Company Overview
[$COMPANY_OVERVIEW]
Role Overview
As Chief Architect, you will define and evolve the technical vision, architecture strategy, and platform roadmap for [$COMPANY_NAME]. You will translate business strategy into scalable, secure, and observable distributed architectures across cloud, data, and edge systems. This leadership role demands deep hands-on experience with system design, cross-functional alignment, and delivering enterprise-grade platforms that accelerate product delivery while maintaining operational excellence.
Responsibilities
- Set the global architecture strategy: define target-state architectures for cloud-native microservices, data platforms, integration fabrics, and developer platforms aligned with business goals and cost constraints.
- Architectural governance and standards: establish architecture decision records (ADRs), design review boards, API and data contracts, and technology selection criteria.
- Lead large-scale migrations and transformations: plan and execute decompositions of monoliths, cloud migrations (IaaS/PaaS), and adoption of container orchestration (Kubernetes) and service meshes.
- Cross-functional leadership: partner with product, security, SRE, data engineering, and business stakeholders to prioritize technical debt, reliability, and roadmap trade-offs.
- Operational excellence: define SLOs/SLA strategy, observability requirements (tracing, metrics, logs), and incident response playbooks; drive tooling adoption (e.g., OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, DataDog).
- Security and compliance by design: embed threat modeling, secure design patterns, and compliance controls (SOC2, ISO27001, GDPR) into architecture reviews.
- Platform and developer experience: design internal platforms (CI/CD, artifact registries, feature flags) to reduce lead time for changes and increase developer productivity.
- People and culture: recruit, mentor, and develop senior architects and engineering leads; run architecture workshops, brown-bags, and training to raise technical bar.
- Vendor and cost management: evaluate third-party technologies, negotiate licensing/cloud contracts, and optimize cloud spend through architecture and platform choices.
- Hands-on contribution: participate in high-impact technical projects, proofs-of-concept, and code-level design when needed to de-risk initiatives.
Required Qualifications
- 15+ years of software engineering experience with at least 5 years in senior architecture, principal, or chief-level roles driving enterprise architecture decisions.
- Proven track record designing and delivering distributed systems at scale using microservices, event-driven architectures, or serverless patterns.
- Deep expertise in cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) including IaC (Terraform, CloudFormation), containerization (Docker), and orchestration (Kubernetes).
- Strong systems design skills: capacity planning, performance optimization, data partitioning, eventual consistency, and fault-tolerant design.
- Demonstrable experience with API design and management (REST, gRPC, GraphQL), message brokers (Kafka, RabbitMQ), and data stores (Postgres, MySQL, NoSQL, data warehouses).
- Solid security and compliance background, including experience implementing secure architecture patterns and meeting regulatory requirements (GDPR, SOC2, PCI where applicable).
- Experience establishing architecture governance, ADR processes, technical roadmaps, and measurable architecture KPIs.
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent experience; advanced degree or relevant certifications (AWS Certified Solutions Architect, TOGAF, Certified Kubernetes Administrator) preferred.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience leading multi-region, multi-product platform organizations and defining platform-as-a-service constructs for internal teams.
- Background in data engineering, ML infrastructure, or real-time streaming systems at petabyte or high-throughput scales.
- Prior experience with cost-optimized cloud architecture and FinOps practices.
- Published architecture patterns, conference talks, or open-source contributions demonstrating thought leadership.
Technical Skills and Relevant Technologies
- Cloud: AWS/GCP/Azure, VPC, IAM, KMS
- Infrastructure as Code: Terraform, CloudFormation, Pulumi
- Containers & Orchestration: Docker, Kubernetes, Helm, Istio/Linkerd
- Service Communication: REST, gRPC, GraphQL, OpenAPI
- Streaming & Messaging: Apache Kafka, Kinesis, RabbitMQ
- Datastores: PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, Cassandra, DynamoDB, Snowflake, BigQuery
- Observability: OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana, DataDog, ELK/EFK
- CI/CD & Developer Tools: Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, ArgoCD, Nexus/Artifactory
- Security & Identity: OAuth2, OIDC, SAML, Secrets Management (Vault)
- Languages: Java, Kotlin, Go, Python, Node.js (experience with compiled and dynamic languages)
Soft Skills and Cultural Fit
- Strategic communicator: ability to present complex technical trade-offs to executive and non-technical stakeholders with clarity and data-driven recommendations.
- Influential leadership: track record of building consensus across distributed teams and driving adoption without direct authority.
- Mentorship mindset: experience developing technical leaders, conducting architecture reviews, and improving team design capabilities.
- Bias for measurable outcomes: define success metrics (mean time to recovery, deployment frequency, platform adoption) and iterate to improve them.
- Inclusive collaborator: commitment to building diverse teams, psychological safety, and equitable processes for hiring and promotion.
Benefits and Perks
Salary range: [$SALARY_RANGE]
Comprehensive benefits include:
- Competitive base salary and performance-based equity
- Medical, dental, and vision coverage; flexible spending accounts
- Retirement plan with employer contribution / match
- Generous paid time off and parental leave
- Professional development stipend and conference allowance
- Home office / remote work stipend and flexible working hours
- Wellness programs, mental health support, and employee resource groups
Equal Opportunity Statement
[$COMPANY_NAME] is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran status, disability, or other protected status. Reasonable accommodations are available for candidates with disabilities during the recruitment process.
Location
This is a remote position within [$COMPANY_LOCATION]. Candidates must be based in and authorized to work within [$COMPANY_LOCATION] and be available for occasional travel to regional offices and customer sites as required.