Principal Architect

ABOUT UNCHAINED

Unchained offers a suite of bitcoin financial services built on top of a unique collaborative custody model. These include: buying and selling bitcoin directly to and from cold storage, bitcoin retirement accounts, bitcoin-backed loans, concierge services to educate clients on best security practices, and cold storage solutions for institutions and other businesses. 

POSITION OVERVIEW

As our Principal Architect, you’ll be at the center of some of the most important technical decisions we make—shaping the systems, tools, and strategies that power our products and teams. This is a high-impact leadership role where deep technical expertise meets big-picture thinking.

You won’t just maintain architecture—you’ll define it. You’ll lead the design of scalable, modern systems, set organization-wide engineering standards, and help teams navigate complexity with clarity and confidence. From guiding senior engineers to partnering with executives on long-term strategy, your work will directly influence how we build, grow, and scale.

If you’re excited by the challenge of solving big technical problems, mentoring top-tier talent, and building systems that last, this is your opportunity to lead at the highest level.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

Architecture & Design

• Define and maintain enterprise-wide architecture standards, patterns, and best practices
• Lead the design of complex, scalable systems and technology solutions
• Evaluate and recommend technology stacks, frameworks, and third-party solutions
• Ensure architectural consistency across multiple projects and teams
• Conduct architecture reviews and provide technical guidance on critical decisions

Technical Leadership

• Collaborate with engineering leaders to translate business requirements into technical solutions
• Mentor and develop senior and staff engineers across the organization
• Contribute to engineering review cycles by providing feedback and input on the performance, growth, and technical development of software engineers
• Lead cross-functional technical discussions and drive consensus on architectural approaches
• Stay current with emerging technologies and assess their potential impact on the organization
• Champion engineering excellence through code quality, testing practices, and documentation standards

Strategic Planning

• Partner with product and business stakeholders to understand long-term technology needs
• Develop technical roadmaps that support business growth and scalability requirements
• Assess technical debt and create strategies for modernization and optimization
• Lead proof-of-concept initiatives for new technologies or approaches
• Contribute to technology budget planning and resource allocation decisions

Collaboration & Communication

• Present architectural designs and recommendations to executive leadership
• Facilitate technical workshops and architecture review sessions
• Work closely with Security, DevOps, and Infrastructure teams on system requirements
• Document architectural decisions, patterns, and guidelines for the engineering organization

WHO YOU ARE

• You have a Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field
• You have 15+ years of software engineering experience with 5+ years in architecture roles
• You have deep expertise in multiple programming languages, frameworks, and technology stacks
• You are experienced in architecting large-scale distributed systems and guiding them from concept to production
• You have a strong understanding of micro-services and related architectures
• You have a strong understanding of cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP), Kubernetes and microservices architectures
• You are experienced with contributing to open source projects
• You are experienced with data architecture, API design, integration patterns, System of Systems design, and building cloud-native 12-factor applications
• You are experienced with most if not all of our stack: Python (Flask, SQLAlchemy/alembic, pytest), Celery, PostgreSQL, Pydantic / OpenAPI, Redis, NodeJS, Javascript/Typescript, React, Git and modern CI/CD workflows
• You have expertise in security best practices and compliance frameworks, ensuring enterprise architectures are resilient, auditable, and aligned with organizational risk and governance models.
• You live in the United States

Even Better

• You have experience in cryptography, financial services, banking, or bitcoin security infrastructure
• You have professional architecture certifications (TOGAF, AWS Solutions Architect, etc.)
• You have a track record of leading technical transformations or migrations
• You have experience with DevOps practices, CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure as code
• You have a strong background in performance optimization and scalability engineering
• You have experience working in the Bitcoin space

WHAT WE OFFER

• Company paid medical, dental, and vision coverage
• 401k with employer match 
• Employee stock options
• Unlimited PTO
• Training & development opportunities
• Remote work flexibility

P.S. Want to really impress us? Include a (non-AI generated) cover letter telling us why you’re the perfect fit. It’s totally optional—but we’ve got a soft spot for a great cover letter.