Software Architect

Job Description

About the role:

We are looking for a strong Software Architect to lead the definition of PayByPhone’s software architecture and technology roadmap. This is a major growth opportunity to build off PayByPhone’s current global platform technology alongside a talented and enthusiastic software development team.

Based in our Vancouver Head office, this role will work closely with PayByPhone’s CTO to execute on technical priorities aligned with the business. With a high level of technical ownership and accountability, this role is essential to the success of PayByPhone’s product and overall growth trajectory.

This role will act as a leader in the development organization through pragmatic architectural decisions, balancing long-term sustainable productivity with shorter-term delivery commitments. The Architect will e nsure that technical decisions are driven by business value , in alignment with commercial and product strategy in addition to helping create an environment in which teams are empowered to explore new approaches, ensuring that the whole organization learns from these teams’ experiences.

Here’s what you’ll do:

LEADERSHIP & COLLABORATION

• Work with development teams to assess the technical health of each major system, including factors such as maintainability, operability, scalability, and reliability.
• Work with teams to define and measure health metrics, define service-level objectives, and ensure that services meet SLOs
• Collaborate with teams to ensure that each team understands the roadmap and how their team fits in. Ensure that teams are informed about technical developments throughout PayByPhone. Work with managers to identify technical knowledge gaps, and to provide learning opportunities (e.g. via training)
• Work closely with the CTO and Senior Managers to align architecture with development team structure
• Harness team strengths alongside the PMO to schedule major technical initiatives such as legacy migrations into quarterly delivery plans
• Collaborate with the Data & Analytics team to define an architecture roadmap for the data and insights platform, and to incorporate this into the PBP architecture roadmap
• Team up with Cloud Operations to define cloud-native architecture patterns for use in new and modernized services

ARCHITECTURE & ROADMAPPING

• Lead the development teams in documenting the architecture of PayByPhone’s technology platform. Establish and communicate documentation standards. Ensure that architectural documentation is consistent, up-to-date, and widely shared
• Define architectural principles to guide technical decision-making. Examples: autonomous services enabling autonomous teams; consistent interfaces; incremental migration; avoiding vendor lock-in
• Define an architecture roadmap which documents a desired future state and a plan for reaching this state. The plan may include legacy replacement, technical renewal, and creation of greenfield systems. Work with stakeholders to ensure the architecture roadmap is aligned with business and product roadmaps. Communicate the roadmap and the value it delivers throughout the organization
• Lead the architecture group in defining a technology adoption plan for PBP, including: a process for evaluating technologies; technologies to adopt or consider; and technologies to deprecate or retire
• Collaborate with other VWFS (Volkswagen Financial Services) business units to architect cross-company technical integrations, in alignment with the strategic direction of PBP and VWFS

The must-haves:

• 10+ years industry experience
• People management experience is an asset
• Experience working with teams to incrementally improve architecture while continually delivering business value
• Experience working with teams to define and socialize effective technical practices and standards
• Experience defining, communicating, and facilitating the execution of a cross-team technical roadmap
• Experience successfully transitioning from legacy to modern technologies with minimal disruption to the business

The technical must-haves:

• Understands strategic domain-driven design while guiding domain experts
• Deep understanding of one of the major technology stacks used in the organization. Comfortable working with other major stacks; aware of the tradeoffs.
• Designs scalable, robust, and maintainable architectures
• Writes clear architectural documentation for technical and business audiences.
• Practical understanding of application security, compliance, and data privacy.
• Designs systems with testability in mind, at service boundaries and at the unit level
• Advocates DevOps values including flow, feedback, and automation
• Good understanding of CI/CD and observability
• Good understanding of SQL and NoSQL data stores
• A deep understanding of the production environment in which PayByPhone’s services operate
• Understands cloud-native architecture and deployment patterns, including infrastructure as code and container orchestration technologies

What makes you a great addition?

• You have solid technical experience. You know how to build & design great technology and are ready to hit the ground running from day one.
• You have a strong background in relevant development theory (e.g. distributed systems theory)
• You plan for the long haul and take initiative to make difficult decisions that align with business strategy
• You’re a natural mentor, and you care to ensure that teams are connected with the resources necessary to grow technically

About us:

Here at PayByPhone, our strength is in our people: a talented team behind a fantastic product. We are a creative, ambitious and driven multi-disciplinary group. We value learning and fun as we innovate to help millions of consumers pay for parking easily and securely. Our teams are growing; but not without you.

Together, we’re on a mission to simplify the world of mobility payments – one parking spot at a time. We’re one of the fastest-growing mobile payment companies in the world and process over 100 million parking, transit, and bike-share transactions a year in cities across North America, Europe and Australia. Our teams help millions of consumers easily and securely pay for parking and transportation without the hassles of waiting in line, carrying change, or risking costly fines.

Now, with a recent acquisition by Volkswagen Financial Services, our growth has a global focus and we can’t do it alone. We need the right people working with us to help reach our lofty goals and we want it to be you.

PayByPhone is committed to fostering a diverse and representative workforce and an inclusive work environment where all employees are treated equally. The Company does not tolerate discrimination or harassment in the workplace or talent attraction processes. Our commitment is to attract and acquire talent that are representative of the talent market, and are based on business needs, job requirements and individual qualifications.