Lead Software Architect (PHP)
- Location
- Romania
- Posted
- Reference
- AO121
- Employer
- Technology Staffing Group SA
Lead Software Architect | 7+ years | [Location / Remote] | Product Engineering | PHP/Symfony, APIs, React & React Native; own and evolve the end-to-end architecture of scalable, secure and maintainable web and mobile products.
About the role
This is a hands-on technical leadership role for an experienced software architect who can bring architectural clarity across backend services, APIs, web applications and mobile platforms.
You will own and evolve the application architecture while working closely with Engineering Leads, engineers, Product, QA, Infrastructure and DevOps. The role combines high-level architectural ownership with the ability to dive deeply into system design, review critical implementations, challenge technical decisions and guide teams towards pragmatic, sustainable solutions.
Responsibilities
Technical leadership and architecture
• Own and evolve the end-to-end architecture across backend services, APIs, web applications and mobile platforms.
• Define and maintain architectural principles, patterns, technical standards and decision-making practices that enable scalable, secure and maintainable software.
• Act as the primary architecture reference point for Engineering Leads and engineers, providing direction on complex technical design decisions and trade-offs.
• Lead architecture reviews for major features, integrations, platform changes and cross-team initiatives.
• Identify technical debt, architectural risks and modernization opportunities, then help define realistic improvement plans.
• Ensure that architectural decisions support both immediate product needs and the long-term evolution of the platform.
• Review critical implementations and technical designs where architectural input is required.
• Mentor engineers and technical leads, helping strengthen system-design, architecture and technical decision-making capabilities across Engineering.
Engineering excellence and operations
- Promote engineering best practices across teams, including code quality, testing, security, performance, maintainability and documentation.
- Partner with Infrastructure and DevOps teams to shape cloud-native application architecture, deployment patterns, CI/CD practices and production-readiness standards.
- Ensure observability, reliability, resilience and operational ownership are embedded into architectural decisions from the outset.
- Support incident analysis for significant production issues and convert findings into durable architectural, engineering or operational improvements.
- Help establish practical standards around service boundaries, API design, database usage, integration patterns and system reliability.
- Balance technical quality with pragmatism, avoiding both unnecessary complexity and short-term decisions that create unsustainable long-term costs.
Collaboration and delivery
- Work closely with Engineering Leads, Product, QA, Infrastructure and DevOps to translate product and business requirements into sustainable technical solutions.
- Create alignment across teams without removing their ownership, autonomy or ability to move quickly.
- Contribute to technical roadmap planning, investment decisions and prioritization together with the CTO and Product stakeholders.
- Coordinate architectural initiatives that span multiple teams, services, platforms or product areas.
- Clearly communicate architectural decisions, risks, dependencies and trade-offs to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Support teams in making informed delivery decisions where technical feasibility, time-to-market, reliability and maintainability need to be balanced.
Experience
- At least 7 years of professional software engineering experience, including strong experience in software architecture, technical leadership or senior engineering responsibility.
- Proven experience designing and evolving backend systems, APIs and service-oriented application architectures in production environments.
- Experience guiding engineers and technical leads through complex system-design decisions, architectural trade-offs and cross-team dependencies.
- Demonstrated ability to establish technical standards and improve engineering practices across multiple teams or product areas.
- Experience working in environments where reliability, maintainability, scalability and production operations are important.
- Proven ability to identify technical debt and modernization opportunities, and translate them into realistic, prioritized improvement initiatives.
- Experience mentoring engineers and raising the overall technical capability of a software engineering organisation.
- Comfortable operating between strategic technical direction and hands-on engagement with designs, code reviews and implementation decisions.
Technical fluency
- Strong expertise in backend architecture, service design and API design.
- Strong experience with PHP and Symfony, or comparable backend technologies and frameworks.
- Solid understanding of end-to-end application architecture across backend services, APIs, web applications and mobile applications.
- Good working knowledge of modern frontend architecture, ideally including React and React Native. You will not be expected to build frontend features day-to-day, but should be comfortable reviewing and guiding frontend and mobile architectural decisions.
- Experience working with SQL databases and designing reliable data-access, integration and persistence patterns.
- Practical experience with modern production environments, including Docker, Kubernetes and CI/CD pipelines.
- Good understanding of cloud-native architectural principles, deployment practices and operational concerns.
- Experience with observability and production monitoring tools such as Sentry, Datadog or similar platforms.
- Strong understanding of code quality, automated testing, application security, performance and reliability practices.
Ways of working
- Able to articulate and defend technical positions with senior engineers, Engineering Leads, Product stakeholders and executive leadership.
- Pragmatic in decision-making: able to protect architectural quality while enabling teams to deliver meaningful product outcomes.
- Collaborative and influential, with the ability to create alignment without relying solely on formal authority.
- Comfortable working across multiple disciplines, including backend, frontend, mobile, QA, Product, Infrastructure and DevOps.
- Able to explain complex technical topics, risks and trade-offs clearly to non-technical stakeholders.
- Structured and detail-oriented, while remaining focused on the outcomes that matter most.
- Comfortable working in evolving product environments, where architectural direction must be clear but adaptable.
- Committed to helping teams succeed through mentorship, standards, thoughtful technical challenge and practical support.
Qualifications
- 7+ years of software engineering experience, including architecture or technical leadership responsibility.
- Strong background in backend architecture and API design, ideally in PHP/Symfony-based environments.
- Experience working across web and mobile product ecosystems.
- Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD, SQL databases and production observability tooling.
- Strong English communication skills, written and spoken.
- A pragmatic mindset, high standards for software quality and a genuine interest in helping engineering teams build better systems.
Your data
By submitting your resume, you agree to the retention and use of your personal data for recruitment purposes, including sharing with our clients in the context of your application. The identity and sector of the client will be disclosed to shortlisted candidates ahead of interview.