Lead Architect – Java/Spring Boot, Cloud - TX

For the past 20 years, we have powered many Digital Experiences for the Fortune 500. Since 1999, we have grown from a few people to more than 4000 team members across the globe that are engaged in various Digital Modernization. For a brief 1 minute video about us, you can check https://youtu.be/uJWBWQZEA6o.

Role Summary

We are seeking a Lead Architect who can own system architecture end-to-end and clearly articulate design decisions, technology choices, and tradeoffs to senior stakeholders. This role requires deep hands-on technical expertise combined with strong technical communication and leadership capabilities. The ideal candidate should be comfortable leading architecture discussions, guiding teams, and influencing platform direction.

Key Responsibilities

- Lead architecture design for complex, large‑scale backend and platform systems, with ownership across application, integration, data, and cloud layers.

- Drive architecture and design clarity, focusing on long‑term scalability, performance, security, and resiliency rather than pure feature development.

- Clearly articulate architecture decisions, design patterns, and tradeoffs to engineers, product teams, and senior client stakeholders.

- Define and govern technology standards, design guidelines, and engineering best practices across teams.

- Review, challenge, and approve high‑level and low‑level technical designs.

- Lead technical discussions with client architects and senior engineering leadership, influencing platform direction and roadmap decisions.

- Evaluate and recommend tools, frameworks, and cloud services aligned with platform strategy.

- Support delivery teams by resolving complex technical challenges and architectural risks.

- Mentor senior engineers and tech leads to raise overall architectural maturity of the organization.

Required Qualifications

- 10+ years of overall software engineering experience with 3–4 years in an architecture or lead role.

- Strong expertise in Java, Spring Boot, microservices, and API-driven architectures.

- Strong experience designing distributed systems and enterprise-scale platforms.

- Deep experience with cloud architectures (Azure, GCP, or AWS).

- Strong knowledge of architecture and design patterns.

- Experience with CI/CD, DevOps practices, and release architecture.

- Excellent technical communication and stakeholder engagement skills.

- Proven ability to lead architecture discussions and defend design decisions.

Preferred Qualifications

- Experience in regulated enterprise environments (Healthcare, BFSI, Retail).

- Experience with Kafka, Pub/Sub, or event-driven architectures.

- Knowledge of observability, performance tuning, and production readiness.

- Experience collaborating directly with client architecture teams.

- Experience in cloud migration or platform modernization initiatives.

Location

• Texas, Chicago, NY - Photon Offices

Compensation, Benefits and Duration

• Minimum Compensation: USD 50,000
• Maximum Compensation: USD 175,000
• Compensation is based on actual experience and qualifications of the candidate. The above is a reasonable and a good faith estimate for the role.
• Medical, vision, and dental benefits, 401k retirement plan, variable pay/incentives, paid time off, and paid holidays are available for full time employees.
• This position is available for independent contractors
• No applications will be considered if received more than 120 days after the date of this post