Principal Software Architect (Platform)

OPERATIVE OVERVIEW Operative builds the software that powers the business of advertising for the world's leading media companies. Our platforms manage the full advertising lifecycle — from sales planning and order management to trafficking, analytics, and billing — across linear TV, streaming, and digital channels. Built on a modern, cloud-native SaaS architecture with microservices at its core, the Operative platform is engineered to handle the scale and operational demands of the world's largest broadcasters and publishers. Operative is actively developing AI Agents — both to enhance the capabilities of our platform and to augment how our engineering teams work. Engineers at Operative have access to AI tooling as a standard part of their workflow, and we are investing in building increasingly autonomous agents that accelerate development. Position Overview Operative is seeking an experienced architect with a strong hands-on engineering background and a demonstrated ability to operate independently and drive the technical quality of the teams and codebases they engage with. This individual will serve as a senior technical authority across Operative's platform engineering disciplines, spanning backend services, distributed data infrastructure, and cloud-native architecture. This role represents a significant opportunity to shape how a complex, high-scale platform evolves — identifying the highest-priority technical investments, establishing the standards and patterns the broader team will follow, and driving those initiatives from inception through delivery. AI adoption and maturity is a strategic priority at Operative, and this individual will play a direct role in advancing both the use of AI within engineering workflows and the development of agentic capabilities within the platform itself. The successful candidate will bring both architectural breadth and hands-on depth, and will be motivated by the opportunity to work at the intersection of modern platform engineering and applied AI. Key Responsibilities Architect and lead delivery of complex, cross-functional initiatives spanning backend services, data pipelines, and cloud infrastructure Drive the adoption and maturity of AI within engineering workflows, including agentic tooling, AI-assisted development practices, and the integration of autonomous AI agents into platform capabilities Identify systemic technical challenges across reliability, performance, scalability, and observability, and own the path to resolution Define and uphold engineering standards across code quality, testing practices, API design, data modeling, and deployment patterns Make well-reasoned architectural decisions in ambiguous or rapidly evolving situations, and communicate those decisions clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders Engage across the full technology stack; this role requires both breadth and depth, with the ability to move fluidly between system-level architecture and hands-on implementation Partner with Product and business stakeholders to translate complex requirements into coherent technical strategy Provide mentorship and technical guidance to engineers across the broader global team through design reviews, documentation, code review, and direct collaboration Serve as a senior escalation point for complex or high-impact engineering problems Qualities and Working Style Beyond technical depth, Operative is looking for specific qualities that define how this individual will work: Operates with a high degree of autonomy and self-direction; identifies what needs to be done without requiring close oversight Holds strong technical opinions grounded in experience, while remaining pragmatic about tradeoffs and context Approaches ambiguity as a problem to be solved rather than a barrier to progress Remains hands-on as a practitioner; this is an engineering leadership role, not a purely advisory one Has a track record of being a go-to resource for difficult, cross-cutting engineering challenges Communicates technical concepts effectively to cross-functional audiences, including product and business stakeholders Technical Requirements Candidates should demonstrate strong proficiency across the following areas: Java / Spring Boot Python Kafka / Kafka Connect Kubernetes AWS Elasticsearch MongoDB SQL Redis Serverless / Lambda S3 / Object Storage CI/CD & DevOps Depth across all areas is not required; candidates should be able to engage effectively across the stack and demonstrate strong expertise in several. Familiarity with the following areas is also valued: Distributed systems design, including event sourcing, CQRS, and saga patterns Platform observability, including distributed tracing, metrics infrastructure, and structured logging at scale Data pipeline architecture, including stream processing, schema evolution, and backpressure management Security and compliance practices within cloud-native environments Qualifications 10 or more years of software engineering experience with demonstrated scope at the architectural level Prior experience as a senior technical owner of a complex distributed system, with accountability beyond individual contribution Track record of identifying, prioritizing, and driving technical initiatives independently, not solely executing a defined roadmap Experience working effectively within globally distributed engineering organizations Demonstrated ability to improve the technical quality of a team or platform in a measurable and lasting way Background in SaaS platform engineering, with an understanding of the operational demands of continuously available systems What Operative Offers A senior role with broad technical scope and direct influence over platform direction The opportunity to provide technical leadership across a global engineering organization Competitive compensation commensurate with experience and scope of impact Flexible remote-first work environment Operative cares about your privacy and protecting your data. By submitting an application for a position with Operative, you acknowledge that you have read the following and consent to how Operative treats your data: 1) the Candidate Privacy Policy available at https://www.operative.com/candidate-privacy-notice/ (or if you are a candidate from Israel the Candidate Privacy Notice (Israel), available at https://www.operative.com/candidate-privacy-notice-israel/, and 2) the Candidate Notice for Data Transfer and Retention available at https://www.operative.com/candidate-notice/.