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Principal Platform Architect

San Jose, California, United States

Archer is an aerospace company based in San Jose, California building an all-electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft with a mission to advance the benefits of sustainable air mobility. We are designing, manufacturing, and operating an all-electric aircraft that can carry four passengers while producing minimal noise.

Our sights are set high and our problems are hard, and we believe that diversity in the workplace is what makes us smarter, drives better insights, and will ultimately lift us all to success. We are dedicated to cultivating an equitable and inclusive environment that embraces our differences, and supports and celebrates all of our team members.

Principal Platform Architect (San Jose, CA) 

Role Overview

We’re building a platform layer above enterprise systems of record (SAP S/4HANA, Workday, Google Workspace, Okta etc.) that normalizes their data into a typed entity graph. Applications and AI agents program against a single SDK rather than integrating with source systems directly.

 

As a hands-on Principal Platform Architect and Tech Lead, you will serve as the technical authority for the Enterprise OS team. You will establish foundational platform capabilities that streamline the development of secure, reliable applications atop unified enterprise data. This is a deeply technical, high-leverage role. You will not only design and build core services but also lead the engineering team in execution, set rigorous platform standards, and own the technical roadmap.

You own the canonical entity model, the connector contract, and the SDK interface. You are responsible for ensuring the team delivers a portable, scalable architecture that serves as the backbone for all enterprise-wide applications.

Key Responsibilities

  • Technical Leadership: Act as the Tech Lead for the platform team. Drive technical decisions, manage architectural trade-offs, and ensure the team adheres to high engineering standards through rigorous design and code reviews.
  • Platform Design Ownership: Define the canonical entity model, design the connector interface for typed Go services across source systems, and own the Platform SDK used by application teams.
  • Core Service Development: Lead the development of services enabling policy-controlled access, traceability, and automation, including AI-assisted workflows with robust guardrails.
  • Execution & Validation: Translate the platform vision into actionable engineering milestones. Your designs will be rapidly validated through production applications.

 

Responsibilities

  • Define canonical entity models that normalize data across multiple enterprise systems (e.g., finance, supply chain, HR)
  • Demonstrated ability to lead engineering teams through the full SDLC of complex platform products.
  • Design and implement core backend services (Go preferred, Java experience also valued)
  • Define strongly typed API contracts and versioning standards using protobuf, with the Platform SDK as the single interface applications build against
  • Design a portable data architecture using PostgreSQL, including schema evolution and performance strategy
  • Establish scalable connector/integration patterns for ingesting, enriching, and serving enterprise entities
  • Build a policy-based authorization approach (RBAC with attribute-aware controls) with entity-level access control and data masking where needed
  • Define event propagation patterns (e.g., outbox pattern) and a clear path to CDC/event streaming as the platform matures
  • Establish auditability, traceability, and observability standards for platform services
  • Enable AI-assisted workflows safely (e.g., classification/summarization/suggested actions) with strict access boundaries and full audit logs
  • Mentor engineers and collaborate with application teams to validate the platform through real production use cases

Qualifications

Required:

  • 15+ years building distributed systems, backend platforms, or internal developer platforms
  • Strong hands-on backend engineering experience  (Go preferred)
  • Deep expertise in relational databases, ideally PostgreSQL (schema design, indexing, performance tuning, migrations)
  • Experience designing canonical data models across heterogeneous systems
  • Experience defining durable API contracts and operating them over time (versioning, compatibility, reliability)
  • Experience implementing secure authorization patterns (RBAC and fine-grained access controls)
  • Experience designing event-driven systems and reliability patterns (idempotency, retries, consistency)
  • Cloud-native experience (AWS/GCP preferred) and comfort working across infrastructure/application boundaries
  • Demonstrated ability to ship production systems used by other teams

Preferred:

  • Experience with typed contracts
  • Experience with policy-as-code authorization (e.g., OPA/Cerbos or similar)
  • Experience integrating enterprise identity providers (OIDC/SAML; Okta is a plus)
  • Experience building internal SDKs/frameworks used by multiple teams
  • Experience incorporating AI/LLM capabilities into production systems with strong governance (access boundaries, prompt-safety patterns, human-in-the-loop controls)
  • Experience integrating with ERP/HR systems (SAP, Workday, etc.)
  • Experience with enterprise data integration patterns: multi-table source joins, delta sync strategies, field-level provenance, canonical model design

 

Please note that this job description is intended to provide a general overview of the position and does not include an exhaustive list of responsibilities and qualifications

At Archer we aim to attract, retain, and motivate talent that possess the skills and leadership necessary to grow our business. We drive a pay-for-performance culture and reward performance that supports the Company’s business strategy. For this position we are targeting a base pay between 219,00 - 273,000. Actual compensation offered will be determined by factors such as job-related knowledge, skills, and experience.

 

Information collected and processed as part of any job applications you choose to submit is subject to Archer's Candidate Privacy Policy.
Archer is unable to provide work visa sponsorship for this position at the present time.
Archer is proud to be an Equal Opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusivity in the workplace. All aspects of employment are decided on the basis of merit, qualifications, and business needs. We do not discriminate based upon race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, gender identity or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.
Archer Aviation does not engage with external recruiting agencies/individual recruiters with whom it does not have a prior written agreement. Archer reserves the right to make use of any unsolicited resumes that it receives and bears no responsibility for payment of any fees asserted from the use of unsolicited resumes. If you are a recruiting agency or individual recruiter wishing to do business with Archer, please reach out to People@archer.com. All employment processes are managed by the Archer People Team.

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