Senior Staff Architect: Cloud-Native & API-First Systems

Penn Mutual; United States; On-site; USD 170,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Penn Mutual is seeking a Sr. Staff Architect – Software Architecture to lead and shape enterprise architecture for scalable, secure, cloud‑native platforms.

You will drive microservices, API‑first design, and AWS‑based solutions, partnering with application, data, and security teams to deliver resilient systems aligned with enterprise principles. You will establish standards, reusable patterns, and governance, mentor engineers, and enable teams to ship high‑quality software while improving

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.
• 10+ years of software development and architecture experience.
• Deep expertise in microservices, distributed systems, and API design.
• Strong experience with Java frameworks (e.g., Spring Boot).
• Proven cloud-native design experience on AWS.
• Experience defining architecture standards, governance models, and engineering best practices.
• Strong collaboration and communication with technical and business stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Provide thought leadership and technical guidance across IT and business teams.
• Define and drive adoption of modern architecture principles including microservices and API-first design.
• Establish enterprise architecture standards, reference architectures, and reusable design patterns for distributed and Java-based systems.
• Lead architecture and design of scalable applications, including service decomposition, API contracts, and integration patterns.
• Architect and guide development of cloud-native solutions leveraging AWS services and ensuring alignment with AWS Well-Architected principles.
• Design and govern API ecosystems and enable event-driven and loosely coupled service architectures.
• Improve developer productivity through frameworks, templates, CI/CD enablement, and best practices in quality, testing, and observability.
• Establish monitoring, performance, and reliability standards; lead troubleshooting and continuous optimization.
• Ensure solutions align with enterprise architecture standards, security requirements, and governance frameworks.
• Partner with product, engineering, and business stakeholders to align technical solutions with strategic objectives.
• Mentor engineers and promote continuous improvement through modern engineering practices and emerging technologies.

Skills

Architectural leadership

Microservices

API design

Cloud-native / AWS

Java ecosystem

Security & performance

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

CI/CD tooling

ECS/EKS

Job description

Penn Mutual is seeking a Sr. Staff Architect – Software Architecture to lead and shape enterprise architecture for scalable, secure, cloud‑native platforms.

You will drive microservices, API‑first design, and AWS‑based solutions, partnering with application, data, and security teams to deliver resilient systems aligned with enterprise principles. You will establish standards, reusable patterns, and governance, mentor engineers, and enable teams to ship high‑quality software while improving