Principal Software Architect

Quick Facts

• Role: Principal Software Architect
• Focus: Technical direction for a SaaS platform spanning backend, frontend, data pipelines, integrations, and delivery practices

Description

Lead the technical direction for a SaaS product by defining and evolving the platform architecture and long-term roadmap. You will guide scalable and secure backend services (Java/Spring Boot), frontend applications (React), event-driven data pipelines (Apache Kafka), and data/integration architecture (Snowflake and third-party APIs). You will also evaluate AI and LLM technologies and help integrate them responsibly (including RAG) where they provide measurable value.

Responsibilities

• Define and evolve technical architecture and roadmap aligned to product goals, scale, reliability, security, and cost
• Provide technical leadership across backend and frontend engineering
• Design event-driven architectures and high-throughput data pipelines using Apache Kafka
• Guide data architecture and integration patterns involving Snowflake and analytical data systems
• Lead architecture for complex third-party integrations (API design, authentication, data mapping, reliability, versioning, failure handling)
• Establish standards for service boundaries, data contracts, observability, security, and performance
• Strengthen CI/CD practices, deployment automation, testing strategy, and release reliability
• Collaborate with product, data, security, operations, and engineering leaders
• Review designs and mentor engineers and technical leads
• Identify and address technical risks, scalability constraints, architectural debt, and operational bottlenecks
• Evaluate AI/LLM technologies and lead secure, practical integration
• Communicate technical strategy, options, and tradeoffs to technical and non-technical stakeholders

Requirements

• Significant experience designing and evolving production software architectures; principal/staff or equivalent senior technical leadership experience
• Hands-on production experience with Java and Spring Boot in distributed systems
• Experience with React and modern web application architecture
• Experience designing event-driven systems and large-scale streaming/data pipelines with Apache Kafka
• Practical experience with cloud data warehousing concepts and Snowflake
• Proven experience architecting and operating third-party integrations and APIs
• Strong understanding of CI/CD, automated testing, deployment strategies, and production operations
• Experience building SaaS products (multi-tenancy, security, availability, scalability, serviceability)
• Ability to lead through technical influence and collaborate across organizational boundaries
• Excellent communication, decision-making, and technical documentation skills

Benefits

• Opportunity to shape a SaaS platform roadmap and architecture end-to-end, from engineering execution to secure AI/LLM adoption