Principal Architect

The Role

A Principal Architect will serve as the senior-most technical authority for large‑scale software delivery engagements, designing and governing application architectures, platform foundations, and engineering systems that enable enterprises to build and ship software efficiently. The role focuses on modernizing legacy portfolios, establishing cloud‑smart architecture standards, and building automation and delivery infrastructure to accelerate engineering velocity.

Responsibilities Include:

• Define and govern end‑state application architectures spanning microservices design, API strategy, data models, integration patterns, and platform and automation layers that support continuous delivery.
• Lead application architecture reviews, design sign‑offs, and code‑level technical discussions with engineering teams and client stakeholders, ensuring solutions are scalable, maintainable, secure, and aligned to reference architectures and industry best practices.
• Drive technical excellence across engineering teams through design patterns, test‑driven development, clean architecture principles, API‑first design, domain‑driven design, continuous integration, and GitOps delivery workflows.
• Collaborate with business, product, engineering, and operations teams to define requirements, integration approaches, and scalable, reusable application and platform solutions.
• Establish and enforce cloud‑smart application architecture standards, including microservices, event‑driven systems, API gateways, service mesh, and containerized workloads, ensuring consistency and long‑term maintainability.
• Own cross‑workstream architectural alignment on large programs, preserving architectural intent through execution, deployment, and production readiness.
• Serve as the senior technical escalation point for complex application, pipeline, or platform issues spanning teams and client organizations.
• Lead from the front in exploring new delivery platforms, developer toolchains, and automation technologies.
• Present technology delivery pitches and architectural strategies to senior technical and non‑technical executive audiences.
• Support pre‑sales and solutions teams on pursuits to contribute to SOW development, technical approach design, and proposal reviews.
• Collaborate with the client engagement partner to improve and expand client relationships, identifying technical growth opportunities across the account.
• Attract and retain diverse, highly skilled engineering talent; mentor architects and senior engineers toward architectural leadership.
• Manage day‑to‑day technical operations, architectural governance, and client communication across active engagements.

Required Skills and Professional Experience

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, with at least 3 years of software or platform engineering experience.
• 10+ years in an architect role leading distributed, cloud‑smart applications and enterprise platforms, with deep expertise in application architecture patterns, system integration, security, scalability, performance, and cost optimization.
• 4+ years with multiple cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) including cloud‑smart deployment and hybrid infrastructure models.
• Hands‑on experience with Kubernetes or OpenShift and Infrastructure‑as‑Code tools (Terraform, Ansible, Pulumi).
• Demonstrated leadership working with business units, product management, engineering, and operations to architect solutions meeting functional and performance requirements on realistic schedules.
• Deep expertise in modern application architecture patterns: microservices, event‑driven architecture, API‑first design, domain‑driven design (DDD), CQRS, saga patterns, and twelve‑factor principles.
• Proficiency in designing and governing CI/CD pipelines and delivery automation using GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, or Tekton, with hands‑on GitOps, trunk‑based development, and automated testing strategies.
• Experience with relational (PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle) and NoSQL technologies (MongoDB, Cassandra, Elasticsearch, Couchbase) in distributed contexts.
• Architecture governance and documentation standards, including Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) and design review processes.
• Security‑by‑design expertise: DevSecOps practices, shift‑left security integration, zero‑trust patterns, and compliance‑aware architecture for regulated environments.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, able to translate technical trade‑offs into business impact for engineering teams and C‑suite audiences.

Preferred Skills and Professional Experience

• Experience designing and operating internal developer platforms using Backstage, Port, or equivalent.
• Observability and SRE expertise with distributed tracing, log aggregation, synthetic monitoring, and reliability engineering using OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana, or Datadog.
• AI/ML platform exposure and integration of GenAI capabilities, including LLM APIs, RAG patterns, and AI‑assisted developer tooling.
• FinOps‑aware architectural design, cloud cost governance, per‑service cost attribution, and resource optimization for application workloads.
• Experience with message queues, event streaming platforms, and asynchronous architecture patterns (Kafka, RabbitMQ, Azure Service Bus, AWS SQS/SNS).
• Agile delivery expertise (SAFe, Scrum, Kanban) at scale and aligning architectural runway with product delivery cadences.
• Relevant certifications: AWS/Azure/GCP Solutions Architect (Professional), CKA/CKAD, GitHub Actions, or equivalent.
• Background in pre‑sales solutioning, SOW development, or technical account growth strategy.

Presidio is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We hire the most qualified candidates and encourage women, people of color, people with disabilities, veterans, and other underrepresented groups to apply. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, disability, veteran status, genetic information, or any other legally protected characteristic.

Presidio is a VEVRAA Federal Contractor requesting priority referrals of protected veterans for openings. Our applicant process complies with all federal and state laws, including the Massachusetts requirement that prohibits the use of lie detector tests as a condition of employment.

For further information, please contact View email address on click.appcast.io for reasonable accommodations regarding applications or employment. The Know Your Rights poster is available here: Presidio’s EEO Policy Statement can be found at