Career Area:

Job Description:

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.

Role Overview

We are seeking a Lead Digital Architect (UI Architect) to define and drive the architecture of our Experience Engineering stack, focusing on scalable, high-performance UI platforms and frameworks.

This role is a senior individual contributor and technical leadership position responsible for building and governing front-end platforms, micro-frontends, design system implementation, and UI engineering standards across web and mobile experiences.

You will work closely with Engineering Managers, Product teams, Platform teams, and UX/Design System teams to ensure consistent, performant, and scalable user-facing applications.

What You’ll Do

Architecture & Platform Ownership

• Define and evolve the front-end architecture strategy across web and mobile web platforms.
• Architect scalable UI platforms using React, Next.js, TypeScript, and Web Components.
• Drive adoption of micro-frontends and module federation for large-scale applications.
• Define patterns for Backend-for-Frontend (BFF) layers using Node.js, GraphQL, and REST APIs.
• Partner with platform teams to design edge/CDN, caching, and rendering strategies (SSR/SSG/ISR).

Design Systems & UI Engineering

• Lead the technical architecture and implementation of Design Systems (tokens, components, theming).
• Build and standardize component libraries and shared UI frameworks for reuse across teams.
• Establish governance for:
  • Versioning and distribution of UI components
  • Backward compatibility and adoption tracking
• Collaborate closely with UX and Design teams to translate design tokens and Figma assets into production-ready systems.
• Enable developer-friendly tooling and workflows (Storybook, documentation, design-to-code pipelines).

Performance, Scalability & SEO

• Define and enforce standards for front-end performance (Core Web Vitals).
• Architect solutions for:
  • Lazy loading, code splitting, and caching
  • CDN and edge optimization
• Implement best practices for SEO, including SSR, metadata management, and structured data.
• Establish performance budgets and monitoring standards.

Engineering Excellence, Dev-Ops, Standards & Governance

Engineering Excellence, DevOps, Standards & Governance

• Define and govern UI engineering standards, architectural principles, and best practices across all teams in the experience stack.
• Establish organization-wide guidelines for:
  • Code structure, modularity, and reuse
  • Naming conventions, linting, and formatting standards
  • Secure, scalable, and maintainable front-end patterns
• Own the adoption and enforcement of code quality and governance frameworks, including:
  • SonarQube for static code analysis, quality gates, and technical debt management
  • FOSSA (or equivalent) for open-source license compliance, vulnerability tracking, and dependency governance
• Define quality benchmarks and guardrails, including:
  • Minimum code coverage thresholds
  • Limits on code duplication and complexity
  • Security and vulnerability standards
• Ensure all quality, security, and compliance checks are integrated as mandatory gates in CI/CD pipelines.
• Establish standards for modern engineering practices, including:
  • Trunk-based development
  • Automated testing (unit, integration, visual regression)
  • Progressive delivery (feature flags, canary, blue-green)
• Drive consistency in developer experience (DX) through standardized tooling, frameworks, and workflows across teams.
• Define and monitor engineering quality KPIs, such as:
  • Code quality scores and technical debt trends
  • Build and pipeline health
  • Defect leakage and escape rates
• Promote a culture of shift-left quality, automation, and continuous improvement across the engineering organization.

Observability & Reliability

• Implement front-end observability practices using tools like DataDog, Grafana, Sentry.
• Define SLIs/SLOs for UI systems (performance, availability, error rates).
• Enable real user monitoring (RUM) and proactive issue detection.
• Support incident response, root cause analysis, and postmortems.

Security & Compliance

• Ensure secure UI development practices (XSS, CSRF prevention, secure headers).
• Partner with security teams on threat modeling and vulnerability management.
• Enforce privacy-by-design principles in front-end implementations.

Collaboration & Technical Leadership

• Act as a technical leader and mentor for senior engineers and tech leads.
• Partner with:
  • Engineering Managers for execution alignment
  • Platform teams for infrastructure and scalability
  • UX/Design teams for design system integration
• Drive technical decision-making and alignment across teams.
• Contribute to roadmaps and long-term technical strategy.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of experience in software engineering with strong focus on front-end/UI architecture.
• Proven experience as a UI Architect / Front-End Architect / Principal Engineer in large-scale, distributed systems.
• Strong experience in:
  • React, Next.js, TypeScript, Web Components
  • Micro-frontends and module federation
  • Design systems implementation (not UX ownership)
  • BFF architecture (Node.js, GraphQL, REST)
• Experience building high-performance, scalable user-facing platforms.

Technical Competencies

Front-End Engineering

• React, Next.js, TypeScript, HTML5, CSS3
• Component architecture, state management

Architecture

• Micro-frontends, Module Federation
• SSR/SSG/ISR patterns
• BFF and API orchestration

Design Systems

• Design tokens, theming, component libraries
• Storybook and documentation systems

Performance & SEO

• Core Web Vitals, Lighthouse, RUM tools
• SEO best practices for modern web apps

DevOps & Platform

• CI/CD (GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Azure DevOps)
• CDN (CloudFront, Akamai), caching strategies

Observability

• DataDog, Grafana, New Relic, Sentry

Nice to Have

• Experience with mobile platforms (React Native, Flutter)
• Exposure to edge computing and serverless architectures
• Familiarity with AI-driven UI patterns and personalization frameworks
• Knowledge of multi-tenant and localization architectures

Posting Dates:

Caterpillar is an Equal Opportunity Employer.  Qualified applicants of any age are encouraged to apply

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