Senior Principal Architect, Platform & AI-Driven Systems

Blue Shield of CA; Oakland (CA); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Blue Shield of California seeks a Senior Principal Architect to shape enterprise architecture across a payer, provider, pharma, and partner platform. You will set direction for reusable services, vendor integrations, and AI-assisted development patterns, while aligning with production realities and organizational goals.

This is the most senior IC architecture role, with emphasis on code-level design, system tradeoffs, and scalable platform delivery for multiple lines of business.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or 4 years of relevant experience in lieu of a degree.
• 12+ years of software engineering, architecture, or related technical experience.
• Extensive experience setting architecture direction for enterprise-scale distributed systems.
• Expert knowledge of microservices, API ecosystems, DDD, integration strategy, and platform services.
• Strong hands-on engineering background discussing code structure, service design, and deployment.

Responsibilities

• Set architecture direction for enterprise-scale distributed systems and cloud-native platforms.
• Design and operate microservices and event-driven systems in cloud environments (Azure preferred).
• Lead complex technical decisions across engineering, product, security, and operations.
• Turn vendor integrations into reusable marketplace capabilities and platform services.

Skills

Bachelor-level design

Microservices

API ecosystems

Event-driven architecture

Cloud-native platforms

TypeScript

Node.js

Kubernetes

CI/CD

Data modeling

OpenAPI

OpenAPI/REST

Education

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent

Tools

TypeScript

Node.js

NestJS

React

Next.js

Python

PostgreSQL

Azure

Azure Kubernetes Service

Terraform

ArgoCD

GitHub Actions

Docker

Job description

Blue Shield of California seeks a Senior Principal Architect to shape enterprise architecture across a payer, provider, pharma, and partner platform. You will set direction for reusable services, vendor integrations, and AI-assisted development patterns, while aligning with production realities and organizational goals.

This is the most senior IC architecture role, with emphasis on code-level design, system tradeoffs, and scalable platform delivery for multiple lines of business.