Lead Architect, Solution Dev & Automation

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MGA Entertainment is on a mission to inspire imagination and creativity through innovative toys, entertainment, and experiences that transform play into limitless possibilities. As the largest privately held toy and entertainment company in the U.S., MGA is a global leader in designing and delivering world-class consumer products that spark wonder and drive play forward. Headquartered in Los Angeles with offices worldwide, MGA’s portfolio spans a dynamic range of original and licensed brands — from toys, dolls, games, and electronics to fashion, home décor, and entertainment content including hit movies and TV series. The company is recognized for its bold approach to storytelling, trendsetting design, and deep commitment to quality. The award-winning MGA family includes fan-favorite brands such as L.O.L. Surprise!™, Little Tikes®, Rainbow High™, Bratz®, MGA’s Miniverse™, Yummiland™, CarTuned™, Wonder Factory™, BABY born®, and Zapf Creation®. To learn more, visit www.mgae.com and follow MGA on LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook.

Lead Architect, Solution Development & Business Process Automation

Role Purpose

The Lead Architect establishes the architectural foundation for MGA's solution development and automation capability. This is a hands-on technical leadership role - designing frameworks, building sandbox environments, and defining the pathways that move agent-driven prototypes into enterprise-ready production. The role bridges modern cloud-native engineering with MGA's existing IT estate (ERP, data platforms, cybersecurity) and anchors MGA's shift from a support-focused IT model to a product-centric, innovation-driven organization.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Architecture

• Define the architectural vision, standards, and reference patterns for automation and AI-enabled product development.
• Translate technology strategy into actionable frameworks that connect rapid experimentation with enterprise readiness.

Engineering & Platform

• Design and own the automation sandbox environment - secure, compliant, and built for fast iteration.
• Build and maintain the transition pipeline that moves prototypes to production through defined quality, security, and performance gates.
• Own API strategy, microservice architecture, data access frameworks, and cloud infrastructure design.

Automation & Solution Architecture

• Architect automation-enabled workflows and applications in partnership with solution designers, data engineers, and product teams.
• Set standards for model deployment, vector search, data pipelines, and runtime hosting.
• Ensure all solutions integrate with core enterprise systems: ERP, CRM, eCommerce, and Data Warehouse.

Enterprise Alignment & Governance

• Serve as the bridge between modern development practices and the existing enterprise IT estate.
• Ensure architectural consistency with MGA's security, compliance, and operational standards across all environments.

Team Leadership

• Mentor full-stack developers, ML engineers, and platform engineers — building a culture of pragmatic, disciplined engineering.
• Coach mid-level engineers into future technical leads and contribute to building MGA's internal product engineering team.

Key Deliverables

• Publish MGA's Architecture Framework for AI-enabled solution development.
• Build the business process automation sandbox and secure access model.
• Deliver the prototype-to-production transition pipeline.
• Produce reusable reference architectures for APIs, integrations, and automation workflows.
• Launch multiple AI-enabled solutions or automations across business units.
• Establish architectural guardrails for ERP, data, integration, and cloud alignment.

Experience & Qualifications

• 7–12 years in software engineering or solution architecture.
• Hands-on cloud-native development expertise (AWS, Azure, or GCP), containers, and modern application architectures.
• Proven experience deploying LLM-based applications, AI/ML systems, or enterprise automation frameworks.
• Strong grasp of enterprise technologies: ERP, CRM, data platforms, Power Platform, and identity management.
• Proficient in DevOps practices - CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, observability, and secure-by-design principles.
• Experience designing vector search pipelines across multimodal data types (text, images, audio, documents, structured data).
• Proficient with vector databases (e.g. Pinecone, Weaviate, pgvector) — able to evaluate managed vs. self-hosted trade-offs for multimodal workloads.
• Solid understanding of data ingestion, preprocessing, and embedding refresh cycles across heterogeneous sources.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.

Success Metrics

• Speed and quality of delivered AI-enabled prototypes and solutions.
• Stability and adoption of sandbox and transition pipeline environments.
• Architectural alignment with core enterprise systems.
• Reduction in time from prototype to production.
• Adoption of architectural patterns and automation frameworks across the organization.
• Developer satisfaction and uplift in technical capability across product teams.

Salary: 

$150,000.00 - $250,000.00