Senior Platform Architect - Cloud-Native Microservices

Blue Shield of CA; Long Beach (CA); On-site; USD 190,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Blue Shield of California seeks a Principal, Application Architecture to lead architecture decisions for payer operations, member experiences, customer integrations, pharma workflows, internal products, and marketplace capabilities. The role reports to the Senior Director, Application Architecture and focuses on turning platform strategy into deployable systems for engineering teams.

This senior individual-contributor role will own architecture direction for major platform capabilities, manage

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience with 4+ years relevant work experience.
• 10+ years of software engineering, architecture, platform engineering, or related technical experience.
• Experience leading architecture for distributed systems, cloud-native platforms, microservices, or modernization initiatives.
• Hands-on engineering background guiding service design, API contracts, data models, testing, deployment, and production tradeoffs.
• Deep experience with domain-driven design, service decomposition, and reusable platform patterns.
• Ability to influence senior stakeholders and translate strategy into architecture direction.
• Experience designing and operating microservices and event-driven systems in a cloud environment.
• Strong API and data architecture judgment (REST, OpenAPI, PostgreSQL, security, auditing).
• Experience mentoring senior engineers and architects.
• Healthcare/payor/pharma/regulatory domain experience is strongly preferred.
• Enterprise architecture experience is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Define and steer architecture direction for major platform capabilities.
• Resolve high-impact design conflicts and technical risks across teams.
• Translate platform strategy into concrete architectural standards and guidelines.
• Guide engineers in system design, API contracts, data modeling, and testing.
• Drive build-vs-buy, integration consolidation, and modernization decisions.
• Mentor senior engineers, architects, and technical leads.

Skills

Architecture leadership

Distributed systems

Cloud-native platforms

Microservices

APIs & OpenAPI

Domain-driven design

Mentoring

Communication

Regulated industries

Security & compliance

Education

Bachelor's degree or High School Diploma/GED with 4 years of relevant experience

Job description

Blue Shield of California seeks a Principal, Application Architecture to lead architecture decisions for payer operations, member experiences, customer integrations, pharma workflows, internal products, and marketplace capabilities. The role reports to the Senior Director, Application Architecture and focuses on turning platform strategy into deployable systems for engineering teams.

This senior individual-contributor role will own architecture direction for major platform capabilities, manage