Director- Architect

Job description

Job Details The Role apexanalytix is the world's leading provider of supplier onboarding, risk management and recovery solutions. Founded in 1988 and headquartered in Greensboro, NC, apexanalytix is a Leader in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Supplier Risk Management Solutions, recognized for both Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute. More than 320 of the world's largest companies use our AI-native, Quantum Era-ready platform to protect over $9.5 trillion in annual spend. apexanalytix is seeking a hands-on Architect to own the technical foundation of our platform and the applications that run on it as we scale globally. apexanalytix runs its own private cloud — more than 60 Kubernetes clusters across two datacenters, each declared in Git and reconciled by GitOps, networked with Cilium's eBPF datapath, and backed by Ceph. On top of that platform run our supplier management and risk products on .NET, a Go microservice estate, a React front end and a growing set of internal engineering products. Very little here is a black box: you can follow a request from a BGP-advertised service IP, through the eBPF datapath, into a pod, into the application request pipeline, to a query against a tenant database the team migrated itself. This is a high-leverage technical leadership role. The successful candidate sets architectural direction and standards across both planes — Kubernetes at fleet scale, GitOps, networking, storage, identity and observability on one side; n-tier application architecture, multi-tenancy, service contracts and distributed data on the other — while remaining hands-on with the code and the cluster, and mentoring engineers across apexanalytix's global engineering teams, including the Noida, India GCC. The ability to reason across the infrastructure and application boundary is the defining requirement of this role. The hardest problems at apexanalytix — and the most valuable ones — live exactly on that line. Quick Take - • Leverages deep subject-matter expertise in private-cloud architecture and enterprise application architecture to advise engineering leadership on platform and product strategy and trade-offs. • Acts as the go-to technical authority on how apexanalytix software is built and how it runs, and on the interaction between the two. • Partners with the Global Head of Engineering & Infrastructure, the Head of Software Development and global engineering teams to ensure one architectural standard spans design, build and run. • Roles and Requirements • Infrastructure and platform architecture. Owns the architectural vision and standards for apexanalytix's private cloud: Kubernetes across bare-metal, virtualized (KubeVirt with Cluster API and hosted control planes) and managed-cloud footprints. Designs and evolves cluster architecture, multi-tenancy (namespaces, RBAC, admission control, Pod Security standards), and workload placement and scheduling. • GitOps as the only path to production. Sets direction for GitOps delivery (FluxCD, Kustomize, Helm) through a layered model — component template, shared baseline, per-cluster overlay — so the fleet's desired state always lives in Git. • Networking and storage. Defines standards for the Cilium eBPF networking layer (BGP control plane, LB-IPAM, ClusterMesh, network policy, Hubble) and for Rook-Ceph and cephadm storage (CephFS, RBD, CSI drivers, snapshots, backup and DR). Contributes to network fabric design, including QoS and buffer engineering on the 100/200/400G data-plane fabric. • Platform services. Sets direction for the services the fleet depends on — container registry, identity and OIDC, secrets management, certificate management — and for the Prometheus/Thanos/Grafana/Loki/Tempo observability stack. • Application architecture. Owns architectural standards across the product estate: a .NET 10 enterprise platform ( Core, EF Core, OData, gRPC, .NET Aspire) with a React 19 front end; a Go microservice estate with mTLS and shared contracts; and the supplier-facing community platform. • Multi-tenancy and service contracts. Sets and enforces the multi-tenancy model end to end — tenant resolution, per-tenant data isolation, cache key discipline and the identity and access model — across both the .NET and Go estates. Owns service contract architecture: gRPC and REST/OData surface design, versioning, and backward-compatibility discipline across independently released packages. • Performance and resilience by design. Owns application performance architecture — data access patterns, large-column materialization, caching topology and query-plan discipline — and sets resilience standards including replica counts, host anti-affinity, disruption budgets, health and dependency endpoints and graceful degradation, applied as a design gate rather than an incident finding. • Data platform architecture. Owns the architecture of a distributed data tier spanning SQL Server, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, OceanBase, CockroachDB, Vitess, ClickHouse, Elasticsearch, Snowflake and in-memory stores. Owns the geo-replicated database programme — distributed database architecture, migration tooling and sequencing, and the application-side changes each migration requires — and sets standards for schema change management, index and query design across the multi-engine estate. • Internal engineering products. Owns the architecture of apexanalytix's internal product and tooling estate, ensuring it is held to the same standards as customer-facing products for identity, secrets handling, observability and supportability. • Tooling and standards. Evaluates and introduces new tooling — CI/CD, policy-as-code, custom static analysis, service mesh enhancements — to improve engineering velocity and platform reliability. Partners directly with engineering teams to review designs, unblock complex technical problems and ensure architectural consistency. • Hands-on delivery. Writes and reviews production code and configuration — C#, Go, Helm charts, OpenTofu/Terraform, Ansible, Python and Bash automation. This role remains technically hands-on. • AI-assisted