Principal Architect - Java
First seen by Alion on Sep 22, 2026.
Principal Architect - Java - Large scale SAAS Products
Location : Bengaluru
Reports to : Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
Experience : 14 to 20 years, with a substantial track record in software architecture and technical leadership
Function : Engineering
About Client :
Client is a rapidly growing SaaS platform powering high-velocity sales and customer engagement execution across global industries, including BFSI, Education, Healthcare, and Marketplaces. We build large-scale, mission-critical systems focused on performance, reliability, and innovation. As our platform and product portfolio expand including new AI-native capabilities we are looking for a Principal Architect to shape the technical foundation that will carry the business into its next phase of growth.
Role Overview :
We are looking for a Principal Architect for our Core Platform who combines deep technical architecture skill with a strong grasp of our technology, product, and business landscape. This is a senior individual-contributor role reporting directly to the CTO built around technical ownership and influence. You will own the target-state architecture of the core platform: defining where it needs to go to support the future direction of our products and business, and charting a credible, phased path to get there. Just as importantly, you will be a magnet and mentor for our most talented senior engineers raising the technical bar across the organisation and giving high-potential IC talent a compelling reason to grow.
Key Responsibilities :
Platform & Technical Strategy :
- Build and maintain a deep working understanding of our technology stack, product portfolio, and the business/customer landscape across BFSI, Education, Healthcare, and Marketplaces.
- Define and drive the target-state architecture for the core platform covering scalability, multi-tenancy, extensibility, performance, security, Infra Cost and data architecture.
- Translate the future direction of product and business including emerging AI-native and agentic capabilities into a coherent, sequenced architecture roadmap.
- Establish architectural principles, standards, and guardrails across services, APIs, data, and integration layers, and ensure they are consistently applied.
- Evaluate new technologies, platforms, and patterns (cloud-native, data, AI/agentic where relevant) that keep the platform future-ready and competitively differentiated.
- Make and own architectural trade-off calls that balance paying down technical debt against the pace of new capability delivery.
Cross-Functional & Business Alignment :
- Partner closely with the CTO, Engineering and Product leadership, and business stakeholders to keep platform architecture aligned with product strategy and market direction.
- Represent core platform architecture in leadership forums, bringing a technical lens to business and product decisions.
- Assess build-vs-buy, platform consolidation, and modernisation choices through a business-outcomes lens, not just a technical one.
- Engage with customers and internal stakeholders as needed to validate that architectural direction holds up against real-world use cases.
Talent Development & Mentorship :
- Inspire and mentor senior engineers, tech leads, and architects across the organisation raising the overall quality of technical thinking and decision-making.
- Build structured mechanisms for coaching and knowledge-sharing design reviews, architecture forums/guilds, RFC and ADR processes that scale good architectural practice beyond any one team.
- Act as a magnet for senior IC talent: create a visible, credible technical growth path that improves engagement and retention of high-potential engineers.
- Champion engineering best practices design reviews, architecture decision records, documentation, and code quality as habits, not one-off exercises.
Hands-On Technical Leadership :
- Stay hands-on: prototype, review designs and code, and work directly alongside teams on the platforms hardest problems.
- Lead resolution of the most complex, cross-cutting architectural challenges such as scale, reliability, data consistency, and security.
- Set up lightweight governance (architecture review forums, a technology radar) that keeps the platform coherent as teams and services multiply.
Required Skills & Experience :
Technical Background :
- 14 - 20 years of overall software engineering experience, with a significant and recent track record in architecture and technical leadership roles on large-scale, multi-tenant SaaS platforms.
- Proven experience owning target-state or reference architecture for a platform of meaningful scale and complexity.
- Strong, credible hands-on background across modern technology stacks (e.g., Java/.NET, cloud-native services, microservices, distributed systems) deep enough to earn the respect of senior engineers.
- Solid understanding of database technologies (SQL & NoSQL) and system design trade-offs at scale.
- Working knowledge of cloud platforms (AWS/Azure/GCP) and cloud-native architecture practices.
- Familiarity with AI/ML and agentic architecture patterns (e.g., RAG, LLM orchestration, vector search) is a strong plus, given growing AI-native roadmap.
Leadership & Influence :
- Demonstrated ability to mentor and elevate senior engineers and architects without formal reporting authority leading through influence and credibility.
- Excellent communication skills; able to explain architectural rationale clearly to the CTO, business leaders, and, where needed, customers.
- Strong stakeholder management, able to balance the sometimes-competing needs of product, business, and engineering.
- Genuine interest in coaching and teaching, with a track record of building technical culture that improves the quality and retention of senior talent.
Why Us :
- Shape the target-state architecture of a global SaaS platform used by thousands of enterprises.
- A high-ownership, high-visibility role reporting directly to the CTO, with the freedom to set technical direction.
- The opportunity to build a lasting technical legacy both in the platforms architecture and in the engineers you mentor.
- Competitive compensation and the chance to work at the intersection of core platform, product, and emerging AI capabilities.
Skills
Solution Architect, Java, SaaS, .Net, Microservices Architecture, Distributed Systems, SQL, AWS, System Design