Principal Architect - Java - Large scale SAAS Products

Location : Bengaluru

Reports to : Chief Technology Officer (CTO)

Experience : 14 to 20 years, with a substantial track record in software architecture and technical leadership

Function : Engineering

About Client :

Client is a rapidly growing SaaS platform powering high-velocity sales and customer engagement execution across global industries, including BFSI, Education, Healthcare, and Marketplaces. We build large-scale, mission-critical systems focused on performance, reliability, and innovation. As our platform and product portfolio expand including new AI-native capabilities we are looking for a Principal Architect to shape the technical foundation that will carry the business into its next phase of growth.

Role Overview :

We are looking for a Principal Architect for our Core Platform who combines deep technical architecture skill with a strong grasp of our technology, product, and business landscape. This is a senior individual-contributor role reporting directly to the CTO built around technical ownership and influence. You will own the target-state architecture of the core platform: defining where it needs to go to support the future direction of our products and business, and charting a credible, phased path to get there. Just as importantly, you will be a magnet and mentor for our most talented senior engineers raising the technical bar across the organisation and giving high-potential IC talent a compelling reason to grow.

Key Responsibilities :

Platform & Technical Strategy :

- Build and maintain a deep working understanding of our technology stack, product portfolio, and the business/customer landscape across BFSI, Education, Healthcare, and Marketplaces.

- Define and drive the target-state architecture for the core platform covering scalability, multi-tenancy, extensibility, performance, security, Infra Cost and data architecture.

- Translate the future direction of product and business including emerging AI-native and agentic capabilities into a coherent, sequenced architecture roadmap.

- Establish architectural principles, standards, and guardrails across services, APIs, data, and integration layers, and ensure they are consistently applied.

- Evaluate new technologies, platforms, and patterns (cloud-native, data, AI/agentic where relevant) that keep the platform future-ready and competitively differentiated.

- Make and own architectural trade-off calls that balance paying down technical debt against the pace of new capability delivery.

Cross-Functional & Business Alignment :

- Partner closely with the CTO, Engineering and Product leadership, and business stakeholders to keep platform architecture aligned with product strategy and market direction.

- Represent core platform architecture in leadership forums, bringing a technical lens to business and product decisions.

- Assess build-vs-buy, platform consolidation, and modernisation choices through a business-outcomes lens, not just a technical one.

- Engage with customers and internal stakeholders as needed to validate that architectural direction holds up against real-world use cases.

Talent Development & Mentorship :

- Inspire and mentor senior engineers, tech leads, and architects across the organisation raising the overall quality of technical thinking and decision-making.

- Build structured mechanisms for coaching and knowledge-sharing design reviews, architecture forums/guilds, RFC and ADR processes that scale good architectural practice beyond any one team.

- Act as a magnet for senior IC talent: create a visible, credible technical growth path that improves engagement and retention of high-potential engineers.

- Champion engineering best practices design reviews, architecture decision records, documentation, and code quality as habits, not one-off exercises.

Hands-On Technical Leadership :

- Stay hands-on: prototype, review designs and code, and work directly alongside teams on the platforms hardest problems.

- Lead resolution of the most complex, cross-cutting architectural challenges such as scale, reliability, data consistency, and security.

- Set up lightweight governance (architecture review forums, a technology radar) that keeps the platform coherent as teams and services multiply.

Required Skills & Experience :

Technical Background :

- 14 - 20 years of overall software engineering experience, with a significant and recent track record in architecture and technical leadership roles on large-scale, multi-tenant SaaS platforms.

- Proven experience owning target-state or reference architecture for a platform of meaningful scale and complexity.

- Strong, credible hands-on background across modern technology stacks (e.g., Java/.NET, cloud-native services, microservices, distributed systems) deep enough to earn the respect of senior engineers.

- Solid understanding of database technologies (SQL & NoSQL) and system design trade-offs at scale.

- Working knowledge of cloud platforms (AWS/Azure/GCP) and cloud-native architecture practices.

- Familiarity with AI/ML and agentic architecture patterns (e.g., RAG, LLM orchestration, vector search) is a strong plus, given growing AI-native roadmap.

Leadership & Influence :

- Demonstrated ability to mentor and elevate senior engineers and architects without formal reporting authority leading through influence and credibility.

- Excellent communication skills; able to explain architectural rationale clearly to the CTO, business leaders, and, where needed, customers.

- Strong stakeholder management, able to balance the sometimes-competing needs of product, business, and engineering.

- Genuine interest in coaching and teaching, with a track record of building technical culture that improves the quality and retention of senior talent.

Why Us :

- Shape the target-state architecture of a global SaaS platform used by thousands of enterprises.

- A high-ownership, high-visibility role reporting directly to the CTO, with the freedom to set technical direction.

- The opportunity to build a lasting technical legacy both in the platforms architecture and in the engineers you mentor.

- Competitive compensation and the chance to work at the intersection of core platform, product, and emerging AI capabilities.