Principal Integration Architect

Job description

About You You are a Principal Architect with deep expertise in Domain-Driven Design, event-driven architecture, and API governance. We are looking for someone who has built enterprise-scale integration platforms and knows how to standardize how business domains communicate across systems and verticals. You will own decisions end-to-end, communicate blockers proactively, and influence engineering culture across multiple teams. You are as comfortable whiteboarding domain models with business stakeholders as you are reviewing pull requests with engineers. You are energized by AI adoption as a daily practitioner, you use tools like Copilot, RAG, or agentic workflows to build faster and better. This is a hands-on architecture role, not a delivery, program, or project management position. Note: This position is offered under a contractor model. You Bring to Applaudo the Following Competencies: Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field is desired, or equivalent professional experience. 10+ years of experience in Software Engineering. 5+ years of experience in Architecture, Principal Engineer, Staff Engineer, or Technical Leadership roles (with active, current hands-on coding). Proven experience designing and implementing enterprise-scale integration platforms and distributed systems, your core value is building a unified enterprise integration layer that standardizes how business domains communicate across systems and verticals. Strong expertise in: Modern .NET patterns, async pipelines, and enterprise-scale codebases. API Architecture and Enterprise Integrations including API governance at scale. Domain-Driven Design (DDD). Event-Driven Architecture (EDA). Test-Driven Development (TDD). Microservices and Distributed Systems. Cloud-Native Architecture. Hands-on experience with enterprise messaging/event platforms — Azure Service Bus, Event Hubs, RabbitMQ, Solace, Apache Kafka, or AWS SQS. Azure is highly desired but not mandatory: equivalent depth with any of the above is acceptable. Strong understanding of REST APIs, OpenAPI Specifications, OAuth2, OIDC, API Security, and Identity Management. Experience implementing observability practices, including monitoring, logging, distributed tracing, and telemetry. Modern .NET and C# experience is highly desired but not mandatory. Comparable depth in an equivalent stack (e.g., Java) is acceptable. Daily, hands-on use of AI tools as part of your own engineering workflow (Copilot, RAG-based tools, agentic coding assistants). Knowledge of CQRS, Event Sourcing, Saga Patterns, and Distributed Transaction Management. Familiarity with OpenTelemetry and enterprise observability platforms. Strong communication skills, with fluency sufficient to work directly with a US-based team and stakeholders, you'll be expected to own and clearly present specific areas of architecture within larger stakeholder discussions. Demonstrated ownership and accountability: you surface risks early, remove blockers, and drive outcomes with a high degree of autonomy. You Will Be Accountable for the Following Responsibilities: Design and lead the implementation of a unified enterprise integration layer that enables canonical business domains, flexible source system extensions, and seamless cross-vertical connectivity. Define and maintain application architecture standards, principles, and best practices across the integration and API engineering organization. Design scalable, secure, and highly available API ecosystems and integration solutions. Lead architecture reviews and provide hands-on technical guidance across engineering teams. Define standards for API design, security, observability, documentation, and lifecycle management. Lead integration strategies across internal applications, ERP, SaaS platforms, enterprise systems, and external partners. Facilitate domain discovery and event storming workshops with business and technical stakeholders. Design and implement event-driven and message-based architectures using Azure Service Bus, Event Hubs, and related technologies. Drive adoption of AI-assisted engineering practices to improve developer productivity, delivery speed, and solution quality. Promote engineering excellence through TDD, Clean Architecture, SOLID principles, and automated quality practices. Lead modernization initiatives and technical debt reduction efforts. Partner with platform teams on CI/CD pipelines, deployment automation, and developer experience. Mentor architects, technical leads, and engineering teams while fostering a culture of innovation and continuous learning. Serve as a trusted advisor for strategic technology investments and modernization initiatives. 10+ years of Software Engineering experience. 5+ years in Architecture or Technical Leadership roles, with continued hands-on coding. Hands-on Azure and .NET/C# is highly desired. Deep expertise in DDD, EDA, and API governance Enterprise messaging experience (Azure Service Bus, Event Hubs, RabbitMQ, Solace, Kafka, or AWS SQS). Advanced English fluency for direct collaboration with a US-based team. About Us We Are Engineered Different. At Applaudo, talented people design, build, and scale meaningful, AI-powered solutions that create real business impact. As an AI-native organization, we collaborate across design, development, cloud, data, and artificial intelligence to turn ideas into scalable products that transform how companies operate, make decisions, and grow. We are building a high-performance culture grounded in five values: Empowering Excellence, Collaborative Teamwork, Unsolicited Respect, Consistent Transparency, and Efficient Communication . These define how we work, how we support one another, and how we hold ourselves accountable. Applaudo is a place for people who want to learn fast, take ownership, and work alongside strong teams they are proud to belong to. Joining us means being part of an organization that is evolving intentionally, investing in modern ways of working, and leading AI-native transformation at scale.