Principal Software Architect (Platform)

Operative

4d•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 a senior technical authority across Operative's platform engineering disciplines, spanning backend services, distributed data infrastructure, and cloud-native architecture. This role represents a significant opportunity to shape how a complex, high-scale platform evolves — identifying the highest-priority technical investments, establishing the standards and patterns the broader team will follow, and driving those initiatives from inception through delivery. AI adoption and maturity is a strategic priority at Operative, and this individual will play a direct role in advancing both the use of AI within engineering workflows and the development of agentic capabilities within the platform itself. The successful candidate will bring both architectural breadth and hands-on depth, and will be motivated by the opportunity to work at the intersection of modern platform engineering and applied AI.

Requirements

Java / Spring Boot
Python
Kafka / Kafka Connect
Kubernetes
AWS
Elasticsearch
MongoDB
SQL
Redis
Serverless / Lambda
S3 / Object Storage
CI/CD & DevOps
10 or more years of software engineering experience with demonstrated scope at the architectural level
Prior experience as a senior technical owner of a complex distributed system, with accountability beyond individual contribution
Track record of identifying, prioritizing, and driving technical initiatives independently, not solely executing a defined roadmap
Experience working effectively within globally distributed engineering organizations
Demonstrated ability to improve the technical quality of a team or platform in a measurable and lasting way
Background in SaaS platform engineering, with an understanding of the operational demands of continuously available systems

Nice To Haves

Distributed systems design, including event sourcing, CQRS, and saga patterns
Platform observability, including distributed tracing, metrics infrastructure, and structured logging at scale
Data pipeline architecture, including stream processing, schema evolution, and backpressure management
Security and compliance practices within cloud-native environments

Responsibilities

Architect and lead delivery of complex, cross-functional initiatives spanning backend services, data pipelines, and cloud infrastructure
Drive the adoption and maturity of AI within engineering workflows, including agentic tooling, AI-assisted development practices, and the integration of autonomous AI agents into platform capabilities
Identify systemic technical challenges across reliability, performance, scalability, and observability, and own the path to resolution
Define and uphold engineering standards across code quality, testing practices, API design, data modeling, and deployment patterns
Make well-reasoned architectural decisions in ambiguous or rapidly evolving situations, and communicate those decisions clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders
Engage across the full technology stack; this role requires both breadth and depth, with the ability to move fluidly between system-level architecture and hands-on implementation
Partner with Product and business stakeholders to translate complex requirements into coherent technical strategy
Provide mentorship and technical guidance to engineers across the broader global team through design reviews, documentation, code review, and direct collaboration
Serve as a senior escalation point for complex or high-impact engineering problems