Principal Software Architect- Distributed Systems & Cloud Platforms

Position: Principal Software Architect

Years of Experience: 10-15 Years

Location: Bangalore, client location (5 days in the office)

Role Overview

• We are looking for an experienced software/system architect to own the end-to-end design of a complex,large-scale distributed software platform. The role involves translating business and functional requirements into system architecture, defining software components and interfaces, making technology and design decisions, and guiding engineering teams through implementation.
• The platform brings together backend services, external content sources, delivery networks, operational systems and end-user applications. Strong software architecture and backend engineering experience is essential. Prior broadcasting or media-domain experience is not required.
• This is a hands-on architecture role. The candidate must be comfortable moving between system design and code: writing or prototyping code when needed, reviewing production implementations, debugging complex issues, and working directly with developers to ensure architectural decisions are implemented effectively.
• This is a software and system architecture role—not a cloud infrastructure, DevOps or operations architecture role.

Key Responsibilities

• Translate business, functional and non-functional requirements into end-to-end system architecture and clear engineering specifications.
• Define service boundaries, software components, interfaces, data flows and interaction patterns across the platform.
• Produce and maintain high-level and detailed design artifacts, including component, sequence,deployment-context and data-flow diagrams, API contracts and architecture decision records.
• Design distributed, service-oriented systems for scalability, performance, high availability, resilience and maintainability.
• Define API and integration architecture for applications, content providers, external systems and operational platforms.
• Design data storage, caching, messaging, asynchronous processing and event-driven interactions appropriate to system requirements.
• Evaluate architectural options and document trade-offs involving latency, throughput, consistency,reliability, complexity and cost.
• Guide backend and application teams through implementation, review designs and code-level approaches, and resolve cross-component technical issues.
• Identify bottlenecks, failure modes and evolving capacity needs; ensure architecture meets security,observability and operational requirements.
• Work with DevOps, infrastructure and security specialists on deployment and production-readiness,while retaining ownership of software architecture.

• Mentor developers, review implementation choices and help diagnose and resolve complex code-level and cross-service issues.
• Conduct code reviews to ensure implementations align with architecture, design principles, performance requirements and engineering quality standards.
• Participate in hands-on coding, technical spikes and proof-of-concept implementations when needed to validate designs or resolve difficult engineering problems.

Required Experience and Skills

• 10–15 years of software engineering experience, with substantial responsibility for software or system architecture.
• Strong hands-on background in backend software development using Java, Go, Python, C# or comparable languages.
• Demonstrated ownership of the architecture of at least one complex software platform, from requirements and design through engineering delivery and production.
• Proven ability to decompose complex requirements into services, components, interfaces, APIs and data models.
• Strong grasp of distributed systems, microservices and service-oriented design; REST/gRPC APIs asynchronous messaging and event-driven systems.
• Experience with relational and NoSQL databases, caching, messaging/streaming systems and system integration patterns.
• Ability to reason about concurrency, consistency, fault tolerance, performance, horizontal scaling and architectural trade-offs.
• Ability to communicate architecture clearly through design documents, diagrams, reviews and discussions with engineering and product stakeholders.
• Practical familiarity with at least one major cloud platform (AWS, Azure or GCP) and cloud-native application patterns.
• Demonstrated experience reviewing code and providing implementation-level technical direction to engineering teams.
• Current hands-on coding ability in at least one backend language, with willingness to write, review and debug production-quality code when required.

Supporting Technical Knowledge

• Working knowledge of containers, Kubernetes, CI/CD, infrastructure as code, load balancing and deployment models.
• Understanding of authentication, authorization, data protection, monitoring, observability, failover and disaster recovery as system design considerations.

Good to Have

• Experience with large-scale consumer applications, multi-tenant SaaS, e-commerce or high-transaction platforms.
• Experience with OTT/video, content delivery, CDN integration, telecom/media or device management platforms.
• Experience with real-time data processing and platforms serving large device or user populations.

Who Should Apply

• This role is suited to Software Architects, System Architects, Backend Architects and Platform Architects
• Who have personally designed and delivered complex distributed software systems. Candidates whose experience is primarily cloud provisioning, Kubernetes administration, CI/CD, infrastructure automation or production operations—without substantial software design and development ownership—are unlikely to be a fit.

What We Are Looking For:

An architect who can explain why a system is structured a particular way, defend design choices, anticipate failure modes, and work closely with developers to turn architecture into production software. This person should be capable of coding, reviewing code and debugging when needed, without being expected to carry a routine full-time development workload.