Distinguished Architect, Platform jobs in United States
cer-icon
Apply on Employer Site
company-logo

BambooHR · 1 month ago

Distinguished Architect, Platform

BambooHR is a market leader in building a people intelligence platform that transforms HR. They are seeking a Distinguished Architect to lead Platform Engineering, defining the architectural vision for their API-first platform and ensuring alignment across domains while mentoring engineering teams.

Human ResourcesSaaSSoftware
check
Culture & Values
check
H1B Sponsor Likelynote

Responsibilities

Set platform vision & reference architectures for a resilient, secure, compliant, multi‑tenant SaaS: identity & permissions, tenancy, configuration, notifications, audit, and compliance guardrails
Architect and guide the evolution of our headless/API-first platform: capability maps for domain APIs, events, and webhooks; OpenAPI/JSON Schema as sources of truth; contract testing; semantic versioning and clear deprecation windows
Architect and influence platform modernization: evolve BambooHR's core platform architecture—modernizing legacy systems, enabling scalable cloud-native patterns, and ensuring the platform is positioned for future innovation and growth
Collaborate with Product and Engineering leadership to define and communicate the product vision and strategy from an architectural perspective—representing the architectural vision and tradeoffs to the executive leadership team to ensure alignment across business, product, and technology
Own external developer experience: Developer Portal, interactive docs & explorer, quickstarts, sandbox tenants, API keys & usage dashboards, changelogs/status, language SDKs/CLIs/starter kits with automated releases, and partner onboarding (app registration, scopes/consent, security checks, marketplace publication, proactive change notices)
Elevate how internal developers build on top of the platform: evolve the Internal Developer Platform (IDP) to empower teams with standardized, self-service developer workflows, standard SDKs/libraries, and self-service tooling that accelerate delivery and improve DORA metrics and time-to-first-service
Frontend & UX foundations: Partner with frontend architects to ensure the design system, accessibility standards, and frontend platform align with overall platform architecture principles and patterns
Provide architectural guidance for Data & AI platform patterns: guide data modeling, streaming, analytics, AI/agent platform patterns, and evaluation/observability
Ensure reliability, security & compliance by design: public SLOs and error budgets, progressive delivery (canaries), chaos testing, multi-region DR; authN/authZ (OAuth2/OIDC/SAML; RBAC/ABAC), secure webhooks, audit logging; SOC 2/ISO 27001/GDPR baked into designs and pipelines
Guide growth, monetization & FinOps enablement: usage metering, entitlements, pricing tiers, quotas/rate limits; embed unit-economics telemetry (cost per call/event/tenant) to guide caching, capacity, storage tiers, and retention policies
Multiply architectural impact: run ADR/RFC processes, lead design reviews & guilds, mentor Staff/Principal engineers, and prototype to de-risk major bets and migrations

Qualification

API designCloud-native SaaSSecurity complianceDeveloper experienceMulti-tenant architectureObservability patternsEvent-driven systemsArchitectural visionMentoringCollaboration

Required

10+ years designing and operating public APIs/platforms and IDPs at scale in cloud‑native SaaS (AWS/GCP, Kubernetes/containers, service mesh, IaC, progressive delivery)
Proven ownership of developer portals, SDKs/CLIs, and partner onboarding/marketplaces; shipped versioning/deprecation programs and webhook/event architectures (REST/GraphQL; Kafka/PubSub or equivalents)
Deep security & tenancy: OAuth2/OIDC, scope design, RBAC/ABAC, multi‑tenant isolation, auditing, privacy‑preserving patterns, and compliance baked into workflows
Reliability & observability fluency: tracing/logs/metrics, SLO/error‑budget culture, chaos/DR patterns, secure webhook delivery
DevEx & efficiency impact: measurable DORA improvements, faster time‑to‑first‑service, and improved unit economics/FinOps

Preferred

You've transformed developer experience—measurably improving DORA metrics and internal satisfaction through intuitive platforms and golden paths
You've inspired architectural clarity and alignment across teams, helping leadership and engineers alike rally around a cohesive technical vision
You've cultivated thriving developer ecosystems—both internally and externally—through SDKs, integrations, and marketplaces
You bring deep technical fluency in modern architectural patterns: event-driven systems, GraphQL federation, and emerging data/AI platforms
You're a multiplier of talent: a coach, mentor, and community-builder who elevates architecture culture across the organization
You're known for driving change through influence—able to balance pragmatism with innovation and communicate complex ideas simply

Benefits

Comprehensive health, life, and disability insurance
Generous leave policies that include 4 weeks of vacation, 12 company holidays, parental leave, and volunteer time off so you can enjoy quality of life
401k plans with up to 6% company match
$2000 Paid-Paid Vacation bonus
EAP through Headspace

Company

BambooHR

company-logo
BambooHR is a SaaS-based company providing subscription-based HR software for SMEs.

H1B Sponsorship

BambooHR has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (2)

Funding

Current Stage
Late Stage
Total Funding
unknown
Key Investors
Sorenson Capital
2016-08-01Series Unknown
2012-01-01Series Unknown

Leadership Team

leader-logo
Bradley Rencher
Chief Executive Officer
linkedin
leader-logo
Ben Peterson
Co-founder and Co-chairman
linkedin
Company data provided by crunchbase