Senior Principal, App Architecture — Platform & AI

Blue Shield of CA; Chicago (IL); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work model

In-office collaboration

Job summary

Stellarus is seeking a Sr. Principal Application Architect to shape reusable services, vendor integrations, and AI-driven development patterns across our payer, provider, pharma, and partner workflows.

You will set enterprise architecture direction with hands-on coding and system design, influencing engineers without direct management authority. The role emphasizes production readiness, marketplace capabilities, and multi-tenant, secure data boundaries within a cloud-native platform.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or higher and 4+ years of relevant experience in lieu of a degree.
• 12+ years of software engineering, application architecture, platform engineering, or related technical experience.
• Extensive experience setting application architecture direction for enterprise-scale distributed systems, cloud-native platforms, internal platforms, marketplace platforms, or large-scale modernization.
• Expert knowledge of microservices, API ecosystems, event-driven architecture, domain-driven design, integration strategy, and platform services.
• Strong hands-on engineering background with code structure, service design, API contracts, data modeling, testing, deployment, and production failure modes.
• Experience designing and operating microservices and event-driven systems in a cloud environment (Azure preferred; AWS/GCP transferable).
• Ability to lead complex technical decision-making across multiple stakeholders without relying on architecture theater.
• Mentoring staff and principal-level engineers and architects.
• Healthcare, payer, pharma or security-sensitive platforms preferred.
• Excellent written communication; able to make architecture decisions clear and actionable.

Responsibilities

• Shape how Stellarus designs reusable services and market-enabled platform capabilities.
• Define integration patterns with vendors and translate them into reusable marketplace capabilities.
• Apply AI-assisted development patterns and turn platform strategy into executable systems.
• Lead architecture direction for enterprise-scale distributed systems with hands-on involvement.
• Collaborate with engineering, product, security, and operations to ensure production readiness.
• Mentor and guide senior engineers and architects on architectural standards and practices.

Skills

Enterprise architecture

Microservices

Event-driven design

Domain-driven design

Vendor integration

CI/CD

Mentoring staff

Communication

Cloud-native platforms

Production readiness

Education

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

Tools

TypeScript

Node.js

NestJS

React

Next.js

Python

PostgreSQL

Azure

AWS

GCP

Azure Kubernetes Service

Azure API Management

Azure Service Bus

Dapr

Terraform

ArgoCD

GitHub Actions

Docker

Auth0

OAuth2/OpenID Connect

API contracts/OpenAPI

Nx monorepo

Job description

Stellarus is seeking a Sr. Principal Application Architect to shape reusable services, vendor integrations, and AI-driven development patterns across our payer, provider, pharma, and partner workflows.

You will set enterprise architecture direction with hands-on coding and system design, influencing engineers without direct management authority. The role emphasizes production readiness, marketplace capabilities, and multi-tenant, secure data boundaries within a cloud-native platform.