Principal Platform Architect

Archer•San Jose, CA

About The Position

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.

Requirements

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

Nice To Haves

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

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.
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