.Net Microservices Principal Architect

Hire'in Solutions; Houston (TX); On-site; USD 124,000 - 207,000; Part time

Job summary

Hire'in Solutions seeks a hands-on .NET Microservices Principal Architect to define, build, and govern large-scale enterprise platforms in a contract role based in Houston, TX. The role emphasizes deep expertise in C#, .NET 8, distributed systems, AWS/Azure, security, performance, and production reliability, with practical AI/LLM integration experience preferred.

You will own critical code paths, mentor engineers, and lead multiple teams through architecture, design, and governance to deliver

Qualifications

• Expert C# 12 and .NET 8 with ASP.NET Core
• Extensive experience in microservices and domain-driven design
• Proven ability to design secure, scalable, reliable enterprise platforms

Responsibilities

• Hands-on coding of critical paths and production-grade services in C#/.NET 8
• Mentor engineers and leads across multiple teams
• Define service boundaries using DDD and bounded contexts
• Lead high-level and low-level design for scalable platforms
• Drive security, observability, testing, and performance engineering
• Architect AWS-based solutions with containers and CI/CD pipelines
• Guide AI/LLM integration with guardrails and cost controls

Skills

C# and .NET

Distributed systems

AWS

Azure

Security

Performance engineering

Production reliability

AI/LLM integration

Leadership

Mentoring

Microservices

DDD

Kafka/SQS/SNS/EventBridge/RabbitMQ

PostgreSQL/MySQL/Oracle

DynamoDB/MongoDB

Kubernetes

CI/CD

Tools

Docker

Terraform

CloudFormation

Job description

Location - Houston, TX

Employment Type - Contract Only

Cloud-Native Platforms | Distributed Systems | AI Exposure

Experience:

12-18 years

Architecture:

5+ years

Cloud / AWS:

5+ years

Role Overview

We are seeking a hands-on .NET Microservices Principal Architect to define, build, and govern large-scale enterprise platforms. The role requires deep expertise in C#, .NET, distributed systems, AWS/Azure, security, performance engineering, and production reliability. The architect must remain close to the code, lead critical implementations, guide multiple engineering teams, and translate business goals into secure, scalable, and operable solutions. Practical exposure to AI/LLM integration is preferred.

Core Responsibilities

Hands-on Coding and Engineering Leadership

Own critical code paths and develop production-grade services, frameworks, reusable components, and reference implementations using C# and .NET 8.

Conduct code reviews and technical audits covering readability, concurrency, error handling, testability, security, performance, and operational readiness.

Establish coding standards, design patterns, automated quality gates, unit and integration test practices, and secure development controls.

Mentor senior engineers and technical leads while resolving complex implementation challenges and design conflicts.

Architecture and System Design

Lead high-level and low-level design for business-critical, high-throughput, low-latency, and globally scalable platforms.

Define service boundaries using domain-driven design, bounded contexts, API contracts, data ownership, and evolutionary architecture principles.

Required Technical Expertise

C# and .NET: Expert C# 12 and .NET 8, ASP.NET Core, .NET, multithreading, concurrency, CLR internals, design patterns, clean architecture, enterprise integration patterns, and automated testing.

Microservices: Service decomposition, DDD, API design, event-driven architecture, resiliency, distributed data, service discovery, configuration, and backward-compatible evolution.

Messaging: Kafka, SQS, SNS, EventBridge or RabbitMQ; delivery semantics, schema evolution, ordering, replay, dead-letter handling, and idempotent consumers.

Data: PostgreSQL/MySQL/Oracle plus DynamoDB or MongoDB; modeling, query tuning, indexing, partitioning, transactions, replication, caching, and data lifecycle.

Cloud and DevOps: AWS architecture, Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD, Terraform or CloudFormation, observability, automated test deployment strategies, and SRE practices.

Security: Application, API and cloud security; OAuth2/OIDC/JWT, IAM, encryption, secrets, threat modeling, vulnerability remediation, and secure SDLC.

