Distinguished Software Architect, Customer Experience

Role Overview

• As a Distinguished Software Architect focused primarily on our front-end platform, you will shape the long-term architectural vision and strategy for Self’s client applications and BFF microservices while maintaining enterprise-wide architectural coherence across the system.
• You will be responsible for elevating the architecture of our client applications to enterprise scale, ensuring they are resilient, secure, performant, accessible, and adaptable for future growth.
• You will influence backend and platform decisions when they intersect with client applications, ensuring a clear boundary between backend systems dedicated to client applications (BFFs) and our other backend systems.
• You will serve as a trusted advisor to senior leadership and a mentor to architects and engineers across the organization, influencing through technical leadership rather than direct people management.
• Define and champion the enterprise front-end architecture strategy across client platforms and BFF microservices. Ensure we meet our business objectives through implementations that support maintainability, reliability, and scalability.
• Lead and deliver complex, business-critical, cross-team initiatives, influencing both technical and organizational outcomes.
• Establish standards in the client applications around design library, shared components, graphQL, web-analytics, experimentation, state management, and client observability.
• Ensure architectural coherence between BFF microservices and core backend microservices. Establish clear delineations of responsibilities between systems to support decoupled interfaces that allow for independent decoupled development.
• Map and evolve our microservice architecture using Domain-Driven Design (DDD) principles, clarifying ownership and reducing coupling across front-end, BFF, and core backend systems.
• Collaborate across engineering, product, DevOps, security, and data to define and govern architecture standards spanning APIs, data contracts, security, performance, observability, and deployment practices.
• Lead and execute complex, business-critical, cross-team initiatives requiring enterprise-grade alignment across client, product, and platform systems.
• Guide engineering direction through influence, collaboration, and deep technical expertise rather than formal authority.

Requirements

• 12+ years of progressive experience in software architecture and system design, with demonstrated impact across multiple domains and large-scale distributed systems.
• Deep expertise in Domain-Driven Design (DDD), microservice architecture, and API-driven ecosystems; proven ability to decompose and modernize complex legacy systems.
• Experience with python and/or javascript microservices.
• Experience with postgres and AWS.
• Experience with web and app frameworks like react and react native.
• Broad, hands-on knowledge across the modern technology stack
• covering cloud-native platforms, data infrastructure, event-driven systems, CI/CD pipelines, and observability tooling.
• Proven success in leading and delivering complex, business-critical, cross-team initiatives, influencing both technical and organizational outcomes.
• Demonstrated success in defining and governing architecture standards and frameworks at an enterprise scale.
• Exceptional stakeholder management and communication skills, with the ability to influence technical direction at the executive level.
• Proven leadership in building technical alignment across multiple teams and mentoring senior engineers and architects.
• A strategic mindset with the ability to balance technical rigor with business outcomes.
• Strong track record of translating architectural vision into measurable engineering and business results.

Tech Stack

• AWS
• Cloud
• Distributed Systems
• GraphQL
• JavaScript
• Microservices
• Postgres
• Python
• React
• React Native

Benefits

• Company equity in the form of Stock Options
• Performance-based bonuses
• Generous employer-paid health, vision and dental insurance coverage
• Flexible vacation policy
• Educational assistance
• Free gym membership
• Casual dress code
• Team building events and activities
• Remote work arrangements/ flexible work schedule
• Paid parental leave