OS doesn't detect AC1900 TP-Link WiFi card on Ubuntu 16.04

Question

I'm custom build a system for machine learning and so far the toughest challenge so far has been getting the wireless card working (instead of running a 9 meter ethernet cable across the apartment).

This guide looks amazing, but when I list my PCI devices with lspci there is nothing in there that says "Broadcom," "Network," "Wireless," "WiFi," etc. Just the two Ethernet ports.

Here are some of the resources that I've checked out as I've tried to detect the card:

• https://ubuntu-mate.community/t/ubuntu-16-04-noob-no-wireless-detected/5550
• Wireless Internet Ubuntu 15.10
• How do I install drivers for TP-Link AC1300?

I've tried all of these solutions and rebooted the computer after iteration to try and get the cards to detect, but no dice. The card is a a brand new TP-Link Archer T9E Adapter PCI Express. There is a green status light on the back of the card that is green, which I think is a good sign.

Anything else that I haven't tried? The only other thing that I've thought of is to download the source files into /lib/firmware from https://wikidevi.com/wiki/TP-LINK_Archer_T9E.

I hope this isn't a duplicate questions. I've made a pretty careful search of the forums, including the duplicate posts with their "this is answered here" references, and none of the posts have helped me resolve the issue.

Quick note:

Best practices dictate that I should drop some terminal output in here describing my card as per this post, but it seems that my OS is still completing unaware of the card and won't detect it. If it helps I'm happy to drop in the output of sudo lshw -class network, but this only provides details for my two Ethernet interfaces.