Senior Engineer, Platform Architecture

Auto Hauler Exchange; City of Rochester (NY); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Auto Hauler Exchange is seeking a Senior Engineer, Platform Architecture to guide technical direction for the federated GraphQL platform and Go services in Rochester, MI. You will code alongside the team and shape AI strategy for products and internal tooling.

You will own cross-service architecture, set federation standards, and mentor others while delivering practical, scalable solutions in TS and Go within a cloud environment.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in software engineering with senior/architect experience.
• Hands-on coding in TS/Go alongside the team.
• Proven expertise in GraphQL federation and cloud platforms.

Responsibilities

• Own architecture across services and decide where new capability belongs.
• Set standards for GraphQL federation, service layering, contract versioning, data ownership.
• Turn product ideas into technical designs with contracts and acceptance criteria.
• Write and review production TS/Go code weekly.
• Develop reusable patterns for the team to emulate.
• Investigate critical defects and uncover root causes.
• Collaborate on AI product capabilities, data access, and MCP servers.
• Push AI into delivery with automated docs, API tests, and code reviews.
• Define partner integration standards across TMS, payments, mapping, and CRM.
• Establish testing, observability, and release-safety guidelines.
• Mentor through design reviews and architecture decisions.

Skills

Architectural leadership

TypeScript/Node.js

Go / systems language

GraphQL depth

Cloud platforms (GCP/AWS/AZ

Kubernetes

Observability / tracing

AI tooling familiarity

BigQuery / data stack

Documentation & ADRs

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Apollo Federation

Next.js

Datastream / dbt / Dataform

BigQuery

Meilisearch

Job description

Auto Hauler Exchange (AHX) is an innovative startup revolutionizing the auto transport and logistics industry. Our platform connects vehicle shippers and carriers to streamline vehicle transportation with real-time tracking, transparent pricing, and an easy-to-use interface. As we continue to grow, Auto Hauler Exchange is looking for an experienced Senior Engineer, Platform Architecture to join our software development team in Rochester, MI.

JOB OVERVIEW:

AHX runs a federated GraphQL platform, a set of Go services, and several Next.js applications on Google Cloud. As Senior Engineer, Platform Architecture you'll set the technical direction across all of it, and then write code in it alongside the team.

You'll work close to the operational realities of finished vehicle logistics, because the software has to agree with what is physically happening to a vehicle at every step: quote, tender, carrier assignment, tracking, delivery, and invoice.

This is a senior individual contributor role, not a management track. You'll spend a real part of every week with your hands in the codebase, and you'll be a key contributor to our AI strategy on both sides: what we ship to customers, and how we build it.

The first decisions on your desk are real ones: where the boundary sits between our TypeScript subgraphs and our Go service tier, and how far AI should reach into both what we ship and how we build it. We want someone who will form an opinion and defend it in writing.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Own the architecture across our services, and decide where new capability belongs.


• Set the standards for GraphQL federation, service layering, contract versioning, and data ownership, then write them down so they hold.


• Turn product initiatives into technical designs the team can build from, with contracts and acceptance criteria attached.


• Write and review production code in TypeScript and Go every week.


• Build the first working version of a new pattern so everyone else has something to copy.


• Run point on the hard defects. Find the actual root cause, not the nearest one.


• Partner with Product and engineering leadership on the architecture of our AI product capabilities: document intake and extraction, natural-language access to operational data, and MCP servers for internal and partner tooling.


• Push AI further into how we deliver, with coding standards checked into the repo, automated


• documentation, API contract testing, and advisory code review. A human still approves anything that merges or deploys.


• Set the technical direction for our partner integrations across TMS, carrier compliance, payments, accounting, mapping, CRM, and EDI, keeping partner quirks out of our domain code.


• Define the standards for testing, observability, and release safety that new services are expected to meet.


• Mentor through design review, written architecture decisions, and pairing.

SKILLS & QUALIFICATIONS:

• A minimum of 10 years of experience in a software engineering role, several of them at a staff, principal, or architect level.


• You still write code, and you want to keep writing it.


• Deep TypeScript and Node.js, plus production Go, or another systems language and the appetite to pick up Go.


• Real GraphQL depth: schema design, contract evolution, and what breaks when you get it wrong.


• You've led a service decomposition in production and can talk about the parts that went sideways.


• Cloud platforms (GCP, AWS, or Azure), Kubernetes, and infrastructure as code.


• Event-driven systems done properly: durable messaging, transactional outbox, idempotent consumers, distributed tracing.


• You write clearly. Architecture decision records and design docs are part of the job here, not homework.


• Familiarity with AI tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, Copilot, or similar platforms, and the judgment to know when a deterministic script is the better answer.


• Hands‑on experience standing up BigQuery as an analytics platform: dataset and table design, partitioning and clustering, streaming and batch ingestion, and query cost controls.


• Experience with the GCP data stack: Datastream or comparable replication, Pub/Sub subscriptions into BigQuery, Dataform or dbt for transformation, and a catalogue and lineage tool such as Dataplex.


• Experience implementing warehouse governance: row‑level or column‑level security, IAM scoping, retention and deletion paths, and quotas set before a query surface opens up.


• A bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a relevant field is preferred, but not required.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS:

• Apollo Federation specifically.


• AI shipped into a product, and AI used to change how a team delivers. Prompt engineering, LLM workflows, agentic tooling, or MCP servers all count.


• Marketplaces, logistics, or another two‑sided platform where the software has to agree with the physical world.


• MySQL, Postgres, and Meilisearch or a comparable search engine.


• Next.js and backend-for-frontend patterns.

Auto Hauler Exchange is an equal‑opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.