Software Architect at Actian - Cloud SaaS Career Growth in Columbus
Career & Market Insight
Career Level & Market Positioning: This is a senior individual-contributor role (Software Architect / Principal Engineer level), sitting above Staff Engineer and below VP/CTO. In the UK market, Software Architects at established SaaS companies typically earn £85,000–£130,000. With no salary disclosed, candidates should benchmark against this range and negotiate accordingly.
Skills You'll Develop: This role sharpens high-demand, hard-to-replicate skills:
- Multi-tenant cloud platform design (AWS/Azure/GCP) — critical for any SaaS company
- FinOps / cloud cost optimization using Kubernetes — increasingly valued as companies tighten budgets
- Platform engineering and internal developer tooling — a fast-growing discipline
- Security-by-design architecture — essential with growing compliance requirements
Company & Culture Signals: Actian is an established data management company (not an early-stage startup), which suggests relative stability. The description emphasizes eliminating bottlenecks and enabling developer velocity — a sign of a mature engineering culture that values enablement over gatekeeping. The architecture team being "side-by-side" with development is a green flag for collaborative culture.
Green Flags: Clear scope of impact, explicit developer-experience focus, fast-growing data management space.
Watch Out For: The role involves modernizing legacy systems alongside greenfield work — this can be rewarding but also slow-moving. The vague compensation section ("Compensation" heading with no content) is a minor red flag; push for specifics early in the process.
Career Trajectory: This role is a strong stepping stone toward VP of Engineering, CTO, or a consulting/advisory career in cloud architecture.
The architecture team at Actian works side-by-side with the development team. We are looking for a Software Architect to design the structure of our cloud platform and make it efficient, easy to extend, maintain and operate.
We need a proactive professional who ensures the product meets three key conditions: it must be stable (it doesn't crash when failures happen), efficient (it doesn't skyrocket cloud costs), and easy to use for our own developers. Your goal is to eliminate technical complexity and set the rules of the game so developers can ship new features fast and without errors.
Core Responsibilities:
- Cloud Platform Design: Design and improve the cloud structure (AWS, Azure, or GCP) of our data platform, ensuring it works well for many clients at the same time.
- Stability & Fault Tolerance: Build a system ready for failures, capable of recovering automatically and keeping things running if there are issues in production.
- Making Life Easy for Developers: Create clear APIs, templates, and common tools so internal developers can write code faster and with fewer mistakes.
- Cloud Cost Control: Monitor and optimize the use of cloud servers and tools (like Kubernetes) to keep the product cost-effective to run.
- Improving Legacy Code: Identify parts of the system that have become outdated and plan how to improve them step-by-step without stopping daily work.
- Technical Guidance & Standards: Review team designs and define the company's technical standards, helping to resolve questions without becoming a bottleneck.
- Security by Design: Ensure the platform's structure inherently protects customer data and complies with security rules from the very beginning.
- System Monitoring: Decide how we measure platform performance so that if something fails, we know exactly what happened within a few minutes.
- Testing New Technologies: Build quick prototypes and test new tools before deciding whether to adopt them company-wide.
Qualifications & Profile:
- Technical Background: Proven experience as a Software Architect or Principal Engineer working with cloud SaaS products and systems handling large volumes of data.
- Key Tools: Real-world experience with microservices, containers (Docker, Kubernetes), and messaging systems.
- Proactive Mindset: You don't wait to be told what to do; you look for where the system might fail or where we are overspending, and you propose solutions.
- Developer-Focused: You care about your fellow developers working comfortably and without frustrations using the tools you design.
- Communication: Excellent English skills (written and spoken) to explain complex technical problems simply to both developers and executives.
What We Offer:
- The chance to be part of an innovative, fast-growing company making a significant impact in the data management space.
- Collaboration with a passionate and diverse team.
- Competitive salary and benefits package.
- Flexible work arrangements (remote or hybrid).
- Opportunities for professional growth and development.
Why Join Us? At Actian, we are passionate about innovation and teamwork. This role is perfect for someone who thrives in a dynamic environment, loves creating an efficient and welcoming workspace, and enjoys working closely with a talented team.
Interested? We'd love to hear from you! Let's discuss how you can contribute to our success while growing your career with us.
We value diversity at our company. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, or any other applicable legally protected characteristics in the location in which the candidate is applying.