Channel Fusion manages the marketing programs for some of the largest Fortune 1000 brands in the world co-op advertising, dealer rebates, incentive and SPIFF programs, go-to-market tools, and a growing SaaS platform (EngageHQ) with seven live products: EngageSMS, EngageORM, EngageOLM, EngageSites, EngageQR, EngageAds, and EngageVideo. We manage hundreds of millions of dollars in client program spend annually and serve some of the most demanding enterprise clients in North America.

We've committed to an AI-first operating model. We have a 53-person engineering organization doing meaningful work on a platform that clients depend on daily, and we're entering the next stage of scale which means our technical architecture needs a single accountable owner across application, data, integration, cloud/platform, security, and AI systems.

This is a new seat. No one has done this job here before. You won't inherit someone else's playbook. You'll write it.

Reports to: VP of Engineering

Works closely with: Chief Technology Officer

Authority: The Principal Architect is the company's accountable owner for technical architecture direction spanning application, data, integration, cloud/platform, and security architecture standards, and AI systems with authority to approve material architecture decisions and exceptions, and to require remediation where a proposed design creates significant platform, security, scalability, or integration risk.

The Chief Technology Officer sets Channel Fusion's overall technology and AI strategy; the Principal Architect owns translating that strategy into architecture standards, decisions, and the AI-Driven Development Lifecycle (ADLC) playbook, and holds day-to-day decision-making authority for how it's executed across the engineering organization.

This is a close working partnership, not a reporting relationship in either direction.

This is a decision-rights role, not a people-management role: it carries no direct reports. Pod leads continue to report administratively to the VP of Engineering.

What You'll Own

Technical Architecture Single Owner

You are the company's single accountable owner for architecture direction across application, data, integration, platform, and security domains. Every major call frontend modernization, backend patterns, API strategy, service boundaries, technology selection runs through your approval, within a clear, lightweight process for how decisions get made, recorded, and revisited. Pod leads and engineering teams own implementation within approved patterns; you're not inspecting every detail you own the system that governs how decisions get made.

AI-Native Engineering System

Working within the CTO's overall AI strategy, you will define and own the ADLC (AI-Driven Development Lifecycle): model and tool selection, per-engineer workflow standards, AI-assisted code review, agentic workflows,



and adoption metrics tied to output not usage. Every pod executes against your playbook .

Enterprise and Strategic Readiness

You will ensure our technical architecture is ready for continued growth, strategic partnerships, and the integration of new products and capabilities. You will maintain a clear, evidence-backed view of platform scalability, security, and technical health, and drive the roadmap required to strengthen them.

Legacy Modernization

You will define and drive a pragmatic modernization strategy that reduces legacy database coupling, introduces clear service and API boundaries, and improves maintainability without disrupting customers or requiring a high-risk rewrite.

AI Platform Governance In partnership with the CTO, you will own model-selection and routing standards that balance outcome quality, security, latency, reliability, and operating cost. You will establish measurable guardrails and observability for AI usage across engineering workflows and product capabilities.

EngageHQ Platform Architecture

Seven SaaS products need a coherent architecture. You'll own the shared platform strategy, the extension model for new products, and the design decisions that make onboarding a new client or adding a new product non-linear in engineering cost.

Technical Talent Partnership

Partner with the VP of Engineering on technical hiring, leadership capability, and development plans for architecture-critical roles, and with the CTO on technical-talent calibration for architecture-critical seats. You will have a defined decision-making role in selecting senior technical talent and assessing the capabilities required to execute the architecture roadmap.

What the First 90 Days Look Like

Days 1–30: Assess.

Meet every tech lead. Review the codebase, the current state of AI adoption, frontend modernization, and platform integration readiness across all seven EngageHQ products. Come back with a written architectural assessment: where we are, what has to change, and in what order.

Days 31–60: Establish Standards.

Own the architecture decision backlog and establish a lightweight architecture decision record (ADR) process. Set modern data-access and service-boundary standards and begin driving compliance. Define the ADLC playbook and begin rolling it out across engineering pods.

Days 61–90: Present the Roadmap.

Present the full architecture roadmap to the CEO: platform scalability and integration readiness, the AI model governance and cost strategy,



the legacy modernization plan with milestone gates, and which modernization work creates client-visible value in Q3/Q4 versus internal improvement only.

What You Need to Bring

You've architected platforms at scale, ideally in a services or SaaS company serving enterprise clients. You've worked with a real installed base — legacy systems, technical debt, and clients who can't absorb a rewrite on your timeline.

You are AI-native, not AI-curious. You've already shipped systems where AI is embedded in the development workflow, and you have a real point of view on model routing, token optimization, and the tradeoffs between commercial and open-source models. You know what a per-engineer AI productivity metric should look like — and why usage volume alone is the wrong proxy.

You've led modernization under commercial constraints. You understand “we should rewrite this” is half a strategy, and you tie every architecture decision to a clear category: client-visible value, maintenance cost reduction, scale headroom, or risk reduction.

You make hard calls and communicate them clearly. You know the difference between collaborative and indecisive, and you can end the latter respectfully but firmly — through influence, standards, and a well-run decision process.

You understand security at the architecture level: SOC 2, DevSecOps, cloud infrastructure security, secrets management. You set standards the rest of the team executes against.

Preferred technical background: experience modernizing PHP/Laravel or similar legacy stacks; cloud infrastructure on AWS or Azure; React or comparable frontend modernization at scale; multi-tenant SaaS with enterprise clients; MCP architecture or agent-based development systems.

What Success Looks Like:

At 6 Months:

Architecture decisions run through a explicit, documented process rather than by committee. Legacy database coupling is measurably reduced. The ADLC is a real operating standard across engineering pods, not a goal.

Multiple pods show measurably higher AI-assisted throughput, with quality and rework tracked alongside speed. The enterprise-readiness narrative — scalability, security, integration readiness — is written and reviewed by the CEO. The architecture decision and exception process is operating as intended, with clear turnaround times and no exceptions left unresolved past their review date.

At 12 Months:

The EngageHQ platform architecture supports three new product additions without proportional engineering headcount growth. AI/token cost is managed within a defined budget envelope with a clear model-routing strategy. You've built a working technical partnership with both the VP of Engineering and the Chief Technology Officer, with a real, ongoing view of where the organization's architecture capability needs to grow next.

📌 Channel Fusion is looking For Principal Architect (Chandigarh)
🏢 Channel Fusion
📍 Chandigarh