Software Architect

About the Role

Responsive is looking for a Software Architect who combines deep technical expertise with strategic leadership to design and evolve scalable, reliable, and secure SaaS architectures. In this role, you will collaborate with engineering, product, and security teams to define architectures, drive technical decision-making, and ensure solutions align with business goals. You will play a critical role in building trust with stakeholders, mentoring engineering teams, and driving innovation across the organization.

We welcome candidates who thrive at the intersection of architecture, technology strategy, and hands-on problem-solving, and who are eager to make an impact in a fast-paced SaaS environment.

What You'll Be Doing

• Architecting Solutions at Scale: Design, document, and evolve large-scale distributed systems that balance performance, reliability, scalability, and cost efficiency.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with product, security, and engineering teams to shape and continually refine Responsive's technology stack and architecture.
• Technical Leadership: Embed with engineering teams for large projects, providing architectural guidance, and act as a consultant for smaller initiatives.
• Hands-On Contribution: Lead by doing—coding, optimizing, and troubleshooting across the stack (Java, Spring Boot, React, MongoDB)—while partnering with feature development teams.
• Performance & Reliability: Investigate, analyze, and resolve bottlenecks to optimize system performance, maintain high uptime SLAs, and ensure efficient resource utilization.
• Cloud-Native Expertise: Design architectures leveraging AWS, Azure, or GCP, containerization (Kubernetes, Docker), and Infrastructure-as-Code.
• Innovation & Adoption: Evaluate emerging tools, frameworks, and approaches; drive adoption where beneficial to improve developer productivity, performance, or customer experience.
• Mentorship & Enablement: Mentor engineers, foster best practices in solution design, and participate in technical roundtables and architectural reviews across the organization.
• Incident Leadership: Participate in architectural governance and, over time, join on-call rotations for high-severity incidents to support system reliability.
• Emerging Tech: Evaluate emerging tech (databases, LLM APIs, orchestration tools) and translating hype into grounded engineering choices.

What We're Looking For

Education

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field.

Experience

• 12+ years of overall software development experience, with at least 5 years focused on architecting and designing large-scale, cloud-based distributed systems.
• Proven track record leading architectural initiatives in SaaS or enterprise-scale environments.

Skills, Qualifications & Ability

• Strong expertise in designing API-driven applications and microservices architectures.
• Mastery in Java and Spring Boot for backend development, with working knowledge of React for frontend integration.
• Hands-on experience with data layer technologies, including databases (MongoDB, SQL/NoSQL), caching systems, and messaging/event-driven architectures.
• Expertise in search and retrieval technologies such as ElasticSearch or Apache Solr.
• Strong knowledge of application and cloud security best practices.
• Deep understanding of cloud-native architecture, container orchestration (Kubernetes, Docker), and CI/CD pipelines.
• Proficiency in performance optimization, monitoring, and troubleshooting using modern observability tools.
• Excellence in written and verbal communication, with the ability to tailor complex technical concepts for executives, engineers, and customers alike.
• Demonstrated ability to facilitate and resolve organization-wide technical discussions, aligning stakeholders while driving to decisions.
• Experience in Agile environments, with tools like JIRA.
• Experience in designing and implementing AI-powered applications, including LLMs, RAG architectures, AI agents, and workflow automation solutions
• Experience with event-driven architectures and real-time data processing frameworks
• Familiarity with modern observability stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry).

Why Join Us

• Impact-Driven Work: Build innovative solutions that redefine strategic response management.
• Collaborative Environment: Work with a passionate team of technologists, designers, and product leaders.
• Career Growth: Be part of a company that values learning and professional development.
• Competitive Benefits: We offer comprehensive compensation and benefits to support our employees.
• Trusted by Industry Leaders: Be part of a product that is trusted by world-leading organizations.
• Cutting-Edge Technology: Work on AI-driven solutions, cloud-native architectures, and large-scale data processing.
• Diverse and Inclusive Workplace: Collaborate with a global team that values different perspectives and ideas.

About Responsive

Responsive (formerly RFPIO) is the global leader in strategic response management software, transforming how organizations share and exchange critical information. The AI-powered Responsive Platform is purpose-built to manage responses at scale, empowering companies across the world to accelerate growth, mitigate risk and improve employee experiences. Nearly 2,000 customers have standardized on Responsive to respond to RFPs, RFIs, DDQs, ESGs, security questionnaires, ad hoc information requests and more. Learn more at responsive.io.