Sr Architect

Vaco Recruiter Services; Dublin (OH); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Vaco Recruiter Services in Central Ohio is seeking a Sr. Architect to lead the evolution of a resource-sharing platform, shaping technical direction for AI-enabled capabilities and data-driven services.

This hybrid role requires hands-on leadership and collaboration with engineering, product, and technology stakeholders to deliver scalable, secure solutions. The successful candidate will translate product needs into maintainable architectures, guide modernization efforts, mentor teams, and drive

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent professional experience.
• 8+ years of progressive software engineering, architecture, technical leadership, or related experience.
• Current residence in Central Ohio and ability to work a hybrid schedule.
• Proven experience designing, evolving, and supporting large-scale, distributed software systems.
• Strong software architecture background in SaaS or enterprise software environments.
• Demonstrated experience with big data, data-intensive systems, large-scale data processing, or analytics.
• Experience translating product strategy into technical roadmaps and implementation approaches.
• Experience leading modernization initiatives in complex technology environments.

Responsibilities

• Define and communicate a multi-year technical architecture roadmap aligned to product strategy and platform modernization.
• Lead architectural design and evolution of large-scale resource-sharing software.
• Partner with Product and Engineering leadership to translate requirements into scalable, secure solutions.
• Guide modernization initiatives involving distributed systems, APIs, cloud-native approaches, and data platforms.
• Provide hands-on technical leadership for complex design decisions and integration strategies.
• Establish architectural standards and reference patterns to improve consistency.
• Identify technical debt and cross-team risks; drive practical remediation plans.
• Champion reliability, observability, security, performance, and maintainability.
• Mentor engineers and managers; foster architectural judgment and continuous improvement.
• Communicate complex concepts clearly to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Evaluate emerging technologies, including AI-enabled workflows and autonomous AI-agent tooling.

Skills

Architectural leadership

Distributed systems

SaaS / enterprise software

Big data / data processing

APIs & integrations

Technical roadmaps

Mentoring teams

Communication

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Tools

Kubernetes

GitHub Copilot

Claude / AI tools

Job description

THIS ROLE IS NOT AVAILABLE FOR C2C, VISA SPONSORSHIP, or THIRD PARTIES

Sr. Architect

Location: Hybrid — Central Ohio

Employment Type: Direct Hire

Our client is seeking a pragmatic, hands‑on Sr. Architect to lead the evolution of a resource‑sharing platform that helps organizations access and manage digital and licensed assets. This is a hybrid role for candidates who currently live in Central Ohio; relocation is not available.

The Sr. Architect will shape the technical direction for the next generation of resource‑sharing software, including AI-enabled capabilities and modern data‑driven services. This leader will work closely with Engineering, Product, and Technology stakeholders to design scalable, secure, resilient solutions while helping teams deliver practical business value.

The ideal candidate combines strategic architectural depth with a willingness to engage in real‑world delivery challenges. This is not an “ivory tower” architecture position—the successful candidate will be a collaborative technical leader who can make sound tradeoffs, guide modernization efforts, mentor teams, and help translate complex product needs into maintainable technology solutions.

What You’ll Do

• Define and communicate a multi-year technical architecture roadmap aligned to product strategy, business goals, and platform modernization priorities.


• Lead the architectural design and evolution of large-scale resource‑sharing software supporting digital and licensed assets.


• Partner with Product, Engineering, and Technology leadership to translate business requirements into scalable, secure, maintainable technical solutions.


• Guide modernization initiatives involving distributed systems, APIs, cloud-native approaches, event-driven architectures, data platforms, and platform engineering.


• Provide hands‑on technical leadership for complex system design decisions, integration strategies, modernization plans, and technology investments.


• Establish architectural standards, reference patterns, decision records, and lightweight documentation that improve consistency without creating unnecessary process.


• Identify technical debt, architectural risks, operational concerns, and cross-team dependencies; drive practical, business-focused remediation plans.


• Champion high-quality system design with a focus on reliability, observability, security, availability, performance, and maintainability.


• Help engineering teams improve developer productivity, delivery speed, platform capabilities, automation, and software quality.


• Evaluate and introduce emerging technologies where they can create measurable value, particularly AI-assisted software development and autonomous AI-agent workflows.


• Contribute to the development of AI-enabled software capabilities and support teams using tools such as Claude, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, and similar AI engineering tools.


• Partner with engineering leaders to improve architecture review practices, engineering effectiveness, and technical decision‑making across teams.


• Mentor engineers, technical leads, and engineering managers; foster strong architectural judgment and a culture of continuous improvement.


• Communicate complex technical concepts, options, tradeoffs, and recommendations clearly to technical and non‑technical audiences.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent professional experience.


• 8+ years of progressive software engineering, architecture, technical leadership, or related experience.


• Current residence in Central Ohio and ability to work a hybrid schedule. Candidates requiring relocation will not be considered.


• Proven experience designing, evolving, and supporting large-scale, distributed software systems.


• Strong software architecture background in SaaS or enterprise software environments.


• Demonstrated experience with big data, data‑intensive systems, large‑scale data processing, data platforms, event streaming, search technologies, analytics, or high-volume transactional systems.


• Experience designing architectures involving APIs, integrations, distributed systems, databases, and modern data technologies.


• Experience translating product strategy and business goals into technical roadmaps, architecture plans, and implementation approaches.


• Experience leading or supporting modernization initiatives in complex, established technology environments.


• Strong understanding of architectural tradeoffs across scalability, reliability, security, cost, performance, maintainability, and delivery speed.


• Demonstrated ability to influence technical direction across teams and stakeholders, including teams outside of direct reporting structures.


• Strong people leadership, communication, mentoring, and stakeholder‑management skills.


• Ability to balance long‑term technical vision with practical, incremental execution.


• Familiarity with AI-assisted engineering tools and practices, including Claude, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, or similar platforms.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building, integrating, or operating autonomous AI agents, agentic workflows, AI-enabled applications, or AI-assisted developer platforms.


• Experience applying generative AI capabilities to improve engineering productivity, automate software workflows, enhance product experiences, or support intelligent decision‑making.


• Background working with digital assets, licensed‑content platforms, resource‑sharing systems, knowledge‑management platforms, libraries, publishing, research, or information services.


• Experience in a high‑scale SaaS environment with multi‑tenant applications, complex integrations, and mission‑critical services.


• Prior experience in an organization such as Chemical Abstracts Service, or a similar information, research, scientific‑data, publishing, or content‑access environment.


• Experience with cloud‑native technologies, containers, Kubernetes, infrastructure as code, CI/CD, and automated delivery practices.


• AWS experience is helpful but not required.