Principal Software Architect

Role Description

Operative is seeking an experienced architect with a strong hands-on engineering background and a demonstrated ability to operate independently and drive the technical quality of the teams and codebases they engage with. This individual will serve as a senior technical authority across Operative's platform engineering disciplines, spanning backend services, distributed data infrastructure, and cloud-native architecture.

This role represents a significant opportunity to shape how a complex, high-scale platform evolves:

• Identifying the highest-priority technical investments.
• Establishing the standards and patterns the broader team will follow.
• Driving initiatives from inception through delivery.
• Advancing the use of AI within engineering workflows and the development of agentic capabilities within the platform.

Key Responsibilities

• Architect and lead delivery of complex, cross-functional initiatives spanning backend services, data pipelines, and cloud infrastructure.
• Drive the adoption and maturity of AI within engineering workflows, including agentic tooling, AI-assisted development practices, and the integration of autonomous AI agents into platform capabilities.
• Identify systemic technical challenges across reliability, performance, scalability, and observability, and own the path to resolution.
• Define and uphold engineering standards across code quality, testing practices, API design, data modeling, and deployment patterns.
• Make well-reasoned architectural decisions in ambiguous or rapidly evolving situations, and communicate those decisions clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Engage across the full technology stack; this role requires both breadth and depth, with the ability to move fluidly between system-level architecture and hands-on implementation.
• Partner with Product and business stakeholders to translate complex requirements into coherent technical strategy.
• Provide mentorship and technical guidance to engineers across the broader global team through design reviews, documentation, code review, and direct collaboration.
• Serve as a senior escalation point for complex or high-impact engineering problems.

Qualities and Working Style

• Operates with a high degree of autonomy and self-direction; identifies what needs to be done without requiring close oversight.
• Holds strong technical opinions grounded in experience, while remaining pragmatic about tradeoffs and context.
• Approaches ambiguity as a problem to be solved rather than a barrier to progress.
• Remains hands-on as a practitioner; this is an engineering leadership role, not a purely advisory one.
• Has a track record of being a go-to resource for difficult, cross-cutting engineering challenges.
• Communicates technical concepts effectively to cross-functional audiences, including product and business stakeholders.

Technical Requirements

• Java / Spring Boot
• Python
• Kafka / Kafka Connect
• Kubernetes
• AWS
• Elasticsearch
• MongoDB
• SQL
• Redis
• Serverless / Lambda
• S3 / Object Storage
• CI/CD & DevOps

Depth across all areas is not required; candidates should be able to engage effectively across the stack and demonstrate strong expertise in several. Familiarity with the following areas is also valued:

• Distributed systems design, including event sourcing, CQRS, and saga patterns.
• Platform observability, including distributed tracing, metrics infrastructure, and structured logging at scale.
• Data pipeline architecture, including stream processing, schema evolution, and backpressure management.
• Security and compliance practices within cloud-native environments.

Qualifications

• 10 or more years of software engineering experience with demonstrated scope at the architectural level.
• Prior experience as a senior technical owner of a complex distributed system, with accountability beyond individual contribution.
• Track record of identifying, prioritizing, and driving technical initiatives independently, not solely executing a defined roadmap.
• Experience working effectively within globally distributed engineering organizations.
• Demonstrated ability to improve the technical quality of a team or platform in a measurable and lasting way.
• Background in SaaS platform engineering, with an understanding of the operational demands of continuously available systems.

Benefits

• A senior role with broad technical scope and direct influence over platform direction.
• The opportunity to provide technical leadership across a global engineering organization.
• Competitive compensation commensurate with experience and scope of impact.
• Flexible remote-first work environment.