Application Architecture, Sr. Principal

Blue Shield of California•Oakland, CA

13d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Stellarus Application Engineering team builds and operates the platform for payer operations, member experiences, customer integrations, pharma workflows, internal products, and marketplace capabilities. The Application Architecture, Sr. Principal will report to the Sr. Director, Application Architecture. In this role, you will shape how Stellarus designs reusable services, integrates strategic vendors, applies AI-assisted development patterns, and turns platform strategy into systems that engineering teams can build, test, deploy, and operate. The platform is built around domain-owned microservices, reusable APIs, event-driven workflows, vendor integrations, and a marketplace of capabilities that can be composed across customers and product lines. This is our most senior individual-contributor architecture role. The Senior Principal is the technical authority for application architecture across the platform: someone who sets enterprise-level architecture direction without needing a team to do it, and who is close enough to the code, system design, and production tradeoffs to make that direction credible to engineers. This role has overlap with enterprise architecture, and a background in enterprise architecture is a plus, but the work is closer to the code, system design, engineering execution, AI development improvements, vendor integration, and production tradeoffs than to enterprise architecture theater. Stellarus generally takes a build-over-buy approach when the capability is core to our platform. This role owns the call on what we build, where we integrate with vendors, how those integrations become reusable marketplace capabilities, and how teams design products for payer, provider, pharma, and partner workflows. Our leadership model is about developing great leaders at all levels and creating opportunities for our people to grow – personally, professionally, and financially. We are looking for leaders that are energized by creative and critical thinking, building and sustaining high-performing teams, getting results the right way, and fostering continuous learning.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree or High School Diploma/GED and 4 years of additional relevant experience in lieu of a degree.
12+ years of software engineering, application architecture, platform engineering, or related technical experience.
Extensive experience setting application architecture direction for enterprise-scale distributed systems, cloud-native platforms, internal platforms, marketplace platforms, or large-scale modernization.
Expert knowledge of microservices, API ecosystems, event-driven architecture, domain-driven design, integration strategy, and platform services.
Strong hands-on engineering background. You should be comfortable discussing code structure, service design, API contracts, data modeling, testing, deployment, and production failure modes.
Experience designing and operating microservices and event-driven systems in a cloud environment. Azure experience is preferred; AWS or GCP experience is transferable.
Strong understanding of TypeScript, Node.js, APIs, React-based application platforms, containerized workloads, Kubernetes, CI/CD, and infrastructure automation.
Experience with domain-driven design, service decomposition, integration architecture, and the tradeoffs between shared services, product services, and customer-specific extensions.
Practical experience with build-versus-buy decisions, vendor integration, platform consolidation, marketplace capabilities, or turning repeated integration patterns into reusable platform services.
Strong API and data architecture judgment, including REST, OpenAPI, event contracts, PostgreSQL, analytics handoffs, authorization, tenant/customer isolation, and auditability.
Proven ability to lead complex technical decision-making across engineering, product, security, infrastructure, operations, and executive stakeholders without relying on generic architecture theater.
Demonstrated ability to create architecture standards, decision frameworks, and reusable patterns that influence engineering execution without formal management authority.
Experience mentoring staff and principal-level engineers and architects.
Healthcare, payer, pharma, regulated-industry, SOC 2, HIPAA, or security-sensitive platform experience is strongly preferred.
Enterprise architecture experience is a plus, especially when paired with hands-on application architecture and delivery experience.
Excellent written communication. You can make architecture decisions clear, concise, and useful to the teams who need to execute them.

Nice To Haves

Designing enterprise marketplace platforms, multi-tenant systems, customer-isolated data boundaries, or partner integrations
Regulated platform capabilities in healthcare, payer, or pharma environments
Enterprise architecture paired with hands-on application architecture and delivery execution

Responsibilities

Set technical architecture vision for enterprise-scale application platforms that support multiple customers, vendors, product lines, and business workflows.
Define reusable architecture models for domain-owned services, APIs, event-driven workflows, marketplace capabilities, customer isolation, and strategic vendor integrations.
Serve as the senior technical authority for build-vs-buy, platform consolidation, modernization, and integration strategy decisions.
Translate platform strategy into practical architecture patterns that engineering teams can build, test, deploy, operate, and evolve.
Stay hands-on enough to review designs, read code, evaluate pull requests when needed, reason through incidents, and help teams make concrete technical decisions.
Align senior engineering and product leaders on architecture priorities, risks, standards, tradeoffs, and investment decisions.
Establish architecture governance and decision frameworks that improve reuse, resiliency, security, interoperability, observability, and production outcomes.
Establish patterns for customer-isolated data boundaries, multi-tenant workflows, shared services, pharma workflows, partner integrations, and marketplace enablement across the Stellarus platform.
Advance AI-assisted development practices, architecture documentation, service templates, and reusable engineering guidance that improve delivery efficiency.
Mentor principal engineers, architects, and senior technical leaders to strengthen enterprise-level design judgment and technical execution.
Document decisions and create patterns for AI tools and developers to operate efficiently: decision records, reference diagrams, API standards, service templates, AI skills, and architecture review notes.