Sr Architect

THIS ROLE IS NOT AVAILABLE FOR C2C, VISA SPONSORSHIP, or THIRD PARTIES Sr. Architect Location: Hybrid - Central Ohio Employment Type: Direct Hire Our client is seeking a pragmatic, hands-on Sr. Architect to lead the evolution of a resource-sharing platform that helps organizations access and manage digital and licensed assets. This is a hybrid role for candidates who currently live in Central Ohio; relocation is not available. The Sr. Architect will shape the technical direction for the next generation of resource-sharing software, including AI-enabled capabilities and modern data-driven services. This leader will work closely with Engineering, Product, and Technology stakeholders to design scalable, secure, resilient solutions while helping teams deliver practical business value. The ideal candidate combines strategic architectural depth with a willingness to engage in real-world delivery challenges. This is not an "ivory tower" architecture position-the successful candidate will be a collaborative technical leader who can make sound tradeoffs, guide modernization efforts, mentor teams, and help translate complex product needs into maintainable technology solutions. What You'll Do Define and communicate a multi-year technical architecture roadmap aligned to product strategy, business goals, and platform modernization priorities. Lead the architectural design and evolution of large-scale resource-sharing software supporting digital and licensed assets. Partner with Product, Engineering, and Technology leadership to translate business requirements into scalable, secure, maintainable technical solutions. Guide modernization initiatives involving distributed systems, APIs, cloud-native approaches, event-driven architectures, data platforms, and platform engineering. Provide hands-on technical leadership for complex system design decisions, integration strategies, modernization plans, and technology investments. Establish architectural standards, reference patterns, decision records, and lightweight documentation that improve consistency without creating unnecessary process. Identify technical debt, architectural risks, operational concerns, and cross-team dependencies; drive practical, business-focused remediation plans. Champion high-quality system design with a focus on reliability, observability, security, availability, performance, and maintainability. Help engineering teams improve developer productivity, delivery speed, platform capabilities, automation, and software quality. Evaluate and introduce emerging technologies where they can create measurable value, particularly AI-assisted software development and autonomous AI-agent workflows. Contribute to the development of AI-enabled software capabilities and support teams using tools such as Claude, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, and similar AI engineering tools. Partner with engineering leaders to improve architecture review practices, engineering effectiveness, and technical decision-making across teams. Mentor engineers, technical leads, and engineering managers; foster strong architectural judgment and a culture of continuous improvement. Communicate complex technical concepts, options, tradeoffs, and recommendations clearly to technical and non-technical audiences. Required Qualifications Bachelor's degree or equivalent professional experience. 8+ years of progressive software engineering, architecture, technical leadership, or related experience. Current residence in Central Ohio and ability to work a hybrid schedule. Candidates requiring relocation will not be considered. Proven experience designing, evolving, and supporting large-scale, distributed software systems. Strong software architecture background in SaaS or enterprise software environments. Demonstrated experience with big data , data-intensive systems, large-scale data processing, data platforms, event streaming, search technologies, analytics, or high-volume transactional systems. Experience designing architectures involving APIs, integrations, distributed systems, databases, and modern data technologies. Experience translating product strategy and business goals into technical roadmaps, architecture plans, and implementation approaches. Experience leading or supporting modernization initiatives in complex, established technology environments. Strong understanding of architectural tradeoffs across scalability, reliability, security, cost, performance, maintainability, and delivery speed. Demonstrated ability to influence technical direction across teams and stakeholders, including teams outside of direct reporting structures. Strong people leadership, communication, mentoring, and stakeholder-management skills. Ability to balance long-term technical vision with practical, incremental execution. Familiarity with AI-assisted engineering tools and practices, including Claude, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, or similar platforms. Preferred Qualifications Experience building, integrating, or operating autonomous AI agents , agentic workflows, AI-enabled applications, or AI-assisted developer platforms. Experience applying generative AI capabilities to improve engineering productivity, automate software workflows, enhance product experiences, or support intelligent decision-making. Background working with digital assets, licensed-content platforms, resource-sharing systems, knowledge-management platforms, libraries, publishing, research, or information services. Experience in a high-scale SaaS environment with multi-tenant applications, complex integrations, and mission-critical services. Prior experience in an organization such as Chemical Abstracts Service, or a similar information, research, scientific-data, publishing, or content-access environment. Experience with cloud-native technologies, containers, Kubernetes, infrastructure as code, CI/CD, and automated delivery practices. AWS experience is helpful but not required. For residents of Ontario, Canada: Based on Highspring's discussions with its Client, Highspring's understanding is that this position for employment is a current vacancy (either through Highspring as a contractor or with the client directly). EEO Notice Vaco by Highspring is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race (including but not limited to traits historically associated with race such as hair texture and hair style), color, sex (includes pregnancy or related conditions), religion or creed, national origin, citizenship, age, disability, status as a veteran, union membership, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, political affiliation, or any other protected characteristics as required by federal, state or local law. Vaco by Highspring and its parents, affiliates, and subsidiaries are committed to the full inclusion of all qualified individuals. As part of this commitment, Vaco by Highspring and its parents, affiliates, and subsidiaries will ensure that persons with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodations. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or to receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please contact View email address on click.appcast.io. Vaco by Highspring also wants all applicants to know their rights that workplace discrimination is illegal. Representation Notice For residents of Ontario, Canada: Based on Highspring's discussions with its Client, Highspring's understanding is that this position for employment is a current vacancy (either through Highspring as a contractor or with the client directly). Privacy Notice Vaco by Highspring and its parents, affiliates, and subsidiaries ("we," "our," or "Vaco by Highspring") respects your privacy and are committed to providing transparent notice of our policies. California residents may access Vaco by Highspring HR Notice at Collection for California Applicants and Employees here. Virginia residents may access our state specific policies here. Residents of all other states may access our policies here. Canadian residents may access our policies in English here and in French here. Residents of countries governed by GDPR may access our policies here. Additionally, submissions to this position are subject to the use of AI to perform preliminary candidate screenings, focused on ensuring minimum job requirements noted in the position are satisfied. More details about Vaco by Highspring's use of AI can be found here ( Further assessment of candidates beyond this initial phase will be conducted by recruiters and hiring managers. Vaco by Highspring does not know and cannot opine on if its client's use of AI products in hiring. Pay Transparency Notice Determining compensation for this role (and others) at Vaco by Highspring depends upon a wide array of factors including but not limited to: the individual's skill sets, experience and training; licensure and certification requirements; office location and other geographic considerations; other business and organizational needs. With that said, as required by local law, Vaco by Highspring believes that the following salary range referenced above reasonably estimates the base compensation for an individual hired into this position in geographies that require salary range disclosure. The individual may also be eligible for discretionary bonuses. #J-18808-Ljbffr Vaco