Vice President of Architecture

Accela is seeking a Vice President of Architecture to serve as a senior technology leader responsible for defining and driving the company’s technology strategy, application architecture, and cloud infrastructure architecture.  

This role is intended for a developer at heart—someone who fully understands the modern cloud stack end-to-end and has successfully led application development, DevSecOps, and infrastructure teams. The VP of Architecture brings both hands-on technical depth and executive level leadership, enabling them to guide teams, influence outcomes, and make durable architecture decisions that support Accela’s products and platforms.  

This leader will work closely with the CTO and engineering leadership to ensure Accela’s technological choices drive velocity, quality, scalability, and security, while remaining aligned with business and customer needs. 

• Define and evolve application, platform, and infrastructure architecture within a cloud-native SaaS environment
• Establish architectural principles, standards, and reference models that guide teams while preserving appropriate flexibility
• Lead architecture decisions for major initiatives, products, and platforms
• Balance near-term delivery needs with long-term sustainability and scalability

• Own and deeply understand the full cloud stack, including:
  • Cloud infrastructure and networking (IaaS / PaaS)
  • Container platforms and orchestration
  • Application architecture (APIs, microservices, distributed systems)
  • CI/CD pipelines, DevSecOps, observability, and reliability engineering
• Champion pragmatic, cloud-native approaches that improve resilience, scalability, and developer productivity
• Embed security and regulatory requirements into architectural designs in partnership with Security and Compliance

• Provide technical leadership across product, engineering, and professional services teams
• Mentor architects, principal engineers, and senior technical leaders
• Lead through influence—driving clarity, alignment, and technical direction across teams
• Step in to resolve complex or high-risk technical challenges

• Promote shared platforms, reusable frameworks, and standardized tooling to enhance speed and quality
• Reduce duplication and fragmentation through thoughtful architectural design
• Strengthen engineering practices that scale teams while maintaining craftsmanship
• Deploy AI-powered solutions or agentic AI frameworks to accelerate engineering velocity and automate architectural insights
• Implement AI capabilities within SaaS products in alignment with business strategy and customer value

• Serve as a trusted technical advisor to executive leadership
• Translate complex technical concepts for technical and non-technical audiences
• Represent platform and architectural considerations in company-level planning
• Build and scale a high-performing architecture organization
• Foster a culture of security, empowerment, and ownership across the company
• Partner with executive leadership to define and advance the security strategy and roadmap

• Up to 15–20% travel for executive meetings, customer engagements, industry conferences, and critical incident response 

• 12+ years of progressive experience in software engineering and architecture leadership
• Proven executive-level leadership in cloud-native SaaS environments
• Deep hands-on expertise across modern cloud infrastructure, distributed systems, APIs, container orchestration, and DevSecOps
• Demonstrated success leading large-scale architecture decisions and platform modernization efforts
• Experience embedding security and compliance into system design
• Track record of mentoring senior technical leaders and influencing cross-functional teams
• Experience deploying AI/ML or agentic AI frameworks within SaaS environments
• Strong executive communication skills 

• Experience in GovTech or highly regulated industries
• Background scaling architecture teams in mid-market or growth-stage SaaS organizations
• Demonstrated success improving engineering velocity through platform standardization and AI enablement
• Experience presenting at industry conferences or serving as a technical spokesperson
• Familiarity with enterprise customer environments and large-scale platform integrations

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