Platform Architect

• Platform Architecture & Strategy
  • Define, own, and continuously evolve the target platform architecture for SmartSea Vision, aligned with business strategy, product roadmaps, and long-term scalability goals.
  • Establish and maintain clear architecture principles, standards, and guardrails across cloud, integration, data, security, and application layers.
  • Ensure the platform remains composable, enabling autonomous product teams to build, deploy, and evolve services without tight coupling.
  • Maintain and publish platform reference architectures that reflect real-world usage and guide day-to-day design decisions.
• Architectural Decision-Making & Learning
  • Design and own a lightweight Architectural Decision Record (ADR) approach, embedded into existing delivery tools and workflows.
  • Ensure architectural decisions are explicit, documented, and can be revisited in time.
  • Facilitate architectural trade-off discussions, helping teams converge on pragmatic decisions.
  • Establish feedback loops to assess the impact of architectural decisions and evolve principles and standards based on learning.
  • Foster a culture where architecture is treated as a shared learning system, not a compliance exercise.
• Cloud, Integration & Data Foundations
  • Design and govern cloud-native architectures leveraging Azure (or equivalent), containerisation, and event-driven patterns.
  • Define integration standards and patterns (APIs, events, messaging) to enable interoperability between SmartSea products, third-party systems, and legacy maritime platforms.
  • Collaborate with data and product stakeholders to establish consistent data models, data ownership, and data flow principles across the platform.
  • Ensure platform designs support scalability, resilience, observability, and operational excellence.
• Architecture Governance & Enablement
  • Act as the architectural authority for the platform, ensuring alignment with agreed principles while avoiding unnecessary delivery friction.
  • Embed architecture touchpoints into product discovery, initiative shaping, planning, and cross-team initiatives.
  • Establish and run a regular architecture review cadence focused on decision-making and learning, not sign-off.
  • Continuously evolve governance mechanisms to remain lightweight, proportionate to risk, and scalable across teams.
  • Actively identify and remove architectural processes that slow teams down without improving outcomes.
• Technology Evolution & Risk Management
  • Own the technology evolution roadmap for the platform, identifying modernization opportunities, technical debt, and emerging technologies.
  • Proactively assess and mitigate architectural risks related to security, compliance, scalability, resilience, and operational complexity.
  • Ensure platform architecture supports high availability, disaster recovery, and regulatory requirements relevant to a SaaS maritime platform.
• Collaboration & Leadership
  • Work closely with Product Management, Engineering, Security, DevOps, and Delivery leadership to ensure architectural decisions are understood, actionable, and aligned.
  • Mentor senior engineers and architects, building a strong architectural community and shared ownership mindset.
  • Influence without authority, helping teams align around common architectural intent.
  • Act as a trusted technical advisor to senior stakeholders, translating complex architectural topics into clear business implications.

Essential

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Engineering, Information Systems, or equivalent practical experience.
• 5+ years of experience in software engineering and architecture roles, with demonstrated ownership of platform-level or enterprise-scale architectures.
• Proven experience designing and governing cloud-native, distributed systems in complex, regulated environments.
• Strong understanding of modern architectural patterns: microservices, event-driven architectures, APIs, domain-driven design, and platform engineering.
• Deep experience with cloud platforms (Azure preferred), container orchestration (Docker/Kubernetes), and CI/CD ecosystems.
• Solid understanding of identity, access management, security-by-design, and compliance considerations in SaaS platforms.
• Strong understanding of Agile and product-centric delivery models in multi-team environments.
• Proven ability to design architecture that enables team autonomy while maintaining overall system coherence.
• Pragmatic decision-maker, comfortable making trade-offs between ideal architecture and delivery constraints.
• Skilled facilitator of technical discussions and decision-making across diverse stakeholders.

Desirable

• Experience in maritime, logistics, transportation, or other asset-intensive industries.
• Experience integrating low-code platforms, enterprise systems, and custom-built services into a cohesive ecosystem.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to influence without authority and align diverse stakeholders.
• Systems thinker with a long-term mindset, capable of designing for growth, change, and uncertainty.
• High level of ownership, accountability, and professional integrity.

SmartSea is an Equal Opportunity Employer and values a diverse workforce with many different countries and cultures represented across the organisation. We offer:

• Competitive salary and discretionary bonus
• Thirteen salaries
• Pension fund
• Medical insurance
• Opportunities for professional growth and architectural leadership
• Flexible working from home policy
• A collaborative, product-driven and innovation-focused culture