Back-End Architect

About Toptal

Toptal is a global network of top freelance talent in business, design, and technology that enables companies to scale their teams, on-demand. With $200+ million in annual revenue and over 40% year-over-year growth, Toptal is the world’s largest fully remote company.

We take the best elements of virtual teams and combine them with a support structure that encourages innovation, social interaction, and fun. We see no borders, move at a fast pace, and are never afraid to break the mold.

Position Description

As a Back-end Architect at Toptal, you will help us scale for our continued growth as a game-changing, industry-defining company shaping the future of work. You will be working to keep our software technology aligned with the business’s strategic vision. You will work across multiple engineering teams to ensure the development of scalable products and the technical success of the teams.

This is a remote position that can be done from anywhere. Due to the remote nature of this role, we are unable to provide visa sponsorship. Resumes and communication must be submitted in English.

Responsibilities:

You will work with the Chief Software Architect and an Engineering Manager owning the full-cycle of technical solutions across multiple Toptal products to build a robust unified technical vision and toolset. You will work with multiple engineering teams to find and analyze present and anticipated future technical challenges with their projects or products. You will build engineering research groups and facilitate work in them to collaboratively design solutions to those challenges. You will work in an entirely distributed company and help define an entirely new space while learning about how an organization scales on a hyper-growth trajectory.

Practical responsibilities involve:

• In collaboration with the Chief Architect, discuss, formulate, and document an architecture vision and approaches in all Toptal software products.
• Detail out and refine higher-level architecture decisions into a lower-level design.
• Communicate the technical vision to the engineering teams. Overlook and support the work of the teams to ensure that the architecture decisions are being executed and the teams are following coding standards and architecture guidelines.
• Lead implementation of technical and infrastructure initiatives to support architecture decisions.
• Consult the engineering team with ongoing projects. Help them align solutions with the Toptal architecture vision and industry best practices. Make software design (application-level) decisions with the team, take software architecture topics for further consideration and unification.
• Ensure technical knowledge sharing between development teams on related or similar projects.
• Build and lead research groups of senior and principal engineers to define and decide development technology and platform, define development standards, tools, processes, etc.
• Proactively identify technical debt and product areas that require attention or improvement at the architecture level.
• Help develop technical skills of the engineers and support their career growth.
• Constantly develop yourself in technology advancements, research new approaches, tools, and best practices in the software architecture and design space.
• Suggest improvements to our technology stack to optimize it for strategic growth and the competitive advantage of Toptal.

In the first week, expect to:

• Meet the team and the mentors that will guide you during the onboarding.
• Get familiar with our product portfolio and technical stack.
• Review Toptal engineering documentation and get ready to be involved in the working process.

In the first month, expect to:

• Develop a deeper understanding of our technology, processes, and technical vision.
• Get hands-on with the codebase to get an insider view of the product.
• Meet and establish relationships with the engineering teams in your domain.
• Participate in ongoing research and exploration projects.

In the first three months, expect to:

• Build productive collaboration with the architects and the engineering teams.
• Identify and prioritize improvement points in the team domains.
• Take a lead in several technology exploration projects.
• Provide architecture support to ongoing product development in multiple teams.

In the first six months, expect to:

• Confidently resolve technical blockers in the application development.
• Make significant contributions to the technology stack and documentation.
• Help mentoring engineers in their career progression.
• Regularly communicate architecture vision to the engineering teams.

In the first year, expect to:

• Build mature forward-thinking architecture in your domain.
• Create a process for refining existing solutions from the architecture perspective.
• Take an active part in formulating and refining the technical vision.
• Take a lead role in the technical mentorship and interview strategy of back-end engineers.

Requirements:

• Previous experience working with multiple engineering teams.
• Experience in facilitating even the most heated discussions, ability to resolve them, and take responsibility for the decisions.
• Track record of delivering successful solutions as a leader.
• Broad technical knowledge and curiosity. Experience with different languages and web frameworks. Knowledge of Ruby, Elixir, JavaScript, in particular, is a plus.
• 5+ years of web development experience — preference is given to candidates who have maintained or architected large scale applications.
• Clear understanding of software design patterns and principles.
• Experience with a variety of web application designs, including monolithic and SOA, understanding of service breakdown and communication principles.
• Experience guiding the continuous improvement of processes and technology.
• Strong sense of ownership. You take responsibility for the success of the engineering teams.
• Commitment to quality. You take pride in everything you deliver as a reflection of yourself.
• Abstract thinking while paying attention to meaningful details at the same time.
• Ability to take smart risks and champion new ideas.
• Ability to communicate clearly and constantly with teams in writing and on video calls.
• Be a world-class individual contributor. You will not be here just to tell other people what to do. The only way we lead in Toptal is by example.