Principal Software Architect / Full-Stack Lead

Hyderabad · Full-time · Stealth THE ROLE

You'll define the architecture, stay hands-on in code, and lead a team of 4–5 mid-level engineers — a player-coach role: roughly half building, half directing and elevating the team. We expect you to be pivotal in bringing current perspectives: challenging our assumptions, introducing design considerations we haven't thought of, and raising the bar on how we build.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

- Own end-to-end system architecture: application design, data pipelines, retrieval systems, and the boundaries between AI components and deterministic logic
- Lead 4–5 mid-level engineers — technical direction, design reviews, PR reviews, unblocking, and growing them into strong owners
- Drive design considerations into every build: scalability, security, reliability, observability, cost, and auditability — argued explicitly, not assumed
- Build production LLM features the disciplined way — grounded retrieval, evaluation harnesses, guardrails, context engineering — not prompt-and-pray
- Design data models and ingestion pipelines that turn messy real-world data into trusted, versioned, auditable systems
- Make pragmatic build-vs-buy and architecture trade-off calls, documented in lightweight ADRs
- Ship fast with AI-assisted development while holding a high bar on review, testing, and security
- Set the engineering culture and standards the team scales on

ARCHITECT'S TOOLKIT (what we expect you to bring)
- System design: modular monolith vs microservices judgment, event-driven patterns, domain-driven design instincts
- API architecture: REST/GraphQL/WebSocket design, versioning, contract discipline
- Async & scale: task queues and messaging (Celery/Kafka/SQS or equivalent), caching strategies, horizontal scaling patterns
- Security architecture: OAuth2/JWT, RBAC, encryption at rest/in transit, PII handling, audit logging
- Reliability & observability: structured logging, metrics,



tracing (OpenTelemetry/Prometheus/Sentry class), HA and disaster-recovery thinking
- Infra as code and CI/CD discipline (Terraform, GitHub Actions or equivalent)
- Architecture communication: C4-style diagrams, ADRs, and the ability to explain a design to both engineers and non-technical stakeholders

OUR CURRENT STACK

- Backend: Python (FastAPI), PostgreSQL, Redis
- AI layer: frontier LLM APIs (Anthropic/OpenAI), RAG with vector search (pgvector/Qdrant), structured outputs, custom eval harnesses
- Frontend: React + TypeScript [+ React Native/Flutter for mobile — you'll help make this call]
- Infra: [AWS ], Docker, GitHub Actions
- Development: Claude Code / AI-assisted workflows as standard practice

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS

- 10+ years professional software engineering, including 3+ years in an architect or principal/lead role owning production systems at scale
- 2+ years leading or mentoring engineering teams (formal or as tech lead) — you've grown engineers, not just managed tickets
- Expert-level Python and strong proficiency in React/TypeScript
- Shipped at least one production LLM-powered feature — retrieval, evals, cost/latency trade-offs from experience, not tutorials
- Deep relational data modeling and pipeline experience (PostgreSQL or equivalent) with versioning and audit discipline
- Hands-on cloud architecture ownership (AWS or GCP): networking, security, deployment, cost
- Active daily use of AI coding tools (Claude Code, Cursor, or equivalent) in real delivery work
- B.E./B.Tech in CS or equivalent demonstrated engineering depth

HOW TO APPLY

Skip the cover letter. Send instead:
- Three sentences on a system you personally architected — what you owned, one decision you got wrong, and what it taught you
- One example of a design consideration you fought for that others initially resisted — and how it played out
- One thing you've shipped recently using AI-assisted development, and where the AI failed you

- Applications with these three answers get read first.

📌 Principal Software Engineer / Full stack developer (Hyderabad)
🏢 Astroum AI
📍 Hyderabad