Principal Software Architect (Frontend)

Operative

5d•Remote

About The Position

Operative builds the software that powers the business of advertising for the world's leading media companies. Our platforms manage the full advertising lifecycle — from sales planning and order management to trafficking, analytics, and billing — across linear TV, streaming, and digital channels. Built on a modern, cloud-native SaaS architecture with microservices at its core, the Operative platform is engineered to handle the scale and operational demands of the world's largest broadcasters and publishers. Operative is actively developing AI Agents — both to enhance the capabilities of our platform and to augment how our engineering teams work. Engineers at Operative have access to AI tooling as a standard part of their workflow, and we are investing in building increasingly autonomous agents that accelerate development. Operative is seeking an experienced architect with a strong hands-on engineering background and a demonstrated ability to operate independently and drive the technical quality of the teams and codebases they engage with. This individual will serve as the primary technical authority for frontend engineering, working at the intersection of UX, Product, and Engineering to ensure that design intent is realized through sound, scalable architecture. Frontend engineering is a priority area for investment at Operative. The successful candidate will bring clarity, direction, and technical leadership to this domain — assessing the current state, identifying improvements, and building the patterns and standards the broader team will follow.

Requirements

Angular
TypeScript
CSS / Design Systems
State Management
Build Tooling
Testing (E2E + Unit)
Web Performance
REST / GraphQL
Micro Frontends
Accessibility (a11y)
Module Federation
10 or more years of software engineering experience with significant depth in frontend architecture and development
Demonstrated experience owning the frontend across its full lifecycle, including architecture, standards, delivery, and ongoing stewardship
Prior experience providing senior technical leadership within distributed or globally distributed engineering teams
Proven ability to establish durable technical patterns and standards, not merely contribute to feature delivery
Background in SaaS product development where reliability, scalability, and user experience are interdependent concerns

Nice To Haves

Experience with other modern frontend frameworks such as React or Vue
Familiarity with Java Spring Boot microservices
Familiarity with AWS (Lambda, S3, API Gateway)
Familiarity with Kafka-driven event architectures
Familiarity with Kubernetes and containerized deployment environments

Responsibilities

Define and own the frontend architecture, including component models, state management patterns, build tooling, performance standards, and testing strategy
Collaborate closely with UX and Product teams to develop a deep understanding of design systems and user workflows, translating that understanding into clean, maintainable implementation patterns
Drive the adoption of AI-assisted development practices within the frontend engineering team, and contribute to defining the user experience layer for Operative's agentic AI capabilities
Establish and uphold code quality standards through design reviews, tooling, documentation, and hands-on example
Identify and drive high-impact improvements to the existing frontend independently, from assessment through delivery
Serve as the primary technical liaison between design and engineering disciplines, ensuring alignment between intent and execution
Provide mentorship and technical guidance to frontend engineers across the broader global team
Make and take ownership of architectural decisions, communicating rationale clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders