Senior Software Architect

Senior Software Architect

Company details

Description of the offer

This is a four day in-office position. The office is located in the Shadyside neighborhood of Pittsburgh, PA. We are unable to provide relocation assistance at this time.

Senior Software Architect

The Software Architect will be the primary owner of the technical design and strategy for our cloud-native backend. This role is focused on architecting and building the scalable, secure, and intelligent Python-based services that power our mobile application. You will make high-level design choices for our cloud infrastructure, dictate data modeling standards, and oversee the crucial integration with AI services. Crucially, you will be expected to provide strategic technical leadership, evaluating our current architecture and suggesting better approaches to ensure our platform is future-proof.

What you will do

Cloud Architecture: Design and lead the development of scalable backend services using Python on serverless platforms within the Google Cloud ecosystem (e.g., Cloud Functions, Cloud Run).
Architectural Evolution: Continuously evaluate the technology stack and architecture, proposing and implementing improvements or alternative approaches to enhance performance, scalability, and cost-effectiveness.
AI Integration: Engineer the core server-side logic for integrating with various AI services, including third-party APIs (OpenAI) and native cloud solutions (Google’s Vertex AI).
API Design: Define and maintain clean, efficient, and secure API contracts for consumption by the Flutter mobile client and any future platforms.
Data & Security Strategy: Architect robust data models and security rules using cloud-native NoSQL databases. Design and implement user authentication flows using managed identity services.
Technical Strategy & Mentorship: Make critical decisions regarding the backend technology stack and guide the development team on architectural principles and best practices.
Required skills and experience:

8-10 years of proven experience as a Software Architect, Technical Lead, or Senior Backend Engineer with a focus on cloud-native applications.
Expert-level proficiency in Python and extensive experience with modern web frameworks (e.g., Flask, FastAPI).
Deep expertise in designing and building solutions within the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) ecosystem, including its serverless, database, and AI/ML offerings.
A strategic mindset with a demonstrated ability to evaluate trade-offs and advocate for new technologies and architectural patterns.
Experience building and securing server-side integrations with third-party APIs.
Strong understanding of NoSQL database design, security, and performance tuning.
Data and privacy: Set standards for PII handling, redaction, consent management, anonymization, and secure storage. Curate, generate, and label data that reflects diverse seniors and scenarios.
Nice to have:

Experience with Flutter and the Dart programming language.
A solid understanding of the mobile application ecosystem and the challenges of client-server interaction.
Familiarity with voice-enabled applications, including Speech-to-Text (STT) and Text-to-Speech (TTS) technologies.
Knowledge of Agile development methodologies and tools like Jira.
Leadership experience – this role will lead a team of software engineers and interns as the team grows.
Architecture: Design the conversational system from intake to response. Own policy, generation, tool use, long-term memory, personalization, and retrieval.
Prompt and Agent Design: Create robust system prompts, function-calling schemas, and tool APIs. Stand up an A/B framework to test prompts, policies, and safety rules with real users.
About us:
We are an exciting, new (funded), and stealthy AI startup that focuses on addressing the negative effects of isolation. You will be working with a group of experienced tech entrepreneurs and AI technologists. This position will help design and ship an emotionally intelligent conversational companion that reduces loneliness and improves daily life for older adults.

Location of employment

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