Senior Technical Architect: Cloud, AI, & Scale

Photon; Dallas (TX); On-site; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

Photon is seeking a senior software engineering leader with 15+ years of progressive experience to drive large-scale system design and technical strategy in a Dallas-based role. You will lead cross-functional teams, shape architecture across multiple domains, and accelerate AI-driven productivity while ensuring secure, compliant development practices.

Expect ownership of complex systems and a measurable impact on product direction and business outcomes.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of progressive software engineering experience.
• Experience with large-scale system design and cross-functional leadership across multiple technology domains.
• Deep experience with cloud platforms (AWS preferred), DevOps practices, and CI/CD automation.
• Proven ability to design, scale, and optimize systems supporting millions of users.
• Strong understanding of security engineering, compliance standards, and secure development practices.
• Experience with mobile infrastructure, crash analytics, feature deployment frameworks, and release automation.
• Expertise in integration platforms, vendor ecosystems, and enterprise workflow automation.
• Experience using AI-assisted development, agentic software engineering, automation, or emerging developer productivity tools to improve how teams design, build, test, deploy, and operate software.
• Strong background in monitoring, observability, event-driven systems, and operational analytics.
• Spec-first practice — authors complete technical specifications and drives design reviews from written artifacts
• Proven ability to take ownership of an existing codebase, standards set, and roadmap at speed
• Proven ability to influence product strategy, investment decisions, technical direction, AI adoption, and business outcomes through credibility, clarity, sound judgement, and technical insight.
• 7+ years of demonstrated track record of leading engineering initiatives with measurable business impact in a distributed environment (Retail, Hospitality, etc)

Responsibilities

• Drive design reviews from written specifications and artifacts.
• Take ownership of an existing codebase, standards, and roadmap at speed.
• Influence product strategy, technical direction, and AI adoption to improve business outcomes.
• Lead engineering initiatives with measurable impact in distributed environments.

Skills

System design

Technical architecture

Cross-functional leadership

Cloud platforms

AWS

DevOps

CI/CD

Security engineering

Compliance standards

Secure development

Mobile infrastructure

Release automation

AI-assisted development

Observability

Event-driven systems

Operational analytics

Spec-first

Codebase ownership

Influence product strategy

AI adoption

Distributed environments

Engineering leadership

Job description

Photon is seeking a senior software engineering leader with 15+ years of progressive experience to drive large-scale system design and technical strategy in a Dallas-based role. You will lead cross-functional teams, shape architecture across multiple domains, and accelerate AI-driven productivity while ensuring secure, compliant development practices.

Expect ownership of complex systems and a measurable impact on product direction and business outcomes.