Software Architect

What You'll Do:

We are looking for a Principal Engineer with deep expertise in designing scalable SaaS platforms, complex system integrations, and AI/rules-driven regulatory systems, along with experience building global, cloud-native compliance and licensing platforms. This role offers the opportunity to define and evolve systems that enable digital trade across 100+ countries, operate across multiple cloud providers, and scale to support rapid, sustained growth. You will play a critical role in shaping the architecture that powers global registrations, licensing, and ongoing compliance, balancing automation, accuracy, and operational excellence.

 

As a Principal Engineer, you will set the technical vision and architectural standards for secure, scalable, and future-ready systems. You will collaborate closely with product, engineering, data, and operations leaders to translate business strategy into robust platform capabilities. This role reports to the VP of Engineering.

What Your Responsibilities Will Be:

• Define and evolve the architecture for a cloud-agnostic, jurisdiction-aware platform that supports global registration, licensing, and compliance services.
• Architect rules engines and decision systems that interpret complex, frequently changing regulatory requirements across countries, states, and local authorities.
• Design workflow and case-management architectures that support long-running, stateful compliance processes involving customers, internal teams, and external agencies.
• Establish scalable data models and governance strategies for highly variable regulatory and licensing data.
• Design systems that balance automation with human-in-the-loop execution, ensuring auditability, traceability, and regulatory defensibility.
• Partner with product and design teams to embed compliance intelligence into customer journeys (e.g., determining where customers need to register or obtain licenses).
• Set and enforce architectural standards for performance, reliability, security, observability, and operational excellence.
• Provide hands-on technical leadership through design reviews, code reviews, and architectural guidance across multiple teams.
• Identify and mitigate architectural risks, scalability challenges, and system performance bottlenecks.
• Recommend and evaluate new technologies, frameworks, and patterns to improve engineering outcomes.
• Create and maintain clear architectural documentation, diagrams, and technical specifications.
• Promote a culture of innovation, experimentation, and continuous improvement.

AI Leadership Responsibilities

• Lead the design of AI- and agent-driven solutions for regulatory interpretation, eligibility determination, document intelligence, and compliance lifecycle automation.
• Define architectural patterns for AI-assisted decisioning, explainability, and regulatory audit readiness.
• Establish coding, security, and governance standards for the responsible use of LLMs, agents, and AI tooling in compliance-critical workflows.
• Mentor engineering teams on applying AI to improve accuracy, efficiency, and scalability across the platform.

What You'll Need to be Successful:

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science.
• 15+ years of software engineering experience, including full-stack development.
• Proven experience designing and scaling distributed, cloud-native systems.
• Strong command of software architecture patterns and system design best practices.
• Hands-on experience with AWS, CI/CD pipelines, and DevOps tooling (e.g., Terraform, Docker, ECS).
• Experience migrating monolithic systems to microservices or serverless architectures.
• Experience with Enterprise Integration Patterns and complex system integrations.
• Experience designing rules-based or policy-driven systems (e.g., compliance, eligibility, pricing, entitlements).
• Experience with workflow orchestration engines, state machines, or BPM-style systems.
• Experience building platforms with strong auditability, traceability, and regulatory requirements.
• Familiarity with Agile methodologies, including TDD and BDD.
• Strong communication and leadership skills, with the ability to influence across teams and functions.

Avalara is an AI-first Company:

AI is embedded in our workflows, decision-making, and products.  Success here requires embracing AI as an essential capability.

• You’ll bring experience using AI and AI-related technologies, ready to thrive here.

• You’ll apply AI every day to business challenges - improving efficiency, contributing solutions, and driving results for your team, our company, and our customers.

• You’ll grow with AI by staying curious about new trends and best practices, and by sharing what you learn so others can benefit too.

How We'll Take Care of You:

Total Rewards 

In addition to a great compensation package, paid time off, and paid parental leave, many Avalara employees are eligible for bonuses. 

 

Health & Wellness 
Benefits vary by location but generally include private medical, life, and disability insurance. 

 

Inclusive culture and diversity 
Avalara strongly supports diversity, equity, and inclusion, and is committed to integrating them into our business practices and our organizational culture. We also have a total of 8 employee-run resource groups, each with senior leadership and exec sponsorship. 

 

 

What You Need To Know About Avalara:

We’re defining the relationship between tax and tech.

 

We’ve already built an industry-leading cloud compliance platform, processing over 54 billion customer API calls and over 6.6 million tax returns a year. Our growth is real - we're a billion dollar business - and we’re not slowing down until we’ve achieved our mission - to be part of every transaction in the world.

 

We’re bright, innovative, and disruptive, like the orange we love to wear. It captures our quirky spirit and optimistic mindset. It shows off the culture we’ve designed, that empowers our people to win. We’ve been different from day one. Join us, and your career will be too.

 

We’re An Equal Opportunity Employer

Supporting diversity and inclusion is a cornerstone of our company — we don’t want people to fit into our culture, but to enrich it. All qualified candidates will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, age, gender, national orientation, disability, sexual orientation, US Veteran status, or any other factor protected by law. If you require any reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, please let us know.