Senior Secure Software Architect

Role Overview

We are seeking an expert Senior Software Architect to lead the design, governance, and evolution of complex software system architectures. This position entails crafting scalable application frameworks, architecting resilient and secure data infrastructures, and elevating technical quality throughout the software delivery process. The ideal candidate combines deep engineering expertise with strong knowledge of security principles, cloud-native technologies, distributed systems, and contemporary application design methodologies.

Core Responsibilities

• Design comprehensive architectures for enterprise-scale software products including web applications, microservices, APIs, and backend services.
• Define architectural standards, design patterns, and development guidelines to ensure scalability and maintainability over time.
• Assess technology solutions to recommend stacks that meet business and technical needs.
• Develop secure and scalable data models for both structured and unstructured datasets ensuring performance, compliance, and growth readiness.
• Establish data management policies covering access control, encryption, segregation, retention, and lifecycle governance.
• Architect distributed event-driven and service-oriented systems supporting high availability and fault tolerance.
• Design integration layers connecting internal and external systems using APIs, messaging, and asynchronous processes.
• Incorporate security measures into system and application design, including authentication, authorization, encryption, and secrets management aligned with best practices and recognized standards.
• Implement enterprise identity and access management solutions using frameworks like OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, SAML 2.0 with secure token handling and single sign-on capabilities.
• Lead threat modeling exercises and architecture governance to identify and mitigate risks, security gaps, and potential vulnerabilities early in project development.
• Provide technical leadership by mentoring engineers, conducting architecture reviews, and supporting development teams to uphold architectural excellence.
• Champion continuous improvement by evaluating new technologies, driving cloud adoption, platform modernization, and advancing automation, observability, and reliability engineering practices.

Professional Requirements

• Over 8 years' experience in software engineering, system design, or solution architecture with proven delivery of large enterprise and distributed systems.
• Expertise in software architecture patterns including domain-driven design, microservices, and API-first approaches.
• Proficient in building scalable, resilient production systems and strong background in data architecture and integration methodology.
• Well-versed in application security best practices supporting OWASP Top 10, OWASP API Security Top 10, secure coding, threat modeling, vulnerability management, and risk mitigation.
• Hands-on knowledge of identity and access management technologies: OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, SAML 2.0, JWT authentication mechanisms.
• Experienced with public cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP), container orchestration, event-driven architectures, and infrastructure-as-code.
• Strong communication and stakeholder management abilities, capable of leading technical discussions, workshops, and strategic architectural planning.

Preferred Qualifications

• Background working in regulated, security-critical, or mission-critical environments.
• Familiarity with zero-trust architecture, platform engineering, observability, reliability engineering, and disaster recovery strategies.
• Experience with cloud transformation, platform modernization, and performance/resiliency testing.

Certifications (Preferred)

• CSSLP (Certified Software Security Lifecycle Professional)
• AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional
• Microsoft Azure Solutions Architect Expert
• CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional)
• TOGAF Certification
• Offensive Security Certifications (OSCP, OSWE)

Location

Abu Dhabi Emirate, United Arab Emirates