Principal Software Architect

TouchTunes • Schaumburg, IL

8d • Hybrid

About The Position

TouchTunes is seeking a Principal Software Architect to operate at a senior level of architectural leadership across the organization. This role reports to the Chief Architect and works in close partnership with technology leadership.
The Principal Software Architect is responsible for guiding architectural direction across backend, frontend, mobile, and data systems. A core enabler of this role is to institutionalize the disciplined use of AI across the software development lifecycle and operational aspects.
This is an enterprise-level architecture role with broad authority and long-term impact.
The mission of this role is to strengthen architectural coherence across the platform while embedding AI as a systemic enabler of engineering excellence.
The primary focus is not building isolated AI features, but redefining how software is designed, implemented, tested, deployed, and monitored through the effective use of AI-assisted tooling.
This includes:
Establishing standards for AI-assisted development across the full stack.
Integrating AI into workflows from UI development to backend implementation.
Elevating testing, validation, and quality practices through AI augmentation.
Leveraging AI in monitoring, observability, and operational analysis
Ensuring AI adoption improves across all aspects of engineering discipline
This role is focused on production systems, measurable outcomes, and sustainable engineering practices.

Requirements

• Extensive experience operating at Staff or Principal Architect level in complex distributed systems.
• Proven experience designing and evolving large-scale backend and application architectures.
• Demonstrated experience applying AI or LLM-based tools within real engineering workflows.
• Strong understanding of the full software development lifecycle across frontend, backend, and mobile systems.
• Experience improving engineering effectiveness at an organizational level.
• Proven ability to influence senior engineering leadership

Nice To Haves

• Experience integrating AI tooling into CI/CD and developer workflows.
• Experience using LLMs for code generation, test augmentation, or analysis at scale.
• Exposure to observability platforms and production diagnostics.
• Experience in high-traffic consumer or real-world deployed systems.

Responsibilities

• Provide architectural direction across backend services, APIs, data systems, mobile applications, and web platforms.
• Establish and uphold architectural standards that ensure system coherence, scalability, and long-term maintainability.
• Guide major technical decisions and platform evolution efforts across multiple engineering domains.
• Own and institutionalize the use of AI-assisted tooling across engineering teams.
• Define and drive standards for incorporating AI into: UI design and implementation acceleration across front-end consumer apps and website
• Backend feature development
• Refactoring and code modernization
• Test generation, edge-case expansion, and regression analysis
• Static analysis and architectural review augmentation
• Documentation and knowledge capture
• Observability, monitoring analysis, and incident diagnostics
• Establish governance, guardrails, and evaluation mechanisms to ensure AI improves productivity, quality, and reliability without compromising security or architectural integrity.
• Ensure AI usage is systematic, measurable, and aligned with long-term platform strategy.
• Ensure AI tooling and workflows integrate cleanly with CI/CD systems, code review processes, testing frameworks, and monitoring platforms.
• Align AI-enabled practices with data governance, privacy requirements, and operational constraints.
• Define architectural principles that prevent fragmentation or uncontrolled experimentation in AI adoption.
• Operate at the Principal level as an enterprise architectural authority.
• Influence and align architectural decisions across backend, frontend, mobile, data, and platform domains.
• Mentor senior engineers and architects in applying AI effectively within disciplined architectural boundaries.
• Participate in long-term technical planning with technology leadership.
• This role carries decision-making authority over cross-stack architectural standards related to AI-enabled engineering practices.

Benefits

• Hybrid Work Environment: Hybrid schedule with 50% work-from-home and in-office time, with the ability to work anywhere in the world for up to 2 months per year.
• Financial Wellness: Annual performance bonus, long-term company bonus, 401k matching, life insurance.
• Comprehensive Benefits: Competitive health insurance and disability coverage, a Lifestyle Spending Account, access to telemedicine, and an unlimited sick days policy.
• Professional Development: Continuous hands-on learning with access to e-learning platform, tuition reimbursement, and peer mentorship.
• Accessibility: An inclusive workplace designed to accommodate people with disabilities.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal
• Education Level: No Education Listed