Principal / Staff Platform Architect

KOS International Talent Group; California; On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

KOS International Talent Group seeks a Principal / Staff Platform Architect to lead the architecture of a global financial cloud platform. You will orchestrate 2,000+ microservices across regulated environments, focusing on modularity, reliability, and robust version management and build systems.

Responsibilities include designing a reproducible, hermetic build pipeline, a live dependency graph, and a GitOps deployment model across sites, with strong governance and change-impact analysis.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in large-scale distributed systems or platform infrastructure.
• Deep expertise in modern build systems and dependency management at scale.
• Experience with versioning governance across large service fleets.
• Experience with API contract evolution and protobuf/gRPC versioning.

Responsibilities

• Own core architecture for a large-scale financial cloud platform.
• Lead design of reproducible, hermetic build pipelines and dependency graphs.
• Develop monorepo governance and cross-module change protocols.
• Implement change impact analysis and selective test strategies.
• Design GitOps-driven multi-site deployment models.
• Create a four-layer testing framework with automated coverage enforcement.
• Collaborate with senior leadership and CTO on platform strategy.

Skills

Distributed systems

Build systems

Dependency management

Semantic versioning

API versioning

Multi-region

Leadership

Tools

Bazel

Buck

Pants

Nx

Job description

KOS International is partnering with a leading global financial technology platform to hire a Principal / Staff Platform Architect for its U.S. engineering team.

This role will take ownership of the core architecture behind a large-scale financial cloud platform, supporting 2,000+ microservices across multiple global, compliance-regulated environments.

You will lead the transformation towards a modular, scalable and highly reliable platform, with a particular focus on version management, dependency analysis, build systems and compatibility engineering.

This is a high-impact opportunity to shape the architecture of a global financial technology platform, working closely with senior engineering leadership and the CTO.

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