[Remote] Distinguished Software Architect Customer Experience

Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Self Financial is a venture-backed, high-growth FinTech company focused on increasing economic inclusion and financial resilience. The Distinguished Software Architect will shape the architectural vision for the company's client applications and BFF microservices, ensuring they are resilient, secure, and scalable while influencing backend decisions and mentoring other engineers across the organization. Responsibilities • Define and champion the enterprise front-end architecture strategy across client platforms and BFF microservices. Ensure we meet our business objectives through implementations that support maintainability, reliability, and scalability • Lead and deliver complex, business-critical, cross-team initiatives, influencing both technical and organizational outcomes • Establish standards in the client applications around design library, shared components, graphQL, web-analytics, experimentation, state management, and client observability • Ensure architectural coherence between BFF microservices and core backend microservices. Establish clear delineations of responsibilities between systems to support decoupled interfaces that allow for independent decoupled development • Map and evolve our microservice architecture using Domain-Driven Design (DDD) principles, clarifying ownership and reducing coupling across front-end, BFF, and core backend systems • Collaborate across engineering, product, DevOps, security, and data to define and govern architecture standards spanning APIs, data contracts, security, performance, observability, and deployment practices • Lead and execute complex, business-critical, cross-team initiatives requiring enterprise-grade alignment across client, product, and platform systems • Guide engineering direction through influence, collaboration, and deep technical expertise rather than formal authority • Lead the evolution of our front-end technology stack (e.g., React, TypeScript, Next.js or similar), ensuring maintainability, scalability, and a strong developer experience • Architect scalable design systems and shared component libraries that enable consistency, accessibility (WCAG), and rapid product delivery across teams • Help define and standardize a design library that supports a cohesive look and feel for components throughout our client applications • Define standards for client application performance optimization (Core Web Vitals, bundle strategy, rendering patterns such as SSR/SSG/CSR), resilience, and client-side monitoring • Establish secure client architecture standards, including authentication flows (OAuth/OIDC), session management, and protection against common vulnerabilities (XSS, CSRF, etc.) • Define testing and CI/CD strategies for front-end platform systems, including automated quality gates, preview environments, and release governance • Partner with platform, data, and core backend teams to implement clean, versioned service interfaces that enable seamless integration with client applications • Advocate for scalable architectural patterns across the full stack, ensuring front-end and core backend decisions are aligned and made with the future in mind • Align executives, product leaders, design leadership, and engineering managers around architectural standards and long-term client platform strategy • Serve as a trusted technical advisor to senior executives, influencing investment decisions and long-range planning for customer-facing systems and enterprise platforms • Facilitate architecture forums, guilds, and trainings that promote shared learning and cross-domain consistency • Champion architectural excellence in large-scale programs, ensuring both enterprise integrity and exceptional customer experience • Act as a thought leader and mentor to Principal Engineers, Senior Architects, and Staff Engineers across both front-end and backend domains • Foster a culture of technical excellence, accessibility, performance awareness, and architectural rigor • Identify and evaluate emerging front-end technologies, frameworks, and industry trends while maintaining disciplined governance standards • Establish scalable architectural governance practices that balance innovation with enterprise stability and risk management Skills • 12+ years of progressive experience in software architecture and system design, with demonstrated impact across multiple domains and large-scale distributed systems • Deep expertise in Domain-Driven Design (DDD), microservice architecture, and API-driven ecosystems; proven ability to decompose and modernize complex legacy systems • Experience with python and/or javascript microservices • Experience with postgres and AWS • Experience with web and app frameworks like react and react native • Broad, hands-on knowledge across the modern technology stack - covering cloud-native platforms, data infrastructure, event-driven systems, CI/CD pipelines, and observability tooling • Proven success in leading and delivering complex, business-critical, cross-team initiatives, influencing both technical and organizational outcomes • Demonstrated success in defining and governing architecture standards and frameworks at an enterprise scale • Exceptional stakeholder management and communication skills, with the ability to influence technical direction at the executive level • Proven leadership in building technical alignment across multiple teams and mentoring senior engineers and architects • A strategic mindset with the ability to balance technical rigor with business outcomes • Strong track record of translating architectural vision into measurable engineering and business results Benefits • Company equity in the form of Stock Options • Performance-based bonuses • Generous employer-paid health, vision and dental insurance coverage • Flexible vacation policy • Educational assistance • Free gym membership • Casual dress code • Team building events and activities • Remote work arrangements/ flexible work schedule • Paid parental leave Company Overview • About Self Financial Self Financial is a credit-building platform that works to increase economic inclusion and financial resilience through easy-to-use products that make building credit accessible. It was founded in 2015, and is headquartered in Austin, Texas, USA, with a workforce of 201-500 employees. Its website is https://www.self.inc. Apply tot his job Apply To this Job