Principal Platform Architect
About The Position
The Principal Platform Architect will define and drive the Forge Platform architecture strategy, establish technical direction, guide strategic investments, and create reusable capabilities that improve product delivery, developer experience, and operational excellence. The role influences architecture and engineering decisions across teams through expertise, collaboration, and clear communication. The architect owns the platform’s architecture, vision, principles, and long-term technology roadmap; develops reference architectures and reusable patterns; and drives cloud-native, API-first, event-driven, and microservices-based approaches aligned with product priorities and enterprise strategy. The role serves as the principal technical authority for platform architecture, leads reviews and pragmatic governance, and guides teams on scalability, resilience, security, performance, maintainability, and technical debt. The position defines cloud-native development, deployment, and operations patterns across Azure, AWS, GCP, or hybrid environments. It shapes architecture for Kubernetes, containers, CI/CD, DevSecOps, infrastructure-as-code, automation, and observability, while enabling secure, highly available platform services, APIs, identity capabilities, and self-service developer experiences. It also establishes approaches for reliability, performance, disaster recovery, and operational readiness at scale. The role evaluates emerging technologies, leads proofs of concept for strategic investments, advances AI/ML enablement, data integration, analytics, automation, and intelligent services, and partners with Engineering, Product, Security, Infrastructure, Operations, and Enterprise Architecture teams. It communicates strategy, tradeoffs, and decisions to technical and executive stakeholders and mentors architects, principal engineers, technical leads, and senior engineers.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree in computer science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field.
- 12 or more years of experience in software engineering, platform engineering, or architecture roles.
- 5 or more years of proven experience architecting and delivering enterprise-scale software platforms.
- 7 or more years of expertise in distributed systems, APIs, microservices, event-driven architectures, and integration patterns.
- 3 or more years of experience with at least one major cloud platform: Azure, AWS, or GCP.
- Must be a U.S. person, defined as a U.S. citizen, U.S. permanent resident, a person with protected status in the U.S. under asylum or refugee status, or someone with the ability to obtain export authorization.
Nice To Haves
- Master's degree in computer science, Engineering, or a related field.
- Experience building or scaling an internal developer platform, SaaS platform, or enterprise digital platform.
- Experience with AI/ML platforms, data ecosystems, or advanced analytics capabilities.
- Expertise in security architecture, DevSecOps, SRE, and enterprise architecture governance.
- Experience with Kubernetes, containers, CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code, automation, and observability.
- Demonstrated ability to influence technical direction across multiple teams without direct authority.
- Excellent communication, systems thinking, and stakeholder engagement skills.
- Relevant cloud or architecture certifications.
Responsibilities
- Own the Forge Platform architecture, vision, principles, and long-term technology roadmap.
- Develop reference architectures, standards, and reusable design patterns that enable consistency and scale.
- Drive cloud-native, API-first, event-driven, and microservices-based architectural approaches aligned with product priorities, business outcomes, and enterprise technology strategy.
- Serve as the principal technical authority for platform architecture decisions and complex design challenges.
- Lead architecture reviews and establish pragmatic governance, standards, and engineering guardrails.
- Guide teams on scalability, resilience, security, performance, maintainability, and technical debt.
- Drive architectural consistency and reuse across products, services, and engineering teams.
- Define patterns for cloud-native development, deployment, and operations across Azure, AWS, GCP, or hybrid environments.
- Shape architecture for Kubernetes, containers, CI/CD, DevSecOps, infrastructure-as-code, automation, and observability.
- Enable secure, highly available platform services, APIs, identity capabilities, and self-service developer experiences.
- Establish approaches for reliability, performance, disaster recovery, and operational readiness at scale.
- Evaluate emerging technologies and lead proofs of concept for strategic platform investments.
- Advance AI/ML enablement, data integration, analytics, automation, and intelligent services.
- Partner with Engineering, Product, Security, Infrastructure, Operations, and Enterprise Architecture teams.
- Communicate architecture strategy, tradeoffs, and decisions to technical and executive stakeholders.
- Mentor architects, principal engineers, technical leads, and senior engineers.
Benefits
- Performance-driven salary
- Employer-subsidized medical insurance
- Employer-subsidized dental insurance
- Employer-subsidized vision insurance
- Employer-subsidized life insurance
- Short-term disability
- Long-term disability
- 401(k) match
- Flexible Spending Accounts
- Health Savings Accounts
- Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
- Educational Assistance
- Parental Leave
- Paid Time Off for vacation, personal business, sick time, and parental leave
- 12 paid holidays
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Principal
