Software Architect

The primary role of the Engineering function within the Product Development team is to create specifications and designs for new products or improvements and enhancements to existing products. The Software Architect works closely with customers, developers, and other stakeholders to understand and define customer needs, translating them into scalable, maintainable, and forward-looking system architectures. Features are aligned to a timetable and areas of responsibility. 

The Software Architect serves as the technical authority for software systems — establishing architectural vision, defining standards, evaluating emerging technologies, and ensuring that design decisions support both immediate product goals and long-term platform evolution. 

Responsibilities 

The primary objective of the "Software Architecture" specialization within the "Engineering (PD)" Job Family is to define, govern, and evolve the software architecture that underpins our products, ensuring systems are designed to meet current and future business and customer needs. 

Architecture & Design 

• Define and maintain the overall software architecture for products and platforms, including system decomposition, component interaction, data flows, and integration patterns. 

• Create and maintain architectural specifications, design documents, reference architectures, and technical roadmaps. 

• Evaluate and select technologies, frameworks, and tools that align with business objectives, scalability requirements, and operational constraints. 

• Establish and enforce architectural standards, design patterns, and coding guidelines across engineering teams. 

• Design systems for non-functional requirements including performance, scalability, reliability, security, and maintainability. 

• Lead architectural reviews and provide technical governance for project designs and implementations. 

Technical Leadership 

• Serve as the primary technical authority and decision-maker for software architecture across one or more product lines. 

• Mentor and guide senior software engineers and development leads on architectural best practices and design principles. 

• Lead cross-functional technical discussions and drive consensus on architectural direction among diverse stakeholders. 

• Lead project teams to achieve milestones and objectives, providing architectural oversight throughout the development lifecycle. 

• Serve as a best practice resource within the engineering function and across the broader organization. 

Collaboration & Stakeholder Engagement 

• Work closely with Product Management, Engineering, Quality, Operations, and customers to understand and translate business requirements into architectural solutions. 

• Collaborate and communicate effectively with all stakeholders — technical and non-technical — to articulate architectural decisions, trade-offs, and rationale. 

• Network with key contacts outside own area of expertise, including industry peers, vendor partners, and academic researchers. 

• Create formal networks involving coordination among groups to drive cross-team alignment on shared platforms and services. 

• Solicit feedback from customers, developers, and operational teams regarding product usability, system behavior, and desired future enhancements. 

Quality & Delivery 

• Verify that software designs and implementations meet architectural requirements through design reviews, code reviews, and automated architectural fitness functions. 

• Ensure quality products are delivered within timeline by proactively identifying and mitigating architectural risks. 

• Analyze, debug, and help resolve complex customer issues, particularly those involving cross-system interactions, performance, or scalability. 

• Drive continuous improvement of development practices, tooling, and infrastructure to increase engineering velocity and product quality. 

Strategy & Innovation 

• Leverage professional expertise and relationships to contribute to technology strategy and drive business results. 

• Evaluate emerging technologies and industry trends — including artificial intelligence, machine learning, and cloud-native architectures — for applicability to current and future products. 

• Contribute to build-vs-buy decisions and vendor/technology evaluations. 

• Define and drive proof-of-concept initiatives to validate architectural hypotheses and de-risk technical decisions. 

Qualifications and Experience 

Required 

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent work experience. 

• Minimum of 10 years of progressive software engineering experience, including at least 3 years in a software architecture or principal engineer role. 

• Demonstrated mastery of software architecture principles, including distributed systems design, microservices, event-driven architecture, API design, and data modeling. 

• Deep understanding of the full software development lifecycle — design, development, testing, deployment, and operations. 

• Proven experience defining and governing architectural standards across multiple development teams. 

• Strong proficiency in one or more modern programming languages and technology stacks. 

• Experience designing systems for cloud environments (AWS, Azure, or GCP), including infrastructure-as-code, containerization, and CI/CD pipelines. 

• Experience with system integration patterns, including REST APIs, messaging/event systems, and data pipelines. 

• Ability to solve unique and complex problems that have a broad impact on the business. 

• Mastery of a specialized discipline and thorough understanding of a number of related disciplines. 

• Excellent communication skills — able to articulate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences through written documents, diagrams, and presentations. 

• Proven ability to lead project teams, build consensus, and drive decisions in ambiguous or high-stakes situations. 

Preferred 

• Master's degree or higher in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field. 

• Experience with artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies, including: 

• Designing architectures that incorporate AI/ML models into production systems (model serving, inference pipelines, feature stores). 

• Familiarity with large language models (LLMs), retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and AI agent frameworks. 

• Understanding of AI/ML development workflows — training, evaluation, deployment, and monitoring of models. 

• Experience with AI-assisted software development tools and practices (e.g., AI code generation, automated testing, intelligent code review). 

• Knowledge of responsible AI principles — fairness, transparency, explainability, and bias mitigation. 

• Experience with data architecture — designing data platforms, data lakes, analytics pipelines, and real-time streaming systems. 

• Experience with healthcare industry software, regulatory requirements (HIPAA, FDA, CMS), and interoperability standards (HL7 FHIR, DICOM). 

• Familiarity with edge computing and IoT architectures, including constrained device environments and device-to-cloud data flows. 

• Experience with platform engineering — building internal developer platforms, self-service infrastructure, and developer experience tooling. 

• Knowledge of security architecture — zero-trust models, identity and access management, encryption strategies, and compliance frameworks. 

• Relevant industry certifications (e.g., TOGAF, AWS Solutions Architect Professional, Azure Solutions Architect Expert). 

• Experience contributing to or leading open-source projects. 

• Track record of presenting at conferences, publishing technical articles, or contributing to industry standards bodies.