Principal Software Architect - IGEN

U.S. Venture, Inc.•Appleton, WI

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Principal Software Architect is a key member of the team that owns the technical architecture across IGEN's product portfolio including system design, technology selection, integration patterns, and the long-range architectural roadmap. Serve as the keeper of architectural integrity as IGEN modernizes from a legacy WinForms-based estate into a cloud-native, API-first, AI-augmented SaaS platform. This individual will work in close partnership with the Chief Technologist, Technology leadership, and Product teams to translate IGEN's enterprise objectives into a coherent, durable, and clearly documented technical strategy. Lead architecturally by influence — across product teams, shaping the multi-year platform roadmap, mentoring engineers, and engineering leads, and leaving the engineering organization measurably stronger. Preferred location for this position is our Corporate Headquarters in Appleton, WI, with hybrid work options available.

Requirements

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related discipline — or equivalent professional experience.
10+ years of professional software engineering experience, including 4+ years in a Software Architect, Principal Engineer, or Staff Engineer capacity on a non-trivial SaaS or enterprise software platform.
Deep expertise in the Microsoft stack — C#, .NET (Framework and modern .NET), ASP.NET Core, Entity Framework, SQL Server / Azure SQL — and the ability to make architecturally sound trade-offs within it.
Production architecture experience on Microsoft Azure — App Service / Container Apps / AKS, Service Bus / Event Grid, API Management, Entra ID, Key Vault, Application Insights, and the operational practices that go with them.
Demonstrated experience leading a meaningful legacy-to-modern migration — monolith decomposition, WinForms / WebForms / WCF modernization, API extraction, or a comparable transformation against a real-world client base.
Hands-on fluency with AI-augmented development tooling — Microsoft Copilot (GitHub Copilot, Copilot in the IDE) and the Anthropic suite (Claude, Claude Code) are IGEN's standards — and a substantive viewpoint on how this class of tooling changes the architecture of how teams build software.
Track record of producing durable architectural artifacts — ADRs, reference architectures, system diagrams that engineers actually use — and influencing technical decisions across multiple teams.
Experience designing API-first systems — REST, gRPC, async/event-driven patterns — with explicit attention to versioning, contracts, and developer experience.
Strong grasp of secure software architecture — OWASP, identity and access architecture, data protection, and the realities of operating regulated data in the cloud.
Excellent written and verbal communication — able to brief engineers, the Chief Technologist, and (when needed) the President or executive team with equal precision.
Ability to work independently or as part of a team, manage multiple priorities, and set both short- and long-range plans while adjusting direction as priorities change.

Nice To Haves

Architecture experience in tax, compliance, financial services, or another regulated B2B software domain.
Hands-on experience designing agentic AI systems — RAG, agent orchestration, tool/function design, evaluations, and the data and retrieval architecture that makes them production-grade.
Hands-on experience with Snowflake as a strategic data platform, alongside Fivetran and modern analytics architectures — and the patterns that connect operational systems to a governed analytics foundation.
Experience working in or with an organization undergoing Agile / SAFe transformation in parallel with cloud and platform modernization.

Responsibilities

Own the end-to-end architecture for IGEN's platforms— domain decomposition, service boundaries, integration patterns, data flow, and the API layer that will replace tightly-coupled module dependencies.
Lead the architectural roadmap from today's estate to a modern, cloud-native, API-first, web-delivered platform — sequenced against the Azure migration and Platform Modernization workstream.
Publish Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) for every significant decision — making trade-offs visible, rationale durable, and the platform's evolution auditable for current and future engineering leaders.
Set and enforce cross-product architectural standards — coding patterns, API contracts, eventing, error handling, observability, data integrity — so teams build on a coherent foundation rather than locally-optimized variants.
Partner with the Cloud Infrastructure Architect and DevOps to shape the Azure landing zone, network topology, security baseline, and deployment model — translating platform architecture into the cloud constructs that enable it.
Lead application-level Azure architecture decisions: compute (App Service, Container Apps, AKS, Functions), persistence (Azure SQL, Cosmos DB, Blob), eventing (Service Bus, Event Grid), API Management, identity (Entra ID), and key management.
Steward cloud cost architecture — design for unit economics, scale efficiency, and predictable cost per module, in coordination with the Chief Technologist and Cloud Infrastructure Architect.
Architect for resilience and recoverability — RPO/RTO targets, multi-region posture, failover patterns, and the disaster recovery design appropriate for clients operating against regulatory filing deadlines.
Define the architectural reference patterns for AI-augmented software delivery at IGEN — how IGEN's standard AI toolchain (Microsoft Copilot family and the Anthropic suite, including Claude and Claude Code) is used safely, consistently, and effectively across the engineering organization.
Establish guardrails for AI-generated code in a regulated-data environment — review patterns, security baselines (OWASP coverage of AI output), licensing posture, secrets handling, and SDLC integration in partnership with Application Security.
Architect IGEN's path toward agentic and AI-native product capabilities — RAG patterns over compliance content, agent orchestration, tool/function design, evaluation harnesses, and the data and retrieval architecture that makes them production-grade.
Track and evaluate emerging AI infrastructure (Azure AI Foundry, foundation models, vector and semantic search, MCP and agent frameworks, evaluation tooling) and form a defensible viewpoint on what to adopt, when, and why.
Own the integration architecture for IGEN's enterprise touchpoints — SAP, IRS, TTB, state revenue agencies, and client ERP/billing systems — defining contracts, versioning strategy, idempotency, retry semantics, and health monitoring.
Partner with the Director of Insight Engineering on the data architecture spanning the operational platform and IGEN's Snowflake + Fivetran analytics foundation.
Design for event sourcing from product, governed data contracts, and the architecture to productize Insight Engineering as a client-facing offering.
Architect the API surface that exposes IGEN's tax determination, calculation, and reporting capabilities to internal modules and (over time) to client integrations — documented, versioned, and consumed by at least one internal integration as a milestone.
Design with regulatory data sensitivity as a first-class constraint — IGEN's clients trust the platform with the data underlying their federal and state filings, and architectural choices must reflect that.
Partner with Application Security on SOC 2 posture, secure SDLC, identity and access design, encryption (at rest and in transit), secrets architecture, and the security architecture for AI-augmented code paths.
Define the architecture for testability and observability — what 'evidence of correctness' looks like at the platform level, how regressions are prevented across the Azure migration, and how the platform proves itself in production.
Lead architecturally across Software Engineering Leads, Senior Software Engineers, and product teams — by influence, not by direct authority.
Make the right thing the obvious thing.
Partner with the Chief Technologist on technology strategy, the FY2027 OKR portfolio, the multi-year architectural roadmap, and the technology narrative presented to the executive team.
Partner with Product Owners and the Director of Product on what is buildable, when, and with what trade-offs — bringing architectural foresight into roadmap discussions early, not at the point of commitment.
Mentor engineers and Engineering Leads on architectural thinking, design reviews, ADR authorship, and the discipline of trade-off reasoning.
Live our values of High Performance, Caring Relationships, Strategic Foresight, and Entrepreneurial Spirit Find A Better Way by championing continuous improvement and quality control efforts to identify opportunities to innovate and improve efficiency, accuracy, and standardization.
Continuously learn and develop self professionally.
Support corporate efforts for safety, government compliance, and all other company policies & procedures.
Perform other related duties as required and assigned.