Chief Architect

CatalystOne Solutions; Oslo; Hybrid; NOK 1,000,000 - 2,000,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

25 days vacation

Pension & Insurance

Wellness contribution

Tech tools provided

Transit allowance

Staff canteen

Hybrid work

Job summary

CatalystOne Solutions in Oslo is seeking a Chief Architect to own the long-term architecture of our HCM platform. You will enable 15 small teams by providing guardrails, patterns, and decision support, balancing delivery needs with sustainability.

You will lead architectural decisions with CTO leadership, collaborate with Product Owners, and drive AI-enabled development while maintaining quality, security and compliance.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience designing and evolving large-scale SaaS architectures.
• Ability to set decision rights and architectural principles.
• Proven influence with senior engineers and leaders.
• Strong communication across disciplines.
• Experience with AI-enabled development and guardrails.

Responsibilities

• Own and guide long-term architecture across the HCM platform.
• Collaborate with Product and Engineering leadership.
• Provide guardrails and decision support to teams.
• Represent architectural perspectives in CTO and executive discussions.

Skills

Large-scale architecture design

SaaS systems

Architectural governance

Stakeholder influence

AI in software

Job description

CatalystOne is building the next generation of HCM products for the Nordic and Northern European market. Our platform is built by 15 product teams across Scandinavia and India, and we are scaling on several fronts at once: product complexity, AI adoption, platform modernisation, and the integration work that follows growth.

Each of those is manageable on its own. Together, they need a single architectural owner who can see the whole picture and set the direction. That is why we are hiring a Chief Architect.

As a Chief Architect in CatalystOne, some of your day-to-day tasks will be:

• Owning and evolving the overall product architecture and target state across our HCM platform, including platform direction, domain boundaries, integration patterns and long-term modernisation priorities.
• Owning, maintaining and evolving our architectural north star, balancing long-term sustainability with near-term delivery needs.
• Curating our Technology Radar, providing transparency and guidance on technology choices.
• Taking ownership of our architecture toolset (principles, patterns, reference architectures, ADR practices and decision records) that gives product teams practical guardrails and decision support as they move toward the target architecture.
• Enabling autonomous, agile teams by setting constraints that increase flow, predictability and compliance.
• Stepping in where local choices carry system-wide consequences, such as shared platform services, data ownership, identity, security, AI infrastructure or the integration of acquired systems.
• Acting as a strategic partner for the product trios, collaborating closely with Product and Engineering leadership.
• Supporting architectural decision-making across teams by enabling fast, well-documented decisions close to where the work happens, and by building architectural capacity within the teams themselves.
• Representing architectural perspectives in strategic discussions within the CTO leadership group and Executive Management Team.

What This Role Focuses On

You own the long-term, product-wide architecture. Implementation stays with the teams, and your job is to give them the tools and guardrails that make their decisions easier and safer.

In practice, that means working across 15 small teams of four to six people, each with a PM, a UX designer and a Tech Lead. You'll spend your time with the Tech Leads on technology choices and trade-offs, and just as much with the Product Owners, because what we build matters a great deal for how it should be built. You lead through principles, clarity and trust rather than approval queues.

AI is changing how our software is built and operated, and you help us adopt it in ways that make us more effective without loosening our grip on quality, security and compliance.

This is an individual contributor role reporting to the CTO and part of the CTO leadership team, with no direct personnel responsibility for now. Broad impact, close collaboration, and your time spent on architecture rather than admin.

How We'll Know It's Working

A year in, we would expect to see:

• Cross-team architectural decisions being made faster, with fewer unresolved dependencies and a shorter path from proposal to decision.
• Architectural debt made visible and actively managed, with shared understanding of core risks, modernisation priorities and ownership boundaries.
• Local team choices staying aligned with the target architecture, with real adoption of principles, reference patterns and ADRs.
• The platform absorbing more product scope, teams and integrations without a matching growth in coordination overhead.
• Strategic initiatives surfacing architectural options, risks and trade-offs early enough to influence the decisions being made.

We Think You Will Thrive Here If You Have

• Deep experience designing and evolving large-scale product architectures in a SaaS environment.
• Strong systems thinking and the ability to reason about complex socio-technical systems.
• A proven ability to set clear decision rights and principles that make local decision-making faster and safer.
• Strong domain leadership and execution skills, and the ability to influence senior engineers and leaders through clarity, trust and strong reasoning. Building trust with Tech Leads and Product Owners is central to succeeding here.
• Experience working through architectural guardrails that increase delivery speed and compliance simultaneously, including for AI-enabled and agentic development.
• Comfort operating at both strategic and tactical levels, translating vision into actionable guidance.
• A pragmatic mindset: strong architecture matters, and outcomes matter too.
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to create shared understanding across disciplines.

Bonus points for

• Experience with architectural integration following mergers or acquisitions.
• Background from HR tech, HCM or other compliance-heavy domains.
• Experience working with distributed engineering organisations across several countries.

If you're excited about the role but don't meet every single requirement, we still encourage you to apply. We value potential, learning mindset, and collaboration as much as past titles.

What It's Like To Work With Us

You will join a company with strong Nordic roots, a growing international footprint, and a culture that values both results and people. We are in the middle of an architectural and organisational transformation, moving toward clearer product boundaries, stronger autonomy, and reduced cognitive load for teams. That work is genuinely underway, and this role gets to shape where it lands.

Location & Language:

This role is based in our Oslo office, and can be performed in a hybrid setup. English is our working language.

What You Get From Us

• Time Off That Matters: Enjoy a solid 25 days of vacation per year to recharge and regroup.
• Financial and Health Security: Benefit from a comprehensive pension and insurance package, plus private healthcare.
• Your Well-being, Your Way: Take advantage of our wellness contribution to stay on top of your health.
• Tech Tools for Efficiency: Get the job done with a choice of laptop (mac / PC), mobile phone & subscription, and a home internet allowance..
• Easy Commuting: Offset your commute costs with our public transport allowance.
• Lunch Made Easy: Skip the hassle and grab a bite at our staff canteen.
• Flexible Work Setup: Hybrid for your life-work balance.