI-enabled components to ensure quality, maintainability, security, and architectural consistency.

Agile Delivery & Technical Leadership

• Partner with Product Owners, Project managers, and development teams within an agile environment to translate business needs into clear, actionable technical designs and backlogs.
• Guide teams through design decisions, trade-off analysis, and implementation best practices across sprints and releases.
• Support solution planning for enhancements, upgrades, and modernization initiatives, including migration from legacy capabilities.
• Own end-to-end troubleshooting and technical support for Guided Buy, Coupa, and the broader integrated solution landscape, partnering across teams to resolve complex cross-system issues.
• Mentor engineers and analysts on architecture principles, integration patterns, and AI solution design.

Stakeholder Collaboration & Governance

• Serve as a trusted technical advisor to procurement, finance, audit, security, IT, and external partners.
• Lead or participate in architecture review boards, design governance forums, and change impact assessments.
• Clearly communicate complex architectural concepts and risks to both technical and business audiences.

Education & Experience: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field; 6-8+ years of experience delivering enterprise-scale business applications, with strong exposure to procurement, ERP, or financial systems. * Technology Advising: Knowledge of effective advisory methods and ability to provide valued information and advice to clients regarding products, technologies, services and solutions for a specific technology domain. * Application Design, Architecture: Knowledge of basic activities and deliverables of application design; ability to utilize application design methodologies, tools and techniques to convert business requirements and logical models into a technical application design. * System and Technology Integration: Knowledge of the features and facilities of systems; ability to integrate and communicate among applications, databases and technology platforms. * Systems Software Infrastructure: Knowledge of computer architecture and system software interaction; ability to design and build a fundamental architecture of operating systems, database management systems, communications protocols, compilers and other development tools. * Technical Troubleshooting: Knowledge of technical troubleshooting approaches, tools and techniques; ability to anticipate, recognize, and resolve technical issues on hardware, software, application or operation.

Core Technical & Functional Skills:

Enterprise & Solution Architecture: Proven ability to design and govern complex, integrated application ecosystems following SDLC process across cloud and on-prem environments. * Procurement Platforms: Hands-on experience with Guided Buy, Coupa, or similar Source-to-Pay / P2P platforms. * Integrations: Strong knowledge of APIs, middleware, ETL, event-driven architectures, and ERP integrations. * AI & Automation: Working knowledge of AI/ML concepts, LLMs, AI agents, and automation patterns applied to enterprise workflows. * Agile Delivery: Experience working within agile product teams, supporting backlog refinement, sprint execution, and continuous improvement.

What Will Set You Apart:

• Experience designing or governing AI agents, copilots, or AI-enabled enterprise applications.
• Strong understanding of Responsible AI principles, model governance, risk management, and ethical AI practices.
• Coupa administration, configuration, or large-scale deployment experience.
• Experience with cloud platforms, data environments, and reporting tools used in enterprise ecosystems.
• Proven ability to lead architecture discussions and influence decisions in a complex, global, matrixed organization.

Subject to plan eligibility, terms, and guidelines. This is a summary list of benefits.

• Medical, dental, and vision benefits*
• Paid time off plan (Vacation, Holidays, Volunteer, etc.)*
• 401(k) savings plans*
• Health Savings Account (HSA)*
• Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs)*
• Health Lifestyle Programs*
• Employee Assistance Program*
• Voluntary Benefits and Employee Discounts*
• Career Development*
• Incentive bonus*
• Disability benefits
• Life Insurance
• Parental leave
• Adoption benefits
• Tuition Reimbursement

Your Work Shapes the World at Caterpillar Inc. When you join Caterpillar, you're joining a global team who cares not just about the work we do - but also about each other. We are the makers, problem solvers, and future world builders who are creating stronger, more sustainable communities. We don't just talk about progress and innovation here - we make it happen, with our customers, where we work and live. Together, we are building a better world, so we can all enjoy living in it.