Title:
Principal Technology Architect – Backend Engineering
Experience:
15+ years of software engineering experience with strong expertise in backend development, system architecture, and distributed systems.
Education:
Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering or a related field.
Location:
Remote
Employment Type:
Full-time
Role Overview:
We are looking for an experienced Technology Architect / Principal Engineer with 15+ years of software engineering experience and strong expertise in backend development, system architecture, and distributed systems.
The ideal candidate will have a strong hands-on background in Node.js and Python, combined with the ability to architect and deliver complex, scalable, highly available software solutions. The role requires someone who can work across the full technology lifecycle—from understanding complex business requirements and designing technical solutions to guiding engineering teams through implementation and delivery.
Key Responsibilities:
- Define and own the technical architecture for complex, large-scale applications and platforms.
- Design scalable, highly available, secure and high-performance backend systems.
- Translate complex business and product requirements into robust technical designs and architecture.
- Develop and review architecture diagrams, technical specifications, API designs and data models.
- Provide hands-on technical leadership in Node.js and Python development.
- Design and implement RESTful APIs, microservices and distributed systems.
- Evaluate architectural trade-offs involving scalability, performance, reliability, maintainability and cost.
- Lead the design of complex features involving multiple services, systems and integrations.
- Identify technical risks and develop appropriate mitigation strategies.
- Establish and promote architecture, coding and engineering best practices.
- Conduct design and code reviews and ensure adherence to engineering standards.
- Mentor senior engineers and technical leads and provide technical direction to development teams.
- Collaborate closely with Product, Engineering, DevOps, Security and other stakeholders.
- Drive modernization of legacy systems and adoption of appropriate technologies and architectural patterns.
- Troubleshoot and resolve complex production and performance issues at an architectural level.
- Stay current with emerging technologies and assess their applicability to the organization’s technology landscape.
Required Technical Skills:
Backend Development
- Strong hands-on experience with Node.js and Python.
- Excellent understanding of asynchronous programming, API development and backend architecture.
- Strong experience designing REST APIs, microservices and event-driven architectures.
- Experience with database design and optimization, including SQL and NoSQL databases.
Architecture & System Design
- Proven experience designing large-scale, distributed and highly available systems.
- Strong knowledge of microservices architecture, distributed systems, event-driven architecture, caching, messaging/stream processing, API gateways, authentication and authorization, fault tolerance and resiliency, scalability and performance optimization.
- Ability to perform end-to-end system design and make appropriate technology and architecture decisions.
Cloud & DevOps
- Experience with one or more cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure or GCP.
- Good understanding of containers and orchestration technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes.
- Familiarity with CI/CD, observability, logging, monitoring and infrastructure automation.
Leadership & Problem-Solving
- 15+ years of experience in software engineering, architecture and technical leadership.
- Demonstrated ability to own architecture for complex products/features from concept to production.
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with the ability to simplify complex technical problems.
- Ability to balance business requirements, technical feasibility, scalability, time-to-market and long-term maintainability.
- Strong communication skills with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Experience mentoring senior engineers and influencing architecture decisions across multiple teams.
Preferred Qualifications
- Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering or a related field.
- Experience working with high-scale consumer, enterprise or SaaS platforms.
- Experience with cloud-native architectures.
- Exposure to AI/ML-enabled applications or modern data platforms is a plus.
- Experience leading architecture initiatives across multiple engineering teams is highly desirable.
Ideal Candidate Profile
The ideal candidate is a hands-on architect rather than a purely managerial architect—someone who can:
Understand the problem → design the architecture → break it into complex features → guide implementation → review the code/design → ensure the solution scales in production.
They should be equally comfortable whiteboarding a distributed system, writing/reviewing Node.js or Python code, challenging architectural assumptions, and mentoring senior engineers.
Does this look like a good fit?
Please send your resume to:
[email protected]
