Software Architect

Role Overview

ClearScale is hiring a Software Architect to help design and build complex, production-grade applications on AWS. This role requires deep hands-on software development and the ability to make binding technical decisions at the code/framework level.

Responsibilities

• Lead technical discovery sessions with business and engineering stakeholders to understand requirements, system behaviors, and integration constraints.
• Define application architecture for cloud-native/modernized systems, including:
  • service decomposition
  • API design
  • data modeling & domain boundaries
  • inter-service communication patterns
• Establish and enforce engineering standards across engagements (coding conventions, design patterns, code review practices, technical debt management).
• Own architecture decisions at the code and framework level, including:
  • framework selection
  • ORM and data access strategies
  • caching layers
  • messaging patterns
  • testing approaches
• Make and document implementation trade-offs (performance, maintainability, cost, time-to-delivery) and create reusable patterns.
• Design fault-tolerant, highly available distributed architectures using AWS, emphasizing event-driven, asynchronous, and serverless patterns where appropriate.
• Define non-functional requirements (NFRs) such as performance budgets, SLA/SLO targets, observability standards, and application-tier security posture.
• Advise engineers/architects/executives on technology stack choices and translate business problems into software solutions.
• Create SOWs and provide structured technical context to delivery teams; ensure architectural intent is preserved during implementation.
• Build trusted advisor relationships across client organizations and align strategic technical vision/roadmaps.
• Drive innovation by identifying and iteratively deploying high-impact, repeatable application patterns; represent ClearScale’s software architecture capabilities to customers/community.
• Author technical materials (blog entries, case studies, reference architectures).

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science/Software Engineering or equivalent experience.
• 8+ years of professional software development experience building enterprise-grade applications with hands-on coding and technical leadership.
• 5+ years consulting experience, including leading application architecture engagements for external clients.

Nice to Have

• Strong familiarity with AWS-based cloud-native architecture patterns (event-driven/asynchronous/serverless) and non-functional requirement frameworks (performance, observability, security).