Principal Software Architect - Emerging Technologies

Role Description

Granicus serves more than 7,000 public-sector agencies and powers approximately 30 billion digital interactions annually. Within the Office of the CTO, we operate an AI-native software development lifecycle: a production engineering model in which autonomous agents perform high-confidence implementation work and senior engineers orchestrate, review, and own the outcome. The model is established and operating; we are scaling it across additional delivery teams.

This role joins one of those teams. Our engineering standards are calibrated to the practices used by leading software and AI organizations:

• Generator-verifier architecture
• Eval-driven development
• Staged deployment
• High-volume autonomous pull-request pipelines

Operating constraints (non-negotiable):

• Agents execute only within branches; all agent-generated code passes senior human review before merging to production.
• Autonomous execution is a force multiplier and does not transfer accountability away from the responsible engineer.
• Compliance obligations — NIST 800-53 Rev 5, WCAG, SOC 2, and applicable FedRAMP authorizations — are treated as engineering requirements and a source of competitive advantage.

High-volume autonomous agent pipelines are straightforward to demonstrate and difficult to operate safely, performantly, and auditably at scale. This role owns that problem. It is responsible for:

• The generator-verifier architecture
• Agent orchestration patterns
• Eval-driven development discipline
• A continuous integration and delivery system engineered for a high volume of autonomous agent pull requests

All within a security boundary that keeps model inference inside the VPC (AWS Bedrock) and sandboxes agent actions (WASM-isolated runtime with encrypted credential storage).

Qualifications

• Architecture of systems at scale with accountability for outcomes.
• Distributed systems, CI/CD, and developer platforms where your design decisions carried significant operational consequence.
• Deep CI/CD and developer-platform expertise.
• Hands-on experience operating LLM agents in production paths, including orchestration, tool use, sandboxing, evaluation, and the failure modes that emerge at volume.
• Security-architecture expertise.
• A track record of setting standards adopted by others.
• The ability to serve as an accountability gate without becoming a bottleneck.

Requirements

• High-assurance security architecture is strongly preferred for this role specifically.
• Demonstrated experience designing and defending a security boundary within FedRAMP, FedRAMP High, defense, financial services, or healthcare.
• NIST 800-53 Rev 5 fluency, including the ability to map controls to engineering guardrails directly.
• AWS Bedrock or GovCloud experience maintaining inference and data within a compliance boundary.
• Experience with eval-driven development or generator-verifier architectures at a frontier-model or leading platform organization.

Benefits

• Flexible Time Off – Take the time you need to rest, recharge, and live your life.
• Company-Wide Wellbeing Days – Paid days off to unplug and focus on your mental health.
• Work From Home Reimbursement – Support a productive home office environment.
• Multiple Health Plan Options – Including a 100% employer-paid plan.
• Employer HSA Contributions – When enrolled in a High-Deductible Health Plan.
• Fitness Reimbursement Program – Stay active, your way.
• On-Demand Mental Health Support – Access to Headspace and other wellness tools.
• Paid Parental Leave – For both birthing and non-birthing parents.
• Traditional & Roth 401(k) – With a generous company match.
• Life & AD&D Insurance – 100% employer-paid coverage for peace of mind.
• Online Learning Platforms – Fuel your professional development.
• Competitive Salary & Bonuses – Your contributions are valued and rewarded.