Software Architect

Job Description

The Software Architect defines the technical direction for software products and leads solution design from business discovery through delivery and production operation. This role translates business needs into secure, scalable, reliable applications and integrations that support Station Casinos' operations and improve the Team Member and Guest experience.

The Architect is a senior technical leader embedded with Agile product teams. They guide Product Owners, Domain Experts, Business Systems Analysts, Scrum Masters, and Software Engineers; make and document architecture decisions; and stay close enough to implementation to validate designs and resolve complex issues. The role combines product leadership, hands-on technical practice, and longer-term architectural strategy. It applies a forward deployed approach: understand the business in context, shape a practical solution, and remain accountable for its outcomes after release.

Responsibilities

Lead Your Product (Planning & Delivery)

• Partner with business leaders, Product Owners, Domain Experts, and delivery teams to understand goals, workflows, constraints, and measurable outcomes.
• Own solution designs for assigned products and initiatives, including system boundaries, components, APIs, data flows, integrations, deployment, security, and operational support.
• Translate requirements into actionable designs and technical briefs; define acceptance criteria for architectural and nonfunctional requirements such as availability, performance, scalability, security, resilience, and observability.
• Guide engineers through design and implementation, review significant technical changes, resolve tradeoffs, and help teams maintain fidelity to agreed architecture while adapting to new evidence.
• Participate in discovery, backlog refinement, sprint planning, reviews, and other Agile activities when architectural decisions or dependencies need direction.
• Present architecture at the appropriate level for executives, business partners, and engineering teams, from strategic overviews to detailed technical specifications.
• Coordinate design and delivery across product teams, data and platform teams, security, operations, and external vendors.

Hands-on Technical Practitioner

• Build targeted prototypes and proofs of concept to test feasibility, integration approaches, performance, and technology choices before broad adoption.
• Contribute to complex design and implementation work where direct participation reduces delivery risk or helps engineers learn.
• Investigate difficult issues across applications, APIs, messaging, databases, cloud infrastructure, and vendor systems; guide root-cause analysis and durable fixes.
• Evaluate new tools and patterns against business value, security, maintainability, and operational fit; communicate findings and recommendations clearly.

Architectural Vision and Strategy

• Define and maintain conceptual, logical, and technical architecture views for assigned products and their place in the enterprise landscape.
• Establish architecture principles, development standards, integration guidelines, reusable patterns, and practical governance that enable consistent decisions across teams.
• Record key decisions and tradeoffs in architecture decision records, solution designs, blueprints, and statements of direction; keep artifacts current as systems evolve.
• Shape roadmaps and migration plans with work packages, dependencies, sequencing, and risk reduction for modernization and technical debt.
• Align product architecture with enterprise strategy, security expectations, system health, and long-term maintainability.
• Mentor engineers and technical leads, share knowledge through design reviews and documentation, and build the team's ability to make sound decisions independently.
• Own production readiness and outcomes.
• Design for deployment, monitoring, alerting, incident response, recovery, and supportability before solutions reach production.
• Partner with engineering and operations teams during high-priority incidents, identify systemic causes, and prioritize preventive improvements.
• Use stakeholder feedback, application telemetry, incidents, and delivery results to refine the architecture and verify that solutions deliver business value.
• Participate in an escalation or on-call rotation as required for the products supported.

Technology Environment

The Architect will work across a modern enterprise environment that may include:

• Applications : Next.js, NestJS, React, Node.js, TypeScript
• Data : Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MongoDB
• APIs and integration : REST, JSON, Stoplight, Postman, third-party platforms
• Messaging and caching : RabbitMQ, Kafka, Redis
• Cloud and delivery : Microsoft Azure, Azure DevOps, CI/CD pipelines, Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, Linux
• Operations : Grafana, Sematext, xMatters, logging and alerting tools
• Collaboration and design : Git, Figma, Lucid, Azure DevOps Wiki, Microsoft SharePoint, and AI-assisted development tools such as Claude Code, Cursor, etc.

Experience with every listed product is not required. The Architect must be able to learn the environment, assess tradeoffs, and guide teams across application, data, integration, platform, and operational concerns.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Substantial professional experience designing and delivering production software, including experience leading architecture or technical design for complex applications and integrations.
• Strong hands-on foundation in modern web and backend engineering, API design, data modeling, distributed systems, and software design patterns.
• Ability to design for security, performance, scalability, resilience, accessibility where applicable, and production observability.
• Experience with cloud platforms, automated delivery, containers, and operational support; ability to make architecture decisions with deployment and support in mind.
• Demonstrated ability to turn ambiguous business problems into clear options, decisions, technical designs, and achievable delivery plans.
• Ability to communicate complex concepts to executives, business stakeholders, vendors, and engineers at different levels of technical depth.
• Experience mentoring engineers, facilitating design reviews, and influencing cross-functional teams without relying on direct reporting authority.
• Sound judgment in balancing delivery speed, technical debt, risk, and long-term product health.
• Willingness to engage directly with business operations and participate in production escalation or on-call support as required.

What Success Looks Like

A successful Software Architect gives teams clear technical direction while staying engaged in delivery. Product teams can explain and implement the design; significant risks are tested early; architecture decisions are documented and understood; and applications operate reliably in production. Business partners see an architect who understands their work and helps turn strategic goals into useful, sustainable software.