Software Architect

About the Role

We are representing a partner company seeking a Software Architect based in Australia for a vital role in shaping the development and evolution of a large, distributed engineering platform. This role is the organization's first dedicated architect position, offering technical leadership without people management duties. The position demands a blend of comprehensive system thinking and hands-on architecture work involving distributed systems, APIs, data infrastructure, reliability, and scalability. The architect will collaborate closely with Staff and Lead Engineers as well as Engineering leadership to guide decisions affecting multiple teams. Preparing the platform for growth, new products, and AI-assisted workflows is a significant focus, alongside establishing solid architectural practices and technical standards to ensure swift yet reliable engineering operations.

Key Responsibilities

• Maintain an up-to-date and thorough understanding of platform architecture, including data flows, service boundaries, ownerships, and dependencies as the engineering organization progresses.
• Identify and remedy systemic platform risks involving scalability, reliability, performance, and cost before they manifest as production issues.
• Provide architectural direction for API design and service patterns spanning REST APIs, SDKs, and MCP interfaces, fostering uniform user experiences across the platform.
• Direct foundational roadmap initiatives such as cell-based architecture adoption, multi-region readiness, rate limiting, and feature flag infrastructure while leading complex architectural designs personally.
• Function as a technical leader by setting priorities, driving architecture decisions, maintaining records, and ensuring adoption across engineering teams.
• Collaborate with leadership and senior engineers to prioritize and align cross-cutting technical initiatives with team roadmaps.
• Mentor staff engineers in system design, architectural thinking, technical writing, and influence tactics.
• Enhance design review protocols, including RFCs and cross-team reviews, to be consistent, efficient, and beneficial for engineering teams.
• Develop and enforce engineering standards related to observability, quality, security-by-design, API versioning, and evolution in partnership with platform, security, and product groups.
• Review and approve key architectural designs, using the process to build engineering capability rather than create bottlenecks.
• Translate business expansion, enterprise needs, new product launches, and AI/agent-assisted workflows into multi-quarter technical strategies and investment plans.
• Advise executive leadership on strategic build-versus-buy decisions, platform investments, and technical risk communication.
• Lead initiatives for integrating AI within engineering practices, establishing methods for AI-assisted design, coding, review, and documentation.
• Stay engaged by developing prototypes, reference implementations, technical documentation, and troubleshooting complex issues when necessary.

Candidate Qualifications

• Minimum 10 years’ experience in software engineering with at least 3 years as an Architect in large engineering organizations (100+ engineers), focusing on platform-wide architecture.
• Proven leadership through influence, adept at guiding senior engineers, leading architectural/design forums, and driving technical standard adoption without formal authority.
• Extensive expertise in distributed systems, backend architecture optimized for high throughput and low latency, with hands-on experience in Go or comparable system programming languages, Kubernetes, AWS, event-driven, and data-centric infrastructures.
• Comprehensive understanding of related domains such as client SDKs, data pipelines, and machine learning serving platforms.
• Strong background in designing scalable public APIs and SDKs with attention to versioning, backward compatibility, and interface consistency.
• Demonstrated foresight in identifying and mitigating systemic technical risks ahead of failures.
• Outstanding communication skills for conveying complex technical matters to both engineering and executive audiences.
• Preference for asynchronous, documented decision-making practices including detailed technical and architectural documentation.
• Experience leveraging AI coding and reasoning tools in software design, prototyping, reviews, and documentation workflows.
• Knowledge of designing codebases, documentation, service boundaries, and APIs to facilitate safe and efficient interactions between engineers and AI agents.
• Pragmatic architectural mindset balancing long-term strategy with delivery demands, recognizing when simpler solutions suffice.
• Ability to establish a new architecture function, build trust with technical leaders and augment effectiveness while respecting existing team ownership.
• Experience or familiarity with fraud detection, identity verification, device intelligence, or adversarial technology is advantageous.
• Exposure to multi-region or cell-based architecture models is a plus.
• Knowledge of MCP, large language model tool integrations, or agent-facing API designs considered a benefit.
• Experience with high-volume data infrastructures such as ClickHouse or Kafka is an asset.

Additional Benefits and Information

• Work fully remotely within a global environment.
• For employees based in the U.S., salary ranges from $177,000 to $240,000 annually; compensation varies by location and market factors.
• Offers are influenced by experience, education, certifications, skills, training, and local market conditions.
• Global remote eligibility depending on legal and security considerations; no visa sponsorship provided.
• Unique opportunity to establish and lead a dedicated architecture function within a large engineering team.
• Direct collaboration with senior engineering leaders and multiple senior engineering teams.
• Significant ability to impact platform architectural direction, scalability, reliability, APIs, and foundational technology investments.
• Chance to influence engineering practices around AI-assisted workflows and architecture for AI-agent interactions.
• Inclusive, culturally diverse, globally distributed team environment valuing varied perspectives and experiences.

Additional Information

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company who manages all applicant interactions and next steps. The hiring decisions, interviews, and assessments are handled internally by the partner organization.

Data Processing and Privacy: Applications involve personal data processing under applicable data protection laws. AI tools may be used to assist recruitment decisions, but final selection is made by humans.