What are the responsibilities and job description for the Principal Platform Architect position at Finalsite?
Finalsite is the first community relationship management platform for K-12 schools, transforming how schools attract students, engage families, build community — and thrive. More than 7,000 schools and districts worldwide trust Finalsite’s integrated platform for their websites, communications, mobile apps, enrollment, and marketing services. Finalsite is headquartered in Glastonbury, CT, USA with employees who work remotely in nearly every state in the U.S. as well as Europe, South America, and Asia. For more information, please visit www.finalsite.com.
VISION
Finalsite will transform the way school communities engage with their schools.SUMMARY OF THE ROLE
Finalsite is seeking a hands-on Principal Platform Architect to lead the design and evolution of our next-generation platform, building a scalable, secure, and modern foundation that powers all Finalsite products. This is a player-coach role: you’ll roll up your sleeves to design, prototype, and guide implementation, while also mentoring teams and driving platform strategy across engineering teams.
The Principal Platform Architect will shape the technical direction for how our systems connect, scale, and deliver value to clients globally. You’ll collaborate closely with Engineering, Product, and Security leaders to unify our technology stack, reduce complexity, and enable speed, performance, and innovation across the organization.
LOCATION
100% Remote - Anywhere within the US
RESPONSIBILITIES
Establish Platform Architecture based on business needs, and implement it across Finalsite products.
Enable Platform and Common Architecture principles adoption across products and teams.
Own and evolve the platform architecture across all products and services, ensuring scalability, reliability, and interoperability.
Act as both strategic architect and hands-on engineer, setting the technical vision while contributing directly to solution design and code reviews.
Partner with Engineering and Product teams to architect shared services, APIs, data flows, and multi-tenant capabilities that support new features and integrations.
Lead modernization and Platform adoption initiatives across products and teams.
Create and maintain reference architectures, reusable frameworks, and developer-friendly tooling that accelerate delivery.
Drive platform governance, technical standards, and best practices that ensure quality and consistency across distributed teams.
Collaborate with infrastructure and SRE teams to optimize CI/CD pipelines, observability across the product and teams, and platform reliability.
Conduct design reviews and provide guidance to engineers on system design, performance, and maintainability.
Evaluate emerging technologies and prototype new solutions that advance platform capabilities.
Serve as a mentor and coach, developing engineers’ architectural thinking and problem-solving skills.
Translate complex concepts into clear, actionable recommendations for both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
QUALIFICATIONS AND SKILLS
10 years of experience in software engineering or architecture roles, with significant hands-on design and coding experience.
Proven success in building or modernizing SaaS platforms and shared service architectures.
Strong knowledge of microservices, API frameworks, event-driven systems, and data integration
Expertise in one or more major cloud environments (AWS and/or GCP) and associated services.
Deep experience with container orchestration (Kubernetes), CI/CD, and infrastructure-as-code.
Solid understanding of data models, identity and access management, and security best practices.
Ability to balance strategic architectural direction with day-to-day technical execution.
Excellent communication skills and ability to influence engineers and leaders alike.
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or related field (Master’s preferred).
Experience in EdTech or other multi-product SaaS environments is a strong plus.
You are a builder and a leader—someone who thrives on designing systems, guiding teams, and seeing complex ideas come to life.
RESIDENCY REQUIREMENT
Finalsite offers 100% fully remote employment opportunities, however, these opportunities are limited to permanent residents of the United States. Current residency, as well as continued residency, within the United States is required to obtain (and retain) employment with Finalsite.
DISCLOSURES
Finalsite is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. EEO is the Law. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please contact Finalsite's People Operations Team. Finalsite is committed to the full inclusion of all qualified individuals. As part of this commitment, Finalsite will ensure that persons with disabilities or special needs are provided a reasonable accommodation. Ensure your Finalsite job offer is legitimate and don't fall victim to fraud. Ask your recruiter for a phone call or other type of verbal communication and ensure all email correspondence is from a finalsite.com email address. For added security, where possible, apply through our company website at finalsite.com/jobs.