Software Architect (m/f/d)

Position:   Software Architect (m/f/d)
Location:  Available to candidates located in Poland

We are seeking a seasoned Software Architect (m/f/d) to own the technical vision and direction for a strategic cloud engineering group at Aras — the team behind our next-generation, cloud-native services that redefine how PLM data is accessed, integrated, and composed across the enterprise.

This is a high-impact, high-autonomy role at the intersection of platform architecture, product delivery, and engineering leadership. You will set the architectural north star across three cross-functional teams and two production SaaS services — a low-code API management platform and a frontend application toolkit — shaping the foundation that thousands of PLM users and integrations depend on every day. You will also engage directly with customers and partners — gathering real-world feedback, validating architectural decisions against production use cases, and representing Aras's technical vision externally.
We are looking for someone who doesn't just tolerate AI-assisted ways of working — but actively leads by example: using AI to accelerate architecture exploration, produce high-quality design artifacts faster, and raise the bar for what a small team can deliver.
If you thrive on solving hard distributed systems problems, love driving clarity in complex multi-team environments, and want your architectural decisions to matter at product scale — this role is for you.

Key Responsibilities

• Domain Architecture
• Define and own the group's target architecture: domain boundaries, core components, service responsibilities, and key integrations — and keep it intentionally evolving, not just initiative-driven.
• Set and enforce technical direction and guardrails across all teams, ensuring design consistency and coherence at scale.
• Act as the final technical decision-maker within the group's domain; evaluate and approve major design proposals, refactors, and technology changes.
• Author and maintain architecture documentation and governance artifacts — reference architectures, ADRs, design principles.
  

Feature-Level Architecture

• Lead architecture elaboration at the feature level: scope, design, and document architectural solutions for new capabilities quickly and to a high standard.
• Produce clear, well-structured architecture diagrams and design artifacts that teams can act on immediately — using AI tooling to accelerate output without sacrificing quality.
• Validate feasibility of proposed solutions early; surface architectural risks, constraints, and trade-offs during discovery.
• Propose solution options and help product and engineering teams make confident, well-informed decisions. 
• Technical Strategy & Roadmap
  Own the group's technical roadmap: identify, prioritize, and drive resolution of technical debt, architectural risks, and modernization opportunities.
• Define domain-level non-functional requirements — performance, security, reliability, observability — and ensure they are met consistently across services.
• Guide PoCs and architectural spikes to reduce uncertainty and de-risk delivery, without owning execution.

AI-Augmented Ways of Working

• Actively champion and model AI-assisted architecture practices across the group: use AI agents and tools for architecture exploration, design generation, documentation, and diagramming.
• Drive adoption of AI agents within engineering workflows — identifying opportunities where AI can accelerate delivery, reduce toil, or improve output quality.
• Lead the group's efforts to make codebases and repositories more AI-friendly: improving structure, documentation, and conventions so AI tooling can be applied effectively by all engineers.
• Stay current on the evolving AI tooling landscape and bring relevant practices into the group proactively.
  

Cross-Group & Initiative Collaboration

• Represent the group in initiative-level architecture forums; partner with cross-group architects on shared platform solutions.
• Translate initiative goals into group-level architectural scope and sequencing, protecting domain integrity while enabling delivery velocity.
• Collaborate with cloud infrastructure, DevSecOps, and security partners to ensure solutions meet enterprise-wide standards.
• Engage with customers, partners, and key stakeholders to gather technical feedback, validate architectural direction, and communicate platform capabilities.
• Resolve cross-domain dependencies and design conflicts; escalate when needed.

Engineering Leadership

• Mentor Tech Leads and senior engineers — sharpen decision quality, raise the bar on design clarity, and build architectural consistency across teams.
• Elevate the technical culture of the group through candid feedback, structured design reviews, and leading by example.

Required Skills & Experience

• 8+ years in software engineering, with 3+ years in a software architect or principal engineer role owning architecture across multiple teams.
• Deep expertise in cloud-native, multi-tenant SaaS on Microsoft Azure — AKS, Azure Front Door, CosmosDB, Terraform.
• Strong backend architecture skills in .NET with RESTful/OData API design at scale.
• Proven experience designing multi-region, highly available distributed systems with real DR requirements.
• Solid foundation in Infrastructure-as-Code and modern CI/CD practices.
• Security-first mindset: hands-on experience with SOC 2, API security, CIAM/identity integration, and zero-trust architecture.
• Track record of driving cross-team architectural alignment, resolving design conflicts, and making defensible technology decisions.
• Active, hands-on user of AI tools in day-to-day architecture and engineering work — not as a novelty, but as a core productivity practice.
• Strong communicator — equally effective with engineers, product managers, and senior stakeholders.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with low-code platforms or API management products.
• Background in PLM, ERP, or enterprise data integration domains.
• Experience building developer-facing toolkits — SDK/CLI design, React component libraries, npm ecosystems.
• Familiarity with composable architecture and AI-powered workflow integration patterns.
• Experience authoring ADRs and lightweight architectural governance frameworks.
• Demonstrated experience leading AI adoption within an engineering team — tooling, workflow integration, or codebase modernization for AI-readiness.
  

Why This Role Matters

Aras is in the middle of a deliberate shift toward composable, cloud-delivered PLM experiences — and this group is at the center of it. The services you will architect are the connectivity layer between Innovator's PLM data and the next wave of AI-powered, role-specific applications. You won't be maintaining legacy systems. You will be designing what comes next — and using the best available tools, including AI, to do it faster and better than anyone thought possible.
High ownership. Real impact. A team that ships.