Who We Are 

At 8th Light, we bring life to the best ideas.

Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Chicago, we are a technology solutions consultancy that partners with organizations from early-stage startups to the world's largest companies. We take on hard software challenges and turn them into durable results. We build agentic products, the platforms they run on, and the engineering and design at every layer.

Our commitment to quality means we deliver solutions we’re truly proud of, while our curiosity sparks innovation and breakthrough thinking. 8th Lights thrive in an environment that champions continuous education, fueling our growth through mentorship and hands-on work. We foster an open, collaborative culture grounded in honesty that builds trust, and believe true success is measured by the outcomes we create for our clients.

If this kind of work and our kind of people energizes you, you’ve found the right place. 

Who You Are

You’ve spent over 10 years architecting large, distributed systems across complex, multi-stakeholder environments. You move comfortably between long-term planning and hands-on design, building trust with executives focused on business value and the engineers who own implementation.

You'll be well-suited if you have:

• Deep experience in enterprise architecture at scale, across large, distributed systems
• Strong data fluency, dependency mapping, data mesh enablement, high-availability and low-latency design
• Hands-on experience with the stack: Kubernetes, Kafka, Cassandra, Java, TypeScript, AWS, protobuf, Databricks, GraphQL, and REST
• Comfort using AI-assisted development and agentic coding tools to accelerate delivery and enable non-technical teams
• A track record of working across teams on complex, multi-stakeholder technical decisions, including trade-off and risk analysis (e.g. SPADE, architecture decision records)
• Credibility and trust building across a group including executives who will be focused on business value and senior technical stakeholders who will be focused on implementation
• Strong domain-driven design instincts and comfort with the ambiguity of both greenfield and legacy work

What You’ll Do

As a go-to architect and strategist within 8th Light, you'll partner with one or two clients a year on their hardest architecture challenges, while deepening your and our collective expertise over the course of your career with us.

This role sits at the intersection of long-term planning and hands-on technical leadership. You'll work across the enterprise to map data dependencies, drive legacy modernization, and define how domains like pricing fit into a broader enterprise data and AI ecosystem. One day that might mean aligning teams to deliver new low-latency data sets; the next, running architecture trade-off analysis with senior product, design, and business leadership.

A significant part of the work involves mapping application dependencies and capabilities, building an enterprise-wide context graph, and contributing to an MCP server built on enterprise architecture tooling, all aimed at giving teams (and the AI-assisted tools they use) the context to make better design, trade-off, and risk decisions.

Day-to-day output is hands-on architecture and design: planning artifacts, architecture diagrams, decision records, and roadmap contributions. This isn't a feature-delivery role, but you'll need enough data and technical depth to make well-informed calls, design real systems, and build credibility with technical stakeholders.

How You’ll be Supported

At 8th Light, we believe our people are our greatest asset. Their growth, well-being, and success shape our future. 

• Our wellness package is designed with the Whole YOU in mind and includes:
• A robust L&D program featuring unlimited access to thousands of books, courses, and expert-led training on the O'Reilly learning platform.
• Annual financial stipend and time allotment for learning & development
• Coworking support for our global team
• Flexible PTO 
• 12 weeks of new parent leave available for eligible employees

See our full list of Benefits. 

A Note on Compensation

At 8th Light, we are committed to a compensation philosophy that is transparent, fair, and helps us attract and retain top talent in alignment with our company’s strategic growth goals and clients’ needs.

We benchmark our salaries using Geographic Structures to establish competitive pay ranges within the regions where 8th Lights live. Our pay ranges for our Principal Engineer position within our four US structures are as follows:

• Structure 1 (Tampa Metro, Ohio, Tennessee, Wisconsin)
• RANGE: $173,585- $216,882 USD
• Structure 2 (Chicago Metro, Miami Metro, Philadelphia Metro, Raleigh Metro ) 
• RANGE: $182,328-$227,910 USD
• Structure 3 (Austin Metro, Boston Metro , DC Metro)
• RANGE: $194,091-$242,613 USD
• Structure 4 (Los Angeles, Seattle, New York City)
• RANGE: $202,325-$252,906 USD

Reach out to recruiting@8thlight.com for more relevant information pertaining to your local market.

8th Light Hubs and Geographies

As a remote-first company, 8th Light's culture is rooted in strong connections that extend across our teams, regions, and beyond client work. We are a distributed team across the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, with hubs in Chicago, London, Los Angeles, New York, and Seattle. 

If you are hired into a hub, you will be a part of a team with regular rituals around co-working and community building. For team members outside of those cities, we offer access to coworking spaces to foster continued collaboration and connection across our global team. 

This role is fully remote and requires working in a US time zone, with central or east coast preferred so you can take calls between Los Angeles and London. Most of our engagements require no travel. This role is an exception, with two or three short trips a year across North America and Europe, none over a week.

We hope to see you apply! 

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