AI and Engineering Innovation

Evaluate and integrate AI/LLM capabilities using AWS Bedrock, OpenAI APIs, RAG patterns, embeddings, vector databases, and appropriate guardrails.

Guide secure and responsible AI integration, including data protection, prompt and output controls, observability, evaluation, cost, latency, and fallback behavior.

Use AI-assisted engineering for code understanding, test generation, documentation, troubleshooting, and productivity improvements without weakening engineering controls.

Required Experience

Experience Area

Total software engineering

12-18 years

C# and .NET enterprise development

10+ years

Microservices and distributed systems

7+ years

Architecture and system design

5+ years

AWS or equivalent cloud architecture

5+ years

Technical leadership and governance

5+ years

Production troubleshooting, performance and security

5+ years

Distributed Systems, Reliability and Operations

Design resilient synchronous and asynchronous workflows using REST, messaging, event streaming, queues, and publish-subscribe models.

Apply distributed systems patterns including Saga, CQRS, event sourcing where appropriate, idempotency, outbox, circuit breaker, bulkhead, timeout, retry with backoff, rate limiting, and distributed caching.

Address consistency, availability, partition tolerance, ordering, duplicate delivery, concurrency, distributed transactions, and failure recovery through explicit design decisions.

Define service-level indicators and objectives, health checks, graceful degradation, disaster recovery, multi-AZ or multi-region strategies, and capacity plans.

Production Troubleshooting and Observability

Lead diagnosis and resolution of complex production incidents spanning application code, CLR, databases, messaging, containers, Kubernetes, networks, and AWS services.

Perform root cause analysis using logs, metrics, traces, thread dumps, heap dumps, profiling, query plans, and distributed correlation IDs; convert findings into preventive actions.

Define observability standards with OpenTelemetry, CloudWatch, Prometheus, Grafana, and centralized logging, including actionable alerts and operational dashboards.

Improve incident response through runbooks, failure simulations, post-incident reviews, automated remediation, and measurable reliability improvements.

Performance and Scalability Engineering

Engineer systems to achieve explicit latency, throughput, concurrency, availability, and resource-efficiency targets.

Lead load, stress, endurance, spike, and scalability testing; analyze bottlenecks across code, CLR, database, cache, network, container, and cloud layers.

Optimize .NET memory management, garbage collection, thread pools, connection pools, serialization, API payloads, SQL queries, indexing, partitioning, and caching.

Drive evidence-based capacity planning and performance benchmarking before production releases.

Security Architecture

Embed security by design through threat modeling, secure coding, least privilege, zero-trust principles, vulnerability management, and secure SDLC controls.

Design authentication and authorization using OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, JWT, RBAC/ABAC, IAM roles and policies, and service-to-service identity.

Protect APIs and data using encryption in transit and at rest, secrets management, key rotation, input validation, dependency scanning, audit logging, and abuse prevention.

Partner with security and compliance teams to address privacy, regulatory, penetration-test, and remediation requirements.

Cloud, DevOps and Platform Architecture

Architect AWS solutions using ECS/EKS, Lambda, API Gateway, SQS, SNS, EventBridge, CloudWatch, IAM, DynamoDB, RDS, ElastiCache, VPC, Route 53, and Secrets Manager.

Define container, Kubernetes, CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code, release, rollback, environment, and deployment strategies using automated controls.

Balance resilience, security, maintainability, operational simplicity, and cloud cost when selecting services and patterns.

Preferred Qualifications and Competencies

AWS Solutions Architect Professional, AWS Security Specialty, TOGAF, CKA/CKAD, or comparable advanced certification.

Experience with high-volume platforms, complex modernization, multi-team architecture governance, and AI-powered enterprise solutions.

Exceptional architecture judgment, hands-on coding depth, analytical troubleshooting, performance mindset, security ownership, communication, and stakeholder influence.

Ideal Profile

A hands-on architect who can write and review critical code, lead system design, resolve severe production issues, and drive distributed systems, performance, reliability, security, cloud, and engineering excellence across teams.