engineering. apexanalytix is an AI-first engineering organization. This role practises AI-assisted development, extends the organization's automation capability, and mentors engineers into it. This is a core expectation of the role, not a bonus. • Security and compliance. Ensures the platform and applications meet enterprise security and compliance requirements — RBAC, network policy, secrets management, image signing and scanning, dependency governance — in a SOC 2 and FedRAMP-readiness environment. • Mentoring. Mentors engineers across global teams, including the Noida, India GCC, on Kubernetes, GitOps, application architecture and cloud-native best practice. Required Skills • 8+ years of infrastructure/platform engineering experience, with 4+ years of deep, hands-on Kubernetes expertise in production environments at scale — bare-metal experience strongly preferred, not managed-cloud-only. • Strong GitOps practice (FluxCD or ArgoCD with Kustomize and Helm) and the conviction that Git should be the only path to production. • Substantial CNI experience with Cilium (eBPF datapath, BGP control plane, LB-IPAM, ClusterMesh, network policy, Hubble) or comparable eBPF-based networking. • Substantial CSI/storage experience, ideally with Ceph (Rook or cephadm): OSD/CRUSH management, CephFS and RBD, snapshots, and performance troubleshooting. • Experience owning platform services such as a container registry, an identity provider and secrets management, plus observability at scale (Prometheus, Grafana, Thanos, Loki or equivalent). • Strong Linux fundamentals (RHEL/AlmaLinux, Ubuntu or similar): systemd, kernel and sysctl tuning, and the storage and network stacks. • Demonstrated architecture ownership of a large n-tier enterprise application, not only operating one. Multi-tenant SaaS strongly preferred. • Hands-on .NET/C# — modern Core, EF Core, and the ability to read and review a production request pipeline. Equivalent depth in another managed enterprise stack will be considered when paired with a genuine willingness to work in .NET from day one. • Hands-on Go. A significant and growing share of the estate is written in Go; this is not optional. • Service contract design experience — gRPC and/or REST/OData — including versioning and backward-compatibility discipline across independently released packages. • Distributed and geo-replicated database architecture experience. Direct OceanBase experience is ideal; CockroachDB, Vitess, Spanner, YugabyteDB or TiDB experience transfers. • Automation skill in OpenTofu/Terraform, Ansible, and at least one of Go, Python or Bash. • Active, practising experience with AI-assisted software development, including the ability to build reusable automation for other engineers and mentor them into it. • Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) or equivalent demonstrable depth; CKS or CKAD a plus. • Experience operating in a B2B enterprise SaaS environment, ideally serving large enterprise customers with strict security and compliance requirements (SOC 2, FedRAMP or comparable). • Strong communication skills; comfortable operating as a technical leader who influences without direct authority across global, distributed teams. • Non-negotiable versus trainable • Non-negotiable: hands-on production Kubernetes at scale; genuinely hands-on coding in at least one of C# or Go; n-tier application architecture ownership; practising AI-assisted development; and the ability to reason across the infrastructure and application boundary. • Trainable on the job: OceanBase specifically, given distributed-database fundamentals; the apexanalytix product domain; and Cilium and Ceph specifics, given strong CNI and CSI fundamentals. • Education Levels/Credentials (Degree types and Emphasis) - Undergraduate degree in computer science, engineering, or another technical field required; graduate degree a plus but not required. Physical/Remote/Travel Work Environment • apexanalytix Global Capability Center, Noida, India. Travel required — occasional. Scope Boundaries: This role holds design authority across infrastructure and applications. Line management of the engineering organization sits with the SVP, Global Head of Engineering & Infrastructure; day-to-day operation of the estate with the Global IT Managed Services Leader; delivery management and release with the VP, Head of Software Development; security policy and compliance attestation with the CISO; and AI and automation delivery with a separate AI & Automation organization. Over the years, we’ve discovered that the most effective and successful associates at apexanalytix are people who have a specific combination of values, skills, and behaviors that we call “The apex Way”. Read more about The apex Way - Benefits At apexanalytix we know that our associates are the reason behind our successes. We truly value you as an associate and part of our professional family. Our goal is to offer the very best benefits possible to you and your loved ones. When it comes to benefits, whether for yourself or your family the most important aspect is choice. And we get that. apexanalytix offers competitive benefits for the countries that we serve, in addition to our BeWell@apex initiative that encourages employees’ growth in six key wellness areas: Emotional, Physical, Community, Financial, Social, and Intelligence. With resources such as a strong Mentor Program, Internal Training Portal, plus Education, Tuition, and Certification Assistance, we provide tools for our associates to grow and develop. About Us: At apexanalytix, we’re lifelong innovators! Since the date of our founding nearly four decades ago we’ve been consistently growing, profitable, and delivering the best procure-to-pay solutions to the world. We’re the perfect balance of established company and start-up. You will find a unique home here. And you’ll recognize the names of our clients. Most of them are on The Global 2000. They trust us to give them the latest in controls, audit and analytics software every day. Industry analysts consistently rank us as a top supplier management solution, and you’ll be helping build that reputation. Read more about apexanalytix -