Principal Platform Architect — Financial Cloud

Confidential; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

Confidential company in San Francisco seeks a Platform Architect to oversee the version engineering and module governance architecture. This role involves designing reproducible build pipelines and managing the live dependency graph across a complex financial cloud platform with substantial regulatory compliance.

The ideal candidate will have over 10 years of experience in platform infrastructure, a deep understanding of build systems, and a strong background in dependency management. Proficiency in semantic versioning governance is required, along with experience in API contract evolution.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in large-scale distributed systems or platform infrastructure.
• Deep expertise in build systems and dependency management at scale.
• Production experience with reproducible build engineering.
• Experience building dependency graph tooling.
• Strong background in semantic versioning governance.

Responsibilities

• Design the version set model for modular versions.
• Architect reproducible build pipelines.
• Build and maintain the live dependency graph.
• Design the monorepo + package ownership governance model.
• Architect the four-layer testing framework.

Skills

Large-scale distributed systems expertise

Build systems knowledge (Bazel, Buck, etc.)

Dependency management skills

API contract evolution experience

Job description

We operate 2000+ microservices deployed across dozens of compliance-regulated sites globally. We are transforming this into a modular financial cloud platform — organizing services into 50-100 independently versioned business modules, where each compliance site is a version set (a pinned, validated combination of module versions).

As Platform Architect, you will own the version engineering and module governance architecture — the system that ensures every deployment is reproducible, every change's blast radius is computable, and every site composition is a known-good state. This is fundamentally a build systems + dependency management + change propagation problem at financial-grade reliability.

Key Responsibilities

• Design the version set model: each site defined as a locked, tested combination of module versions (analogous to a Bazel workspace snapshot or Cargo.lock), with version compatibility matrices and automatic constraint solving
• Architect reproducible build pipelines: any module at any version produces byte-identical artifacts regardless of when/where it's built; hermetic build environments, content-addressable artifact storage, SLSA Level 3+ provenance
• Build and maintain the live dependency graph spanning 2000+ services: static analysis (code/API/schema) + runtime analysis (traffic-weighted call patterns), transitive dependency resolution with automatic conflict detection
• Design the monorepo + package ownership governance model: clear module boundaries via DDD, CODEOWNERS enforcement, cross-module change protocols, module boundary enforcement tooling (lint rules, CI checks, architectural fitness functions)
• Architect change impact analysis systems: given any PR, compute which modules/sites/tests are affected; selective test execution (run only dependency-graph-proven relevant tests); change confidence scoring (blast radius + coverage + stability → risk grade)
• Design the GitOps-driven multi-site deployment model: site config repos declaring module versions + compliance parameters, automated deployment strategies (patch auto-deploy, minor with review, major with migration plan, security force-push)
• Architect the four-layer testing framework: Module self-test → Platform compliance tests (parameterized by country) → Cross-module integration tests → Site-specific tests, with automated coverage enforcement that blocks deployments when gaps are detected

Major Requirements

• 10+ years in large-scale distributed systems / platform infrastructure
• Deep expertise in build systems and dependency management at scale: Bazel, Buck, Pants, Nx, or equivalent (1000+ packages)
• Production experience with reproducible build engineering: content-addressable storage, hermetic builds, deterministic CI, artifact provenance (SLSA)
• Experience building dependency graph tooling: static/runtime dependency analysis, impact computation, selective testing
• Strong background in semantic versioning governance across large service fleets: version resolution, compatibility constraints, lockfile-style pinning
• Experience with API contract evolution: protobuf/gRPC versioning, schema evolution strategies, contract testing
• Experience with multi-region/multi-tenant platform architectures serving regulated workloads
• Track record of migrating monolithic systems to modular architectures without business disruption
• Preferred: Experience with Amazon's internal VersionSet / Brazil build system / Apollo deployment, or similar systems at Google (Blaze/Bazel), Meta (Buck/Configerator)
• Preferred: Background at Stripe or Adyen — multi-country financial platform with compliance parameterization
• Preferred: Mandarin proficiency for collaboration with Singapore/APAC engineering teams