Senior Lead Architect

Activision Blizzard, Inc.•Santa Monica, CA

6d•$146,000 - $270,004•Onsite

About The Position

The Sr. Lead Architect (Backend) is a senior individual contributor responsible for backend architecture across the Marketing Technology ecosystem. This role defines scalable technical patterns, guides implementation for shared platform services, and helps teams solve complex reliability, integration, and modernization challenges across web, identity, campaign, and service platforms. This role is based in our Santa Monica, CA office and follows an onsite work schedule of four days per week. Work arrangements may change at the company's discretion to meet business needs.

Requirements

10+ years of software engineering experience, including significant time in senior backend or architecture-focused roles.
Deep experience with Java or similar backend languages, microservices, APIs, distributed systems, and cloud-native architecture.
Strong working knowledge of containers, CI/CD, observability, and infrastructure/security patterns in modern cloud environments.
Ability to influence across multiple teams without direct authority and translate business needs into durable technical solutions.

Responsibilities

Define and evolve backend architecture for shared services, APIs, integrations, and cloud-hosted platforms, with strong emphasis on scalability, maintainability, and operational resilience.
Lead architecture and design reviews for major backend changes, service decomposition, shared libraries, and platform modernization efforts.
Establish engineering standards for backend development, including API design, service contracts, deployment patterns, observability, and operational readiness.
Partner closely with engineers and SREs to troubleshoot production and platform issues and drive durable fixes, not just tactical workarounds.
Design and improve reusable infrastructure and automation patterns across GCP and related workflows, including secrets management and service access patterns.
Mentor senior engineers and act as a technical escalation point on distributed systems, backend performance, and architectural tradeoffs.