Principal System Architect

About This Role: The Principal Architect is a senior individual-contributor who defines, leads, and governs the software architecture vision across our device and digital ecosystem. This includes our on-device firmware, cloud services, analytics platforms, data pipelines, clinician and patient-facing applications, AI/ML enablement platforms, and operational software systems. This leader drives architectural excellence, technology strategy, and systems coherence across R&D, product, clinical, data science, and the intersection of our products with IT. The role ensures that the on-device and off device software ecosystem is secure, scalable, resilient, compliant, and aligned with product strategy and long-term business goals. Operating at an enterprise level, this role influences senior stakeholders across engineering, product, quality, regulatory, and security while maintaining deep technical credibility. Key Responsibilities: Technology & Architecture Strategy - Define the multiyear architecture strategy for all product software systems, spanning cloud, application, data, integration, and ML/AI infrastructure. - Establish architectural principles, reference architectures, and guardrails that support reliability, performance, interoperability, maintainability, and regulatory compliance. - Ensure holistic systems thinking across software platforms, clinical workflows, device interactions, and data flows. - Evaluate emerging technologies and provide strategic recommendations for adoption, modernization, and platform evolution. Architectural Leadership & Governance - Lead cross-functional architecture forums and governance processes, ensuring consistent patterns, shared services, and disciplined decision-making across teams. - Drive architectural clarity early in product development by guiding systems decomposition, API strategies, data models, and cloud architectures. - Review key technical proposals, high-impact design decisions, and fundamental platform changes across R&D teams. - Champion engineering quality standards for architecture, coding, testing, observability, and documentation. Cross Functional Influence & Collaboration - Partner with product management to translate business needs into scalable technical strategies and architectural roadmaps. - Collaborate with security, privacy, regulatory, quality, and clinical teams to ensure designs meet medical device standards and software compliance requirements. - Serve as a trusted technical advisor to senior leadership, articulating architectural options, trade-offs, risks, and business impacts. - Bridge off device and on device systems to ensure seamless end to end workflows, data flows, and system integrity. Execution Support & Technical Leadership - Provide architectural oversight throughout the SDLC, guiding teams during concepting, detailed design, implementation, and release. - Drive standardization, reducing duplication and accelerating development velocity through clear architectural patterns. - Mentor engineering leads and architects across the organization through thought leadership, coaching, and technical review. - Lead technical investigation and resolution of complex systemic issues, spanning data, scalability, reliability, or workflow interactions. Qualifications: Required: - Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Systems Engineering, or related field; advanced degree preferred. - 15+ years of progressive experience in software engineering or architecture, with deep expertise in largescale distributed systems, cloud architectures, and modern application platforms. - Proven experience architecting regulated or high reliability systems (preferably within medical, health tech, or similar domains). - Mastery of architectural domains such as microservices, event driven systems, data pipelines, observability, DevOps/SRE practices, and cloud native technologies. - Ability to operate as a senior level individual contributor influencing executive teams without direct authority. - Exceptional ability to communicate complex technical concepts in clear, concise, and business relevant terms. - Demonstrated success partnering with cross functional leaders across product, security, quality, regulatory, data science, and infrastructure. Preferred: - Experience with FDA, EU MDR, IEC 62304, HIPAA, and related regulatory frameworks for software as part of medical systems. - Background supporting AI/ML platform architecture, model deployment, and clinical decision support software. - Experience designing architectures that integrate with medical devices, clinical systems, EHRs, or healthcare data standards (FHIR, HL7). - Prior leadership in organizations scaling complex multiproduct software ecosystems.