.NET Principal Architect

Applaudo Studios

About The Position

We are seeking a Principal Architect with deep expertise in enterprise integration platforms, API ecosystems, and cloud-native solutions on Microsoft Azure. The ideal candidate has a proven track record of defining and governing architecture standards, ensuring systems scale, remain maintainable, and align with business outcomes. This role requires someone who thrives in environments where they own decisions end-to-end, proactively communicates blockers, and influences engineering culture across multiple teams. Comfort with both technical and business stakeholder interactions, including whiteboarding domain models and reviewing pull requests, is essential. A passion for AI adoption, identifying opportunities, defining governance, and driving team-level enablement is highly valued.

Requirements

Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field is desired, or equivalent professional experience.
10+ years of experience in Software Engineering.
5+ years of experience in Architecture, Principal Engineer, Staff Engineer, or Technical Leadership roles.
Proven experience designing enterprise-scale integration platforms and distributed systems.
Strong expertise in: Modern .NET patterns, async pipelines, and enterprise-scale codebases.
API Architecture and Enterprise Integrations.
Domain-Driven Design (DDD).
Event-Driven Architecture (EDA).
Test-Driven Development (TDD).
Microservices and Distributed Systems.
Cloud-Native Architecture.
Strong understanding of REST APIs, OpenAPI Specifications, OAuth2, OIDC, API Security, and Identity Management.
Experience implementing observability practices, including monitoring, logging, distributed tracing, and telemetry.
Hands-on experience with Microsoft Azure services, including Azure API Management (APIM), Azure Functions, Azure Service Bus, Event Hubs, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Azure SQL, Application Insights, and Azure AI Services.
Knowledge of CQRS, Event Sourcing, Saga Patterns, and Distributed Transaction Management.
Familiarity with OpenTelemetry and enterprise observability platforms.
Demonstrated ability to identify and drive AI adoption across engineering teams, including AI-assisted development (Copilot, code generation), LLM integration into products, and responsible AI governance.
Strong leadership, communication, stakeholder management, and mentoring skills, with the ability to influence technical direction across teams.
Demonstrated ownership and accountability for architectural decisions, proactively managing risks, removing blockers, and driving outcomes with a high degree of autonomy.
10+ years of Software Engineering experience.
5+ years in Architecture or Technical Leadership roles.
Hands-on C# and .NET (Core / .NET 6+) experience.
Deep expertise in API Architecture, DDD, EDA, and Distributed Systems.
Strong Microsoft Azure expertise: APIM, Functions, Service Bus, Event Hubs, AKS, Application Insights.
Experience integrating or leading adoption of AI capabilities in engineering environments.

Responsibilities

Define and maintain application architecture standards, principles, and best practices across the integration and API engineering organization.
Design scalable, secure, and highly available API ecosystems and integration solutions.
Lead architecture reviews and provide technical guidance across engineering teams.
Define standards for API design, security, observability, documentation, and lifecycle management.
Lead integration strategies across internal applications, ERP, SaaS platforms, enterprise systems, and external partners.
Facilitate domain discovery and event storming workshops with business and technical stakeholders.
Design and implement event-driven and message-based architectures using Azure Service Bus, Event Hubs, and related technologies.
Drive the adoption of AI-powered engineering practices and identify opportunities to improve business value, operational efficiency, and developer productivity.
Promote engineering excellence through TDD, Clean Architecture, SOLID principles, and automated quality practices.
Lead modernization initiatives and technical debt reduction efforts.
Design cloud-native solutions leveraging Microsoft Azure and modern platform services.
Define strategies for scalability, resiliency, disaster recovery, observability, and operational excellence.
Partner with platform teams to improve CI/CD pipelines, deployment automation, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), and developer experience.
Mentor architects, technical leads, and engineering teams while fostering a culture of innovation and continuous learning.
Serve as a trusted advisor for strategic technology investments and modernization initiatives.