Principal Architect: Monolith Modernization to 35M Users

High Country Search Group; Denver (CO); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work schedule

Job summary

High Country Search Group is seeking a Principal Software Architect to modernize a large monolith and support rapid growth. The role combines hands-on coding with strategic roadmap creation, focusing on decomposing domain models and redesigning data architecture to remove performance bottlenecks without production downtime.

You will contribute 30-40% of your time coding critical migrations and proofs-of-concept while guiding architectural direction and cross-team alignment.

Qualifications

• Experience driving architectural transformations or monolith breakdowns at scale.
• Experience through multiple iterations of product scaling.
• Deep expertise in API design, event-driven patterns, domain boundaries, and service extraction.
• Strong data architecture background with zero-downtime migrations.
• Language-agnostic mindset across Rails, Node/TS, Python, Go, Java.
• Experience using AI-assisted tooling to write code and accelerate delivery.
• Ability to define a clear technical direction and gain buy-in across teams.
• Hands-on leader willing to write code and review PRs.

Responsibilities

• Lead modernization of a monolithic system to support 5x growth.
• Spend 30-40% of time writing critical-path migrations and proofs-of-concept.
• Set 2-5 year technical roadmap for the platform.
• Decompose domains and redesign data architecture to remove bottlenecks.

Skills

Architectural transformations

Monolith breakdowns

System design

Data architecture

Polyglot languages

AI-native tooling

Technical leadership

Code-writing / PRs

Job description

High Country Search Group is seeking a Principal Software Architect to modernize a large monolith and support rapid growth. The role combines hands-on coding with strategic roadmap creation, focusing on decomposing domain models and redesigning data architecture to remove performance bottlenecks without production downtime.

You will contribute 30-40% of your time coding critical migrations and proofs-of-concept while guiding architectural direction and cross-team alignment.