Chief Technical Architect, Engineering (IC Role)

Job description

**This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Chief Technical Architect, Engineering (IC Role) based in India.** We are seeking an accomplished technical architect to define the long-term technology direction of an enterprise-scale SaaS platform and its next generation of Agentic AI capabilities. In this senior individual contributor role, you will shape a multi-year architecture roadmap, establish engineering standards, and influence technical decisions across a broad engineering organization. You will lead architectural initiatives spanning cloud-native systems, distributed platforms, modern data infrastructure, and production-grade generative AI. Working closely with executive and product leadership, you will turn strategic priorities into scalable, secure, and cost-effective technical solutions. You will also mentor principal engineers, resolve complex architectural challenges, and foster alignment across teams without relying on direct managerial authority. This is an opportunity to make a significant technical impact while advancing intelligent manufacturing and supply chain technology. ### Accountabilities - Define and communicate a three-to-five-year technology strategy and architecture roadmap in collaboration with the CTO and product leadership. - Own the architecture of large-scale SaaS platforms, including multi-tenant and multi-region services, clear service boundaries, and shared platform capabilities. - Establish architectural principles and technical guardrails that optimize reliability, performance, security, scalability, and infrastructure costs. - Lead the architecture of generative AI and Agentic AI platforms, covering large language model (LLM) orchestration, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), vector search, evaluation pipelines, observability, and model governance. - Guide the evolution of data platforms and infrastructure, including streaming architectures, lakehouse solutions, analytics capabilities, and SQL/NoSQL systems. - Establish and facilitate architecture review forums, design standards, technical governance processes, and technical-debt prioritization initiatives. - Identify and resolve systemic technical risks, performance bottlenecks, architectural inconsistencies, and cross-team engineering conflicts. - Lead build-versus-buy assessments, technology evaluations, proofs of concept, and vendor decisions across cloud infrastructure, data platforms, AI tooling, and observability solutions. - Evaluate technology investments using total cost of ownership (TCO), unit economics, scalability, and long-term business value. - Translate ambiguous business and product ideas into clear technical designs that engineering teams can implement efficiently, balancing customer needs, technical feasibility, and organizational constraints. - Mentor principal engineers and emerging architects through architecture reviews, technical guidance, and knowledge sharing, strengthening the organization's technical leadership capabilities. - Partner with product executives, engineering leaders, QA, DevOps, and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) teams to align priorities and drive architecture decisions. - Communicate complex technical concepts and trade-offs clearly to executive stakeholders, customers, partners, and engineering teams. - Establish measurable technical outcomes and continuously improve platform quality, delivery speed, resilience, and operational efficiency. ### Requirements: - Bachelor's or master's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related technical discipline. - 15+ years of professional software engineering experience, including at least five years in an architect or principal-level role, such as Chief Architect, Distinguished Engineer, Senior Principal Engineer, Head of Architecture, or an equivalent position. - Significant experience working in a product-led organization, ideally within a SaaS business, with responsibility for architecture across multiple teams or platform areas. - Demonstrated ability to influence large engineering organizations, including experience shaping technical direction across 50 or more engineers. - Deep expertise in cloud-native architecture, distributed computing, microservices, event-driven systems, and modern data architectures. - Hands-on experience designing and delivering production-grade generative AI or Agentic AI systems, including LLM orchestration, RAG pipelines, vector databases, evaluation frameworks, and AI observability. - Strong software engineering fundamentals, including data structures, algorithms, object-oriented programming, and modern development practices. - Working proficiency in one or more modern programming languages, such as Java, Python, Scala, Go, or Node.js, with recent experience participating in technical design and code reviews. - Proven ability to establish enterprise-level governance for software quality, performance, resilience, security, and data privacy. - A strong track record of measurable technical impact, demonstrated through outcomes such as improved uptime, reduced latency, lower infrastructure costs, increased scalability, or faster delivery. - Experience with platform consolidation, cloud migration, or transforming monolithic systems into scalable platform architectures is a strong advantage. - Excellent strategic judgment and problem-solving skills, with the ability to evaluate emerging technologies and make data-informed architectural decisions. - Strong influencing, communication, and stakeholder management skills, including the ability to build consensus across teams without direct reporting authority. - A proactive and adaptable mindset, with the ability to anticipate technical and organizational risks and identify opportunities for innovation. - Experience in ERP, supply chain, or manufacturing software is preferred. Patents, technical publications, conference presentations, or other external technical recognition are additional advantages. - Willingness to travel internationally when required. - **Location requirement:** This is an on-site opportunity in Pune, India, with three to four days per week in the office. Candidates must be willing to be based in Pune. ### Benefits: - **Competitive compensation:** Salary packages are determined by experience, technical expertise, and the skills required for the role. - **Strategic technical ownership:** Shape the architecture and long-term technology direction of an enterprise SaaS platform and its Agentic AI roadmap. - **Executive exposure:** Work directly with senior leadership on major technology decisions and long-term platform strategy. - **Career development:** Access structured mentorship and training opportunities designed to support professional growth. - **Collaborative culture:** Join an environment that values knowledge sharing, teamwork, innovation, and contributions regardless of organizational level. - **Health and well-being:** Access programs designed to support employee well-being and a healthy work-life balance. - **Growth opportunities:** Contribute to a growing business undergoing technological expansion and transformation. - **Meaningful technical impact:** Influence architecture and engineering practices across multiple product areas without transitioning into a people-management role. - **Inclusive workplace:** Work in an environment that values diverse perspectives, equal opportunity, and professional development.