The Software Architect defines, modernizes, and owns the technical architecture that powers the platform at scale. Serving as the ultimate technical authority, this role balances the systematic deconstruction of legacy systems with the design of a highly scalable, secure, and future-ready platform. The Software Architect partners with executive leadership to translate business strategy into high-impact technical blueprints, institutionalizing AI-driven workflows and architectural guardrails that empower engineering teams to ship code rapidly, safely, and predictably.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and maintain the technical architecture, establishing pragmatic patterns and guardrails that accelerate rapid, high-quality feature delivery.
• Lead the technical execution for migrating, decoupling, and modernizing legacy systems, owning the sequencing, risk mitigation strategies, and target-state designs to extract core business domains seamlessly.
• Establish the core shared framework for integrating agentic workflows, intelligent automation, and LLM orchestration across the platform with strict compliance auditability and AI API latency under 100 ms.
• Act as the definitive technical authority to proactively resolve cross-team architectural dependencies and ensure alignment across infrastructure and codebases.
• Collaborate with Product leadership and the VP of Engineering to translate business milestones into an actionable technical roadmap, grounding technical debt reduction directly in business outcomes.
• Author and embed standardized design templates into the software development lifecycle that leverage AI-assisted tools, driving 100% adoption across engineering pods and reducing cycle times by 35% or more.
• Work closely with development, QA, and security teams to ensure architectural blueprints are highly practical, realistic, and friction-free for execution.
• Design and implement LLM routing, caching, and model-governance architectures that optimize AI infrastructure costs to remain within 10% of the quarterly budget.

Requirements

• 10 or more years of software engineering experience, including 4 or more years in a dedicated architecture or principal/staff engineer role.
• Proven track record leading large-scale legacy modernization, including defining target-state architecture, sequencing domain decoupling, and executing migrations with zero unplanned downtime.
• Demonstrated experience architecting production-level AI/ML systems, including LLM orchestration, agentic workflows, or intelligent automation at scale.
• Deep expertise in modern distributed systems architecture, microservices, event-driven design, API gateway patterns, and cloud-native infrastructure.
• Hands-on experience designing and governing AI/ML platform infrastructure, including LLM routing, prompt engineering patterns, vector databases, model evaluation frameworks, and cost optimization strategies.
• Strong command of cloud infrastructure, CI/CD pipeline architecture, automated testing frameworks, and enterprise SaaS security and compliance requirements.
• Experience partnering with VP and C-suite stakeholders to translate business strategy into technical roadmaps and smart investment decisions.

Skills and Knowledge

• Familiarity with embedding AI-assisted development tooling into engineering standards and organization-wide development workflows.
• Experience navigating architectural transformations, rapid scaling, or platform consolidation within high-growth or private equity-backed environments.
• Knowledge of compliance, legal, or regulated industry SaaS products where data accuracy, auditability, and security are core platform requirements.

Compensation:

Compensation at the time of offer is based on factors such as skill set, experience, qualifications, and work location. Salary is one part of Harbor Compliance's total compensation package. Other benefits may include health benefits, flexible paid time off, parental leave, fertility and adoption assistance, 401(k), and educational reimbursement. Note that the salary range and benefits apply only to U.S.-based candidates.

Pay Transparency Policy Statement
Harbor Compliance will not discharge or in any other manner discriminate against employees or applicants because they have inquired about, discussed, or disclosed their own pay or the pay of another employee or applicant. However, employees who have access to the compensation information of other employees or applicants as a part of their essential job functions cannot disclose the pay of other employees or applicants to individuals who do not otherwise have access to compensation information, unless the disclosure is (a) in response to a formal complaint or charge, (b) in furtherance of an investigation, proceeding, hearing, or action, including an investigation conducted by Harbor Compliance, or (c) consistent with Harbor Compliance's legal duty to furnish information.

Notice Regarding the Use of Selection Technology

Harbor Compliance uses third-party automated tools and skills assessments (such as Testlify and Rippling) to help evaluate job applications and streamline our hiring workflow. These tools assist our recruitment team in reviewing qualification trends and scheduling, but all final employment decisions are made solely by humans on our Talent Success team, and all tools are subject to human oversight.

Depending on your location, local laws may grant you specific disclosure rights or the option to request an alternative evaluation process. If you require a reasonable accommodation or wish to opt out of automated assessment steps due to regional regulations, please notify your recruiter. Opting out will not negatively impact your application.