Senior Platform Architect - Cross-Domain Scaling

Aiven; Helsinki; Hybrid; EUR 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity plan

Hybrid work policy

Equipment for success

Professional Development Budget

Employee Assistance Program

Global Time Off Commitment

Country-specific benefits

Job summary

Aiven in Helsinki is seeking a senior individual-contributor to lead cross-domain architecture and the 10x scaling initiative with hands-on technical depth. You will set direction, resolve architectural conflicts across domains, and drive complex, high-impact changes that shape the platform’s evolution.

This role emphasizes technical leadership over management, collaborating with global teams and executives. Hybrid work policy and equity benefits accompany the role.

Qualifications

• Track Record: operate at Staff/Senior Staff/Principal level in distributed systems, infrastructure, or platform engineering, ideally at a large-scale operation.
• Direction + Depth: demonstrate ability to set architectural direction across teams and personally deliver deep technical work.
• Cross-Team Influence: experience resolving architectural disagreements between teams that don't share a manager, earning buy-in through technical credibility.
• Ambiguity: comfortable operating with significant ambiguity on multi-quarter, cross-domain initiatives where the roadmap is being defined as the work happens.
• Communication: strong written and verbal communication; able to translate deep technical judgement into actionable direction for engineers and executives.
• Architecture Function Background (nice-to-have): prior experience in an architecture function rather than a purely product-engineering role.

Responsibilities

• Set technical direction for cross-domain architecture initiatives that no single service team owns, particularly the 10x scaling effort and related long-horizon platform decisions.
• Design and drive the most complex, high-risk technical changes impacting the whole company as a hands-on contributor.
• Maintain deep, current hands-on technical expertise to personally write, debug, and review the most difficult systems designs and code.
• Identify and resolve architectural conflicts or misalignment between service domains, making binding technical calls when domains would otherwise diverge or duplicate effort.
• Coordinate complex technical evolution efforts that span multiple domains and multi-quarter timelines, ensuring changes land coherently rather than as isolated domain-level decisions.
• Act as the senior technical authority and point of escalation for architecture decisions requiring deep systems expertise and cross-team credibility.
• Partner with engineering leads and Executive Team Members to translate strategic direction and scaling targets into sequenced roadmaps.
• Mentor and raise the technical bar of senior engineers working on cross-domain problems, without formal management responsibility.

Job description

Aiven in Helsinki is seeking a senior individual-contributor to lead cross-domain architecture and the 10x scaling initiative with hands-on technical depth. You will set direction, resolve architectural conflicts across domains, and drive complex, high-impact changes that shape the platform’s evolution.

This role emphasizes technical leadership over management, collaborating with global teams and executives. Hybrid work policy and equity benefits accompany the role.