Principal Architect

SCALIS

Seattle (WA)

On-site

USD 236,000 - 275,000

Full time

14 days+

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Benefits offered by this job

Health Insurance

Vision Insurance

401(k) Matching

Paid Time Off (PTO)

Paid Holidays

Remote Work

Flexible Schedule

Life Insurance

Professional Development

Bonus

Job summary

Boundless is redefining legal tech by building a scalable AI-powered immigration platform. We seek a Principal Architect to own end-to-end platform architecture, guide the AI layer, and lead a team of engineers to ship a durable, auditable system.

You will shape data infrastructure, agent-based workflows, and regulatory-compliant processes for thousands of users. Based in Seattle with a remote-friendly hybrid model, you will drive architectural decisions, mentor engineers, and collaborate with

Qualifications

10+ years in engineering with architectural decisions on production systems
Ability to hold platform, AI layer, data infra and business constraints in one view
Experience shipping AI into production with attention to latency, retrieval and evaluation
Excellent documentation and architectural decision records to guide engineers

Responsibilities

Own platform architecture end to end: boundaries, API design, multi-tenancy, data models
Design AI layer: LLMs, retrieval, structured tools, quality evaluation
Build and own foundational agent infra used by product teams
Define how context is structured, persisted, and shared across agents
Build agents for legal tasks, communications, data hygiene, payments, and case workflow
Define data movement from transactional systems to warehouse and tooling
Transition engineering to a software factory with improved dev processes
Be the senior technical voice in design reviews and ADRs
Mentor engineers on architectural thinking and proposals
Write and ship code, leading from the front

Skills

System architecture

AI in production

Leadership

Documentation

Mentoring engineers

Tools

Vector search

LLM tooling

API design

Data infrastructure

Job description

Hey — Let's find your next opportunity

New York, New York, United States

Austin, Texas, United States

About the job

HybridSeattle preferred / Remote OK too
Full-Time

We're hiring a Principal Architect to reinvent how legal work gets done in the age of AI.
Boundless is a Series C legal tech company based in Seattle, backed by Foundry Group (Brad Feld) and Silver Lake. We operate in 10+ countries and have helped over 100,000 people and companies navigate immigration. We build tech-powered immigration solutions for two audiences: corporate HR teams managing high volumes of employer-sponsored cases, and individuals navigating family and naturalization cases. We have in-house lawyers and are building a world-class AI-powered services firm.
Anthropic is not coming for this. Immigration is vertical, regulated, and workflow-deep, and we are racing to build the defining AI product in the category.

Why this role exists

We are rebuilding our software platform and engineering infrastructure from the ground up, and we need a Principal Architect to lead that transformation and set the technical vision that ties it together.

You will have a real customer base and a real platform - and the autonomy to reshape both - on day one. We are looking for someone who loves the speed and impact of startups, but wants their work to be immediately scaled on day one.

Immigration is complex, with endless edge cases and global scale. We are building intelligent automation, orchestration, and decision-making to support the agentification of legal workflows, with the checks and balances required to ensure accuracy in a regulated domain and to enable the lawyers who ultimately own legal decisions. The challenge is systems and data infrastructure that can handle this complexity without sacrificing accuracy, observability, or speed, at the scale required to reliably serve thousands of people every year.

We are looking for someone who can hold the whole technical picture: the platform, the AI layer, the data infrastructure, the engineering infrastructure - and how they interact. Someone who makes hard calls, thinks in years not months, and partners with our engineering team to build a durable, world-class AI platform that helps millions of people achieve their immigration dreams.

We are a remote-first team with a small in-person office in Seattle. Our ideal applicant is based in Seattle and will be in the office two-days per week, although we are open to fully remote for the right person.

What you will do

Own the platform architecture end to end: service boundaries, API design, multi-tenancy, data modeling, and the shift to agent-orchestrated legal work.
Design the AI layer: how LLMs, retrieval systems, and structured tools connect to case data; how we evaluate quality; how we handle failure modes that matter in a regulated domain.
Build and own foundational agent infrastructure that product teams use to deploy, monitor, and manage agents independently.
Define how context is structured and managed: what gets persisted, how customer and session state is scoped, and how agents share or isolate domain knowledge.
Build agents that handle legal tasks, communications, data hygiene, payments, and the full operational surface of an immigration case, from intake to government submission to resolution.
Define how data moves, from transactional systems to the warehouse to the operational tooling case managers and legal teams rely on every day.
Transition our engineering infrastructure into a software factory, overhauling dev processes, systems, tools, and culture in partnership with product and engineering.
Be the senior technical voice in design reviews and hard tradeoff conversations. Write architecture decision records that give the team durable context.
Mentor engineers on architectural thinking by doing the work visibly and giving direct feedback on design proposals.
Ship code and lead from the front.

Who you are

You have 10+ years in engineering, with meaningful time as a principal, staff, CTO, or architect-level IC. You have owned real architectural decisions on production systems people depend on.
You think in systems. You can hold the platform, the AI layer, the data infrastructure, and the business constraints in your head at once and see where they don't line up.
You are a builder. You set new benchmarks for output and want a role where you ship with autonomy and speed, with immediate impact on thousands of existing customers. Not a role where you wait for consensus or others to write the code.
You move fast by making decisions quickly, not by cutting corners. You know the difference between a reversible call and one that will cost the team six months to unwind.
You have shipped AI into production. You have views on retrieval, evaluation, latency, and where LLMs break down, and you know when to use AI and when another tool is the right call.
You have taste. You can build systems where agents and humans work in harmony without overbuilding.
You write well. The most durable output of this role is documentation that helps engineers make the right call when you are not in the room.
You have worked in a domain where correctness has consequences: legal, healthcare, financial services, or public safety. You understand why accuracy and auditability are non-negotiable.

Good signals, not requirements

You have worked at both large and small companies and have a preference for small. You understand speed and impact but also know what matters at scale.
Founder or CTO experience.
Experience with workflow automation, case management, or document processing pipelines.
Prior work with vector search, semantic retrieval, or document understanding systems at production scale.

Compensation

At Boundless, we believe compensation is more than just a paycheck. We invest in our team’s health, flexibility, and future:

Seattle Base Pay Range: $236k - $275k
Our Approach: The applicable base pay range will depend on what ultimately is determined to be the candidate’s primary work location, complexity and responsibility of role, job duties/requirements, and relevant experience and skills.
Comprehensive Coverage: Robust medical, dental, and vision insurance.
Financial Protection: Life insurance, plus short- and long-term disability coverage.
Well-being: Access to holistic health benefits and wellness programs.

Time Off & Flexibility