Lead Software Architect

The Lead Software Architect owns the architecture function within the Technology Division, setting the technical direction and defining the target architecture, technology radar, and non-functional requirement envelopes such as performance, cost, security, and reliability. This role holds Software Architects accountable to these standards and governs what systems get built, how they fit together, and which architectural decisions the division pursues. Unlike Software Architects who focus on code governance, the Lead Software Architect oversees the broader system design and architectural strategy.

This position does not involve coding but is responsible for the quality of all architectural artifacts produced across domain teams, including system designs, integration contracts, data models, and migration plans. The Lead Software Architect chairs the Architecture Review Board, acts as the final decision-maker on cross-domain design disputes and build-versus-buy decisions, and serves as the escalation point when Software Architects cannot resolve issues within their scope. Additionally, the role partners closely with the Head of Engineering to translate product strategy into an architecture roadmap, assess architectural costs before commitments, and manage the division’s technical debt.

Key Responsibilities

Architecture Strategy and Ownership
- Define and maintain the division’s target architecture and the roadmap to achieve it.
- Own the technology radar, determining which languages, frameworks, datastores, and platforms to adopt, trial, assess, or hold.
- Set and enforce non-functional requirement envelopes such as latency, throughput, availability, unit cost, and data residency at design time.
- Make build-versus-buy-versus-agent decisions for platform-level capabilities.
- Maintain the Architecture Decision Record (ADR) corpus as the division’s source of truth on architectural choices.

Cross-Domain System Design
- Own the system-of-systems perspective, including service boundaries, integration contracts, event flows, and shared data models across domain teams.
- Arbitrate cross-domain design disputes and boundary ownership questions.
- Review and approve designs that cross domain boundaries, involve shared infrastructure, or introduce new external dependencies.
- Oversee architecture-level migration and decommissioning plans for legacy systems.

Architect Agent Ownership
- Define, train, and continuously improve the Architect agent’s skills to ensure designs conform to target architecture and non-functional requirements.
- Encode architectural guardrails, decision heuristics, and rejection criteria into the agent to catch non-compliant designs before human review.
- Conduct structured spot checks of agent output and incorporate findings into agent skill improvements.
- Set standards for Software Architects’ use of agents and review their agent skill definitions.

Leading the Architecture Function
- Line-manage, coach, and develop the Software Architects team.
- Chair the Architecture Review Board, setting its cadence, entry criteria, and decision rights.
- Ensure Software Architect coding standards align with the target architecture.
- Own architecture onboarding and leveling processes to grow the team bench strength.

Risk, Debt, and Governance
- Manage the division’s technical debt register by quantifying, prioritizing, and negotiating paydown within the roadmap.
- Collaborate with Information Security and GRC leads on security-by-design and threat modeling at the architecture layer.
- Partner with Infrastructure and Platform leads on capacity, cost, and reliability architecture.
- Work with QA leads to ensure testability is incorporated as an architectural property.
- Report architecture health, risk, and debt status to the Head of Engineering and Technology Division Manager.

Required Qualifications
- 18+ years of experience in software architecture and design.
- Expertise in software architecture, design patterns, and SaaS application design.
- Deep knowledge of API and integration contract design (REST, GraphQL, gRPC, event-driven) and data architecture/modeling.
- Strong skills in non-functional requirements engineering, including performance, reliability, and cost.
- Advanced experience with cloud, platform, and security architecture, including threat modeling; AWS expertise required, OCI is a strong plus.
- Proven expertise in architecting agent configuration and training, with advanced skills in agent design, guardrail engineering, and prompt engineering for system design.
- Demonstrated ability in technical decision-making and arbitration, leading senior technical staff, and negotiating roadmaps with stakeholders.
- Mastery of architecture documentation and ADRs, with advanced communication skills for conveying technical risk to executives.

No preferred qualifications or benefits were specified for this role.