Role Description The Platform Architect provides architectural leadership, technical guidance, and strategic oversight across Frontline's Platform Engineering organization, including Identity Platform, Core Services, UI Platform, Data Platform, and AI Enablement teams. This role operates across engineering pods and product domains to help define architectural direction, solve complex cross-functional technical challenges, guide platform evolution, and ensure alignment with Frontline architectural standards, engineering practices, and long-term technology strategy. Platform Architects are expected to operate as highly collaborative technical leaders who influence through expertise, communication, partnership, and trust rather than organizational hierarchy. This role requires strong systems-thinking, broad technical depth, and the ability to provide clarity within complex and evolving technical and business environments. The Platform Architect partners closely with Engineering Managers, Product Managers, Principal Engineers, UX leaders, Security teams, Data teams, and executive leadership to help shape platform strategy, guide technical decision-making, and enable successful adoption of shared platform capabilities across Frontline's product ecosystem. This role reports to the Senior Director, Engineering - Platform. Operating Model Expectations The Platform Architect is expected to: - Participate in product discovery and strategic planning activities across platform domains. - Collaborate closely with Product Management to help translate business challenges into scalable technical approaches. - Provide architectural guidance during discovery, refinement, implementation, adoption, and operational evolution. - Help teams evaluate technical feasibility, tradeoffs, operational implications, interoperability concerns, and long-term sustainability. - Drive alignment with Frontline architectural standards, engineering patterns, governance expectations, and platform strategy. - Act as a cross-functional technical advisor helping teams create clarity in ambiguous problem spaces. - Promote platform adoption through collaboration, enablement, technical guidance, and architectural evangelism. - Act like an owner by proactively identifying risks, opportunities, architectural gaps, and organizational improvement opportunities. How You'll Drive Success Platform Architecture Leadership - Provide architectural leadership and technical guidance across all Platform Engineering domains. - Help define and evolve long-term platform architecture strategy supporting Frontline's multi-tenant SaaS ecosystem. - Collaborate with engineering teams to ensure solutions align with established architectural patterns, standards, and strategic direction. - Guide platform modernization efforts and long-term technical evolution initiatives. - Participate in the evaluation and adoption of emerging technologies, frameworks, and architectural approaches. - Help teams balance innovation, operational maturity, maintainability, scalability, security, governance, and delivery objectives. - Contribute to architectural governance activities and engineering best practice development. Complex Problem Solving & Technical Guidance - Provide leadership and guidance for solving complex cross-functional technical and architectural challenges. - Help engineering teams navigate ambiguous or evolving technical requirements. - Identify architectural risks, interoperability concerns, scalability constraints, operational challenges, and organizational dependencies. - Partner with Technical Leads and Engineering Managers to establish pragmatic implementation strategies. - Support engineering teams during critical design, implementation, operational, and modernization activities. - Contribute hands-on technical expertise where appropriate to unblock complex initiatives. Product & Platform Collaboration - Partner closely with Product Management to shape technical approaches supporting business and product objectives. - Participate in discovery and refinement activities to help evaluate feasibility, technical tradeoffs, and platform implications. - Help Product and Engineering teams align roadmap priorities with platform strategy and architectural direction. - Collaborate with adopting product teams to facilitate successful integration and adoption of platform capabilities. - Help identify reusable platform opportunities that reduce duplication and improve consistency across the portfolio. Platform Adoption & Evangelism - Promote understanding and adoption of Platform capabilities across Frontline engineering organizations. - Help teams understand platform capabilities, integration approaches, architectural patterns, and implementation best practices. - Provide technical guidance and enablement support for adopting teams. - Advocate for reusable platform capabilities, engineering consistency, and operational excellence. - Build strong collaborative relationships across product pillars and engineering domains. Architecture Communication & Influence - Create and communicate solution-level and strategic architecture documentation. - Lead and facilitate Design Sketch reviews, architectural discussions, and technical workshops. - Clearly communicate complex technical concepts and architectural tradeoffs to both technical and non-technical stakeholders. - Influence technical direction through collaboration, expertise, communication, and relationship-building. - Exercise informal authority effectively across teams and organizational boundaries. - Help establish organizational clarity around technical direction, engineering standards, and architectural priorities. AI-Assisted & Agentic Engineering Practices - Effectively leverage modern AI-assisted and agentic development tooling such as GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, and OpenAI Codex to improve engineering productivity, accelerate architectural exploration, and support engineering enablement. - Help establish responsible and effective AI-assisted engineering practices across Platform Engineering. - Apply sound engineering judgment when supervising, validating, and operationalizing AI-generated outputs. - Encourage experimentation and continuous improvement while maintaining strong standards for security, governance, maintainability, reliability, and operational integrity. Qualifications - Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related field. - 12+ years of professional software engineering, platform engineering, or architecture experience. - Strong experience designing and evolving distributed cloud-native systems within complex SaaS environments. - Broad technical experience spanning multiple engineering domains including platform engineering, distributed systems, APIs, cloud-native architectures, frontend systems, data systems, integration patterns, and operational engineering. - Strong understanding of: - Distributed systems and event-driven architectures - API and integration platform design - Cloud-native application architectures - Multi-tenant SaaS platform concepts - Operational scalability and resiliency - Security and governance considerations - Experience with AWS cloud-native technologies and modern engineering practices. - Experience guiding engineering organizations through architectural modernization and platform evolution. - Strong experience facilitating technical discussions and architectural decision-making. - Demonstrated ability to influence technical direction across organizational boundaries without direct authority. - Strong written and verbal communication skills. - Experience operating within Agile/Scrum and product-oriented delivery environments. Preferred - Experience working across multiple engineering disciplines including identity, shared services, frontend platforms, data platforms, and AI enablement systems. - Experience supporting platform adoption and developer enablement initiatives. - Familiarity with modern identity and access management concepts. - Familiarity with data platform and AI enablement architectures. - Experience with event streaming and messaging technologies such as Kafka. - Familiarity with Kubernetes or container orchestration platforms. - Experience collaborating with offshore or geographically distributed engineering teams. - Experience leveraging AI-assisted or agentic development workflows in professional software engineering environments. What You'll Need to Thrive - Acts like an owner by taking accountability for organizational outcomes, architectural integrity, platform adoption, and long-term sustainability. - Strong systems-thinking mindset that balances local optimization with enterprise-wide impact. - Pragmatic and delivery-oriented while maintaining high engineering and architectural standards. - Comfortable operating in ambiguity and helping teams create clarity. - Strong communicator capable of simplifying complex technical concepts for diverse audiences. - Effective collaborator who leads through influence, partnership, trust, and technical credibility. - Passionate about platform enablement, engineering excellence, reusable solutions, and organizational effectiveness. - Curious, adaptable, and continuously learning. - A "One Team" mindset grounded in servant leadership and shared accountability. Compensation & Benefits - The full base compensation range for this position is $180,000-$200,000. - Bonus eligibility and long-term incentive opportunities. - 401(k) with company match. - Comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage. - Employee stock purchase plan. - Generous paid time off and tuition reimbursement. Inclusion, Belonging & Equal Opportunity Frontline Education is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer. We aspire to have an inclusive workplace and strongly encourage suitably qualified applicants from a wide range of backgrounds to apply and join our team. Interview Process & Data Privacy As part of our interview process, Frontline uses video conferencing tools that include photo capture and may include automated transcription features. A screenshot or photo will be taken at the start of the interview for internal identification and record-keeping purposes only, and transcription may be used to support notetaking and evaluation consistency. 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