Principal Architect

Harrison Clarke is partnering with an exceptional founding team to build the engineering core of a new category-defining company: an AI-native, agentic system of record for enterprise operations .

This is not an incremental SaaS product. It’s a ground-up reimagining of how complex enterprise systems are built, operated, and experienced - replacing brittle workflows, heavy implementation layers, and admin overhead with self-managing, agent-driven infrastructure .

The company is backed by leading venture firms and founded by a rare combination of former enterprise platform leaders and deeply technical architects who have built and scaled mission-critical systems from first principles.

We are hiring the Founding Backend Architect, a true peer to the CTO, to help design and build the system from 0→1.

The Opportunity

Be one of the first senior technical hires, working directly with an experienced technical founder to architect a high-scale, enterprise-grade system from scratch.

This is a role for someone who wants to:

• Design systems that will underpin core operational infrastructure for modern companies
• Build at the intersection of distributed systems, data integrity, and AI-native workflows
• Define the architecture for a platform that must be secure, auditable, highly configurable, and globally scalable
• Operate as a hands-on architect , not a distant reviewer

Key challenges include

• Designing transactional, strongly consistent systems with complex domain models (e.g. effective dating, auditability)
• Building configurable enterprise-grade security models (RBAC, delegated authority, fine-grained access)
• Architecting for high throughput + low latency in workflow-heavy environments
• Creating self-healing, observable systems that can operate with minimal human intervention
• Defining guardrails for AI-assisted development and execution
• Designing APIs and extensibility layers that are open by design

Experience Requirements

• Has built and scaled large, complex backend systems (not just maintained them)
• Is deeply fluent in:
• Data consistency & transactional integrity
• Failure modes & resilience engineering
• Security & privacy in enterprise systems
• Can think in multi-year architectural horizons , not just sprint cycles
• Is still hands-on and enjoys building
• Can operate as a technical peer to an experienced CTO
• Saw a system evolve through scale , not just after it stabilised
• Have experience in high-scale infrastructure or enterprise platforms
• Understand the tradeoffs of configurability vs. complexity in enterprise products

Why This Role Is Different

• You are not inheriting legacy - you are defining the system
• You will help build a product in a category with deep structural pain and no clear winner
• The company is addressing not just software, but the broader implementation and services burden around enterprise systems
• You’ll work with founders who have built and scaled globally-used platforms
• Validated before build - multiple design partners already committed, with clear signals & high anticipation to adopt early

This is the formative build phase - the decisions made here will define the system for years.