Principal System Architect

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in Nebraska.

📋 Description

• Establish and uphold the target architecture, system boundaries, data models, integration patterns, and technical roadmap for connected products and cloud platforms.

• Lead architecture evaluations for services, APIs, data pipelines, databases, identity, applications, deployment patterns, and device-to-cloud communication.

• Streamline the platform by pinpointing unnecessary coupling, duplicate processing, fragile patterns, and services that should be consolidated, redesigned, or retired.

• Steer platform modernization and the adoption of managed cloud services based on product requirements, customer continuity, cost considerations, portability, security, reliability, and operational burden.

• Preserve architecture decisions and documentation to ensure LI-COR maintains the knowledge, access, data portability, and technical control necessary for future decisions.

• Direct how devices generate data and how cloud services receive, process, store, and present it, covering schemas, batching, retries, deduplication, derived data, and retention.

• Collaborate with Firmware and Hardware Engineering to identify connectivity, scalability, reliability, support, and cost implications early in the product development lifecycle.

• Assess new products and sensor integrations for their downstream impacts on cloud services, storage, analytics, applications, and cost-to-serve.

• Establish end-to-end observability and nonfunctional requirements for availability, performance, security, privacy, scalability, recovery, and supportability.

• Work in partnership with Engineering, IT, and DevOps on CI/CD, infrastructure as code, release architecture, incident response, disaster recovery, vulnerability remediation, and operational readiness.

• Provide technical leadership during major incidents and recurring performance or connectivity challenges, driving root cause analysis and sustainable improvements.

• Ensure platform designs comply with applicable validation, data separation, retention, privacy, auditability, and customer contractual obligations.

• Act as a technical partner to the Software and Cloud leader and serve as an architecture authority across engineering, product, science, quality, and operations.

• Remain actively involved in backend design and implementation, prototypes, technical investigations, code reviews, and the resolution of high-risk production issues.

• Convert product intent into technically comprehensive approaches and communicate tradeoffs, risks, costs, and recommendations to technical teams and business leaders.

• Mentor engineers and enhance architectural capabilities across employees and partners.

• Function as LI-COR's technical counterpart with cloud, data, connectivity, and engineering partners.

• Perform other job-related duties as assigned.

⛳️ Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent demonstrated experience.

• Typically 12 or more years of experience in software and cloud engineering, including significant experience as a system, solution, platform, or principal architect for production systems.

• Proven architecture ownership for a commercial IoT, connected device, industrial, scientific, telemetry, or other high-volume data platform.

• Extensive experience with AWS or a comparable public cloud, encompassing compute, containers, networking, databases, storage, identity and access, observability, security, resiliency, and infrastructure as code.

• Strong backend engineering and API design capabilities, with hands-on expertise in at least one modern backend programming language.

• Familiarity with event-driven and distributed systems, device ingestion, message delivery, high-volume time series data, data modeling, and data lifecycle management.

• Experience with CI/CD, automated testing, observability, incident response, and secure software delivery at production scale.

• Ability to relate architecture decisions to delivery efforts, operational costs, product economics, and customer impact.

• Excellent communication skills, technical judgment, systems thinking, and the capability to influence across teams and external partners.

• Proficient oral and written communication skills in English.

• A Master’s degree is preferred.

• Preferred: architecture experience spanning embedded devices or firmware, cellular or gateway connectivity, cloud ingestion, web or mobile applications, and analytics.

• Preferred: experience with regulated, validated, or quality-controlled systems that require data access, retention, privacy, auditability, and change control.

• Preferred: involvement in platform modernization, microservice simplification, globally distributed teams, or blended employee and contractor delivery models.

• Preferred: professional-level cloud certification or equivalent practical expertise.

🏝️ Benefits

• Periodic travel to LI-COR locations, partner sites, or team working sessions may be required.