Principal Integration Architect

Applaudo Studios

About The Position

We are looking for a Principal Architect with deep expertise in Domain-Driven Design, event-driven architecture, and API governance. This role involves building enterprise-scale integration platforms and standardizing business domain communication across systems and verticals. The architect will own decisions end-to-end, proactively communicate blockers, and influence engineering culture. Responsibilities include whiteboarding domain models with stakeholders and reviewing pull requests with engineers. A daily, hands-on approach to AI adoption using tools like Copilot, RAG, or agentic workflows is expected. This is a hands-on architecture role, not a management position. The position is offered under a contractor model.

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 (with active, current hands-on coding).
Proven experience designing and implementing enterprise-scale integration platforms and distributed systems.
Strong expertise in Modern .NET patterns, async pipelines, and enterprise-scale codebases.
Strong expertise in API Architecture and Enterprise Integrations including API governance at scale.
Strong expertise in Domain-Driven Design (DDD).
Strong expertise in Event-Driven Architecture (EDA).
Strong expertise in Test-Driven Development (TDD).
Strong expertise in Microservices and Distributed Systems.
Strong expertise in Cloud-Native Architecture.
Hands-on experience with enterprise messaging/event platforms — Azure Service Bus, Event Hubs, RabbitMQ, Solace, Apache Kafka, or AWS SQS.
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.
Daily, hands-on use of AI tools as part of your own engineering workflow (Copilot, RAG-based tools, agentic coding assistants).
Knowledge of CQRS, Event Sourcing, Saga Patterns, and Distributed Transaction Management.
Familiarity with OpenTelemetry and enterprise observability platforms.
Strong communication skills, with fluency sufficient to work directly with a US-based team and stakeholders.
Demonstrated ownership and accountability: you surface risks early, remove blockers, and drive outcomes with a high degree of autonomy.

Nice To Haves

Azure is highly desired but not mandatory: equivalent depth with any of the above is acceptable.
Modern .NET and C# experience is highly desired but not mandatory. Comparable depth in an equivalent stack (e.g., Java) is acceptable.

Responsibilities

Design and lead the implementation of a unified enterprise integration layer that enables canonical business domains, flexible source system extensions, and seamless cross-vertical connectivity.
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 hands-on 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, 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 adoption of AI-assisted engineering practices to improve developer productivity, delivery speed, and solution quality.
Promote engineering excellence through TDD, Clean Architecture, SOLID principles, and automated quality practices.
Lead modernization initiatives and technical debt reduction efforts.
Partner with platform teams on CI/CD pipelines, deployment automation, 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.