Principal Software Architect (Graph Architect)

We are seeking a highly experienced Principal Software Architect to provide technical leadership and architectural direction across complex, high-scale software and data platforms.

This role will have a particular focus on Identity Resolution, including the design of systems that accurately identify, match, link, and resolve individuals, households, organizations, devices, and other entities across large and diverse datasets. In addition to Identity Resolution, the Principal Software Architect will be responsible for designing scalable enterprise applications, distributed systems, large-scale data-processing platforms, and low-latency APIs and services.

The ideal candidate will have deep, hands-on expertise across Java, Python, Scala, Apache Spark, and SQL, with strong experience designing systems on AWS, Snowflake, and Databricks.

This is a senior technical leadership role requiring the ability to define architectural direction, evaluate technology choices, solve complex engineering challenges, and work closely with engineering teams to ensure solutions are scalable, reliable, secure, maintainable, and performant.

Key Responsibilities

Define and drive the architecture for enterprise-scale Identity Resolution platforms and services.

Design systems for deterministic and probabilistic identity matching, entity resolution, identity graphs, record linkage, deduplication, and identity consolidation.

Develop architectures capable of resolving identities across large, diverse, and rapidly changing datasets.

Design solutions supporting both real-time and batch Identity Resolution use cases.

Define strategies for identity matching, confidence scoring, survivorship, source prioritization, identity linking, and identity lifecycle management.

Design and optimize low-latency APIs and services capable of supporting high-throughput, highly available production workloads.

Architect distributed applications and services using Java, Python, and Scala, selecting the appropriate language and framework based on workload and system requirements.

Design high-scale data-processing pipelines and platforms using Apache Spark, including Spark workloads implemented in Scala and Python.

Design and optimize data solutions using Snowflake and Databricks for large-scale analytical and operational workloads.

Design highly efficient data models and SQL-based solutions supporting transactional, analytical, and Identity Resolution workloads.

Define appropriate caching, concurrency, partitioning, indexing, persistence, and data-access strategies to meet stringent performance and latency requirements.

Define cloud-native architectures using AWS and modern distributed computing patterns.

Design integration patterns between AWS, Snowflake, Databricks, internal applications, APIs, and external data providers.

Evaluate technologies, frameworks, databases, processing engines, and architectural approaches based on performance, scalability, reliability, cost, and operational complexity.

Establish standards and best practices for application architecture, API design, data architecture, distributed processing, security, observability, testing, and software development.

Partner closely with engineering teams to translate architectural designs into practical, scalable, and maintainable implementations.

Provide technical direction during the development of complex systems and assist engineering teams in resolving difficult performance, scalability, and design challenges.

Conduct architecture and design reviews to ensure systems align with established technical standards and long-term platform strategy.

Identify performance bottlenecks and guide teams in optimizing APIs, applications, Spark workloads, SQL queries, and distributed-processing systems.

Define architectural approaches for resiliency, fault tolerance, high availability, disaster recovery, and operational monitoring.

Collaborate with engineering, data engineering, product, security, infrastructure, and business stakeholders to translate complex requirements into effective technical solutions.

Mentor senior engineers, technical leads, and architects and help develop architectural capabilities across the engineering organization.

Stay current with evolving technologies and industry practices related to Identity Resolution, distributed systems, cloud computing, data platforms, and software architecture.

Identity Resolution Expertise

The Principal Software Architect should have significant experience designing or working with Identity Resolution, Entity Resolution, Customer 360, Master Data Management, identity graph, or similar large-scale matching systems.

Strong candidates should understand concepts such as:

Deterministic and probabilistic matching

Exact and fuzzy matching techniques

Entity and record linkage

Identity graphs and relationship modeling

Identity stitching and consolidation

Match confidence and scoring

Attribute normalization and standardization

Duplicate detection and resolution

Survivorship and golden-record strategies

Source reliability and attribute precedence

Real-time versus batch identity resolution

Incremental identity processing

Large-scale identity datasets

Data quality and identity accuracy measurement

Privacy, security, and governance considerations associated with identity data

Required Qualifications

10+ years of professional software engineering experience, including significant experience designing complex enterprise software systems.

Proven experience serving as an Architect, Principal Engineer, Staff Engineer, or equivalent senior technical leader.

Deep experience designing and implementing Identity Resolution, Entity Resolution, identity graph, Customer 360, Master Data Management, or similar systems.

Strong expertise in Java, including enterprise application development, high-performance services, concurrency, and distributed application design.

Strong expertise in Python, including application development, data processing, automation, APIs, and distributed data workloads.

Strong expertise in Scala, particularly for distributed systems and large-scale data-processing applications.

Deep experience with Apache Spark, including architecture, optimization, partitioning, distributed execution, performance tuning, and large-scale processing.

Advanced proficiency in SQL, including complex queries, relational data modeling, query optimization, and performance tuning.

Demonstrated ability to select appropriately between Java, Python, Scala, Spark, and SQL based on performance, scalability, maintainability, and workload requirements.

Strong experience designing REST APIs, microservices, distributed applications, and high-throughput backend services.

Demonstrated experience designing and optimizing low-latency and low-latency APIs.

Strong understanding of distributed systems concepts, including concurrency, caching, partitioning, consistency, resiliency, scalability, and fault tolerance.

Extensive experience with AWS and cloud-native application architecture.

Strong experience with Snowflake, including data modeling, performance optimization, security, data sharing, and large-scale data-processing patterns.

Strong experience with Databricks, including Spark-based processing, distributed data engineering, optimization, and production workload management.

Experience designing systems that span application, API, distributed-processing, data, and cloud infrastructure layers.

Strong understanding of software engineering principles, design patterns, API design, data structures, algorithms, and application performance.

Experience with modern CI/CD practices, automated testing, source control, and production software delivery.

Strong understanding of security, privacy, authentication, authorization, encryption, and data-protection practices.