Principal Software Architect (Graph Architect)

Acxiom•Conway, AR

4d•Remote

About The Position

Acxiom is seeking a highly experienced Principal Software Architect to provide technical leadership and architectural direction across complex, high-scale software and data platforms, with a particular focus on Identity Resolution. The role designs systems to identify, match, link, and resolve individuals, households, organizations, devices, and other entities across large and diverse datasets. It also covers scalable enterprise applications, distributed systems, large-scale data-processing platforms, and low-latency APIs and services. The position requires hands-on expertise across Java, Python, Scala, Apache Spark, and SQL, along with experience designing systems on AWS, Snowflake, and Databricks. The architect defines technical direction, evaluates technology choices, solves complex engineering challenges, and partners with engineering teams to ensure solutions are scalable, reliable, secure, maintainable, and performant. The role includes designing Identity Resolution architectures for deterministic and probabilistic matching, entity resolution, identity graphs, record linkage, deduplication, and identity consolidation. Architectures must support real-time and batch use cases and address matching strategies, confidence scoring, survivorship, source prioritization, identity linking, and lifecycle management. The architect also designs distributed applications, data pipelines, efficient data models, cloud-native systems, integrations, and low-latency, high-throughput services. The architect establishes standards for application and data architecture, APIs, distributed processing, security, observability, testing, and software development. Responsibilities include guiding implementation, reviewing designs, addressing performance and scalability challenges, defining resiliency and disaster-recovery approaches, collaborating with cross-functional stakeholders, mentoring technical leaders, and staying current with relevant technologies and practices. The position is homebased, with the primary location listed as Conway, Arkansas. A bachelor's degree in a related technical discipline or equivalent professional experience is accepted; advanced technical education is a plus.

Requirements

10+ years of professional software engineering experience, including significant experience designing complex enterprise software systems.
Proven experience as an Architect, Principal Engineer, Staff Engineer, or equivalent senior technical leader.
Deep experience designing and implementing Identity Resolution, Entity Resolution, identity graph, Customer 360, Master Data Management, or similar systems.
Strong Java expertise, including enterprise application development, high-performance services, concurrency, and distributed application design.
Strong Python expertise, including application development, data processing, automation, APIs, and distributed data workloads.
Strong Scala expertise, particularly for distributed systems and large-scale data-processing applications.
Deep Apache Spark experience, including architecture, optimization, partitioning, distributed execution, performance tuning, and large-scale processing.
Advanced SQL proficiency, including complex queries, relational data modeling, query optimization, and performance tuning.
Ability to select appropriately among Java, Python, Scala, Spark, and SQL based on performance, scalability, maintainability, and workload requirements.
Strong experience designing REST APIs, microservices, distributed applications, and high-throughput backend services.
Demonstrated experience designing and optimizing low-latency APIs.
Strong understanding of distributed systems concepts, including concurrency, caching, partitioning, consistency, resiliency, scalability, and fault tolerance.
Extensive experience with AWS and cloud-native application architecture.
Strong Snowflake experience, including data modeling, performance optimization, security, data sharing, and large-scale data-processing patterns.
Strong Databricks experience, including Spark-based processing, distributed data engineering, optimization, and production workload management.
Experience designing systems spanning application, API, distributed-processing, data, and cloud-infrastructure layers.
Strong understanding of software engineering principles, design patterns, API design, data structures, algorithms, and application performance.
Experience with modern CI/CD practices, automated testing, source control, and production software delivery.
Strong understanding of security, privacy, authentication, authorization, encryption, and data-protection practices.
Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills, including diagnosing complex architectural and performance problems.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including communicating complex technical concepts to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent professional experience.

Nice To Haves

Experience architecting large-scale Identity Resolution platforms.
Experience designing Identity Resolution systems that support high-volume batch processing and real-time API-based resolution.
Experience designing and optimizing large-scale Spark applications using both Scala and Python.
Experience with graph databases or graph-oriented data models.
Experience with probabilistic matching algorithms, machine-learning-based matching, or advanced entity-resolution techniques.
Experience designing APIs with stringent latency, throughput, and availability requirements.
Experience with event-driven and streaming architectures.
Experience with containerized workloads using Docker and Kubernetes.
Experience with infrastructure-as-code technologies such as Terraform or CloudFormation.
Experience designing multi-region or highly available cloud architectures.
Experience establishing enterprise architecture standards and technical governance.
Experience modernizing legacy applications and data platforms.
Experience with large-scale consumer, marketing, advertising, financial, or customer identity datasets.
Advanced technical education.

Responsibilities

Define and drive architecture for enterprise-scale Identity Resolution platforms and services.
Design systems for deterministic and probabilistic identity matching, entity resolution, identity graphs, record linkage, deduplication, and identity consolidation.
Develop architectures that resolve identities across large, diverse, and rapidly changing datasets and support both real-time and batch use cases.
Define strategies for identity matching, confidence scoring, survivorship, source prioritization, identity linking, and identity lifecycle management.
Design and optimize low-latency APIs and services for high-throughput, highly available production workloads.
Architect distributed applications and services using Java, Python, and Scala, selecting appropriate languages and frameworks for system requirements.
Design high-scale data-processing pipelines and platforms using Apache Spark, including Scala and Python workloads.
Design and optimize Snowflake and Databricks data solutions for large-scale analytical and operational workloads.
Design efficient data models and SQL-based solutions for transactional, analytical, and Identity Resolution workloads.
Define caching, concurrency, partitioning, indexing, persistence, and data-access strategies to meet performance and latency requirements.
Define cloud-native architectures using AWS and modern distributed-computing patterns.
Design integration patterns across AWS, Snowflake, Databricks, internal applications, APIs, and external data providers.
Evaluate technologies, frameworks, databases, processing engines, and architectural approaches based on performance, scalability, reliability, cost, and operational complexity.
Establish standards and best practices for application architecture, API design, data architecture, distributed processing, security, observability, testing, and software development.
Partner with engineering teams to translate architectural designs into scalable, maintainable implementations and provide technical direction during development.
Conduct architecture and design reviews and help teams resolve difficult performance, scalability, and design challenges.
Identify performance bottlenecks and guide optimization of APIs, applications, Spark workloads, SQL queries, and distributed-processing systems.
Define approaches for resiliency, fault tolerance, high availability, disaster recovery, and operational monitoring.
Collaborate with engineering, data engineering, product, security, infrastructure, and business stakeholders to translate requirements into technical solutions.
Mentor senior engineers, technical leads, and architects and develop architectural capabilities across the engineering organization.
Stay current with technologies and industry practices related to Identity Resolution, distributed systems, cloud computing, data platforms, and software architecture.