Principal Architect (f/m/d)

Orbem is an impact-driven deep-tech scale up from Munich, Germany. We develop fast, accurate, and accessible imaging solutions that provide access to otherwise unattainable sources of knowledge.

We seek to make a difference – and develop solutions to sustainably feed the world, accelerate the transition to a green economy, and transform disease detection.

Join us on our mission to unleash AI-powered imaging for everything and everyone.

Principal of Architecture (f/m/d)

• Start date: As soon as possible

• Yearly Salary: €120,000 - €135,000 (fixed range, annual gross)

• Equity: €120,000 - €180,000 in company shares

• Benefits: Up to €5,000 annually

• Work model: Full-time, hybrid (based in Munich)

Your Role

As a Principal of Architecture, you will be the vital bridge uniting our hardware, software, and cloud infrastructure into a single, cohesive system, championing radical simplicity, translating complexity into elegant and scalable technical implementations. Your vision will ensure our architecture evolves proactively rather than accidentally, laying down the path for revolutionary industrial MRI platforms.

Your day-to-day

This role is dynamic and influential and strongly connected to the reality of our multidisciplinary teams, transcending beyond software architectural design. As such, your responsibilities include:

Connecting and aligning (~40%)

• Facilitate discussions across teams and areas of expertise to guide the search for simple technical solutions that deliver business value in the short and long term, collaborating with engineers, scientists, product managers, and technical program managers.

• Pitch strategic needs for the company and their impact on our technology landscape, ensuring business-technical alignment and convergence towards our company's purpose.

• Steward our architectural principles, guiding architectural reviews across teams and constantly asking why the architectural decisions made maximize the value delivered by our products today and tomorrow.

Designing and defining (~40%)

• Drive architectural decisions leading design, development, and evolution of our technical solutions to provide business value based on robustness, simplicity, and scalability, defining what to standardize and what to customize

• Create system documentation to provide architectural clarity across teams, keeping at a high level, but exhaustive, including system components and flow diagrams that will guide product evolution

• Proactive research and prototyping to stay abreast of industry trends, but also guide new designs through experimentation, or understand undesirable, highly complex behaviours of our systems through modeling. 

Enabling and mentoring (~20%)

• Code review of highly complex, business-critical merge requests that include architectural changes or design patterns with long-term implications for our products.

• Knowledge sharing deepens the know-how about the architectural principles of the company.

• Mentoring and coaching cultivate a culture of excellence and innovation guided by value creation across teams.

Your experiences and skills

Fit to our values

• We own every challenge: we enjoy complexity and thrive under uncertainty.

• We strive for better: we seize any opportunity for growth and challenge the status quo. We are constantly learning and improving.

• We imagine new frontiers: we think beyond “doable” and “reasonable”. We design a sustainable and healthy future together.
  

Experience and skills

Technical

• Proven track record of designing, implementing, and evolving complex, distributed systems that have successfully shipped and operated in production environments for multiple years.

• Proven expertise in hardware and software compliance and data protection across markets.

• Success in identifying and implementing shared platform services that serve multiple teams or products, reducing duplication and promoting efficiency.

• Demonstrable experience integrating software with physical hardware systems (e.g., embedded systems, IoT/IIoT), especially crucial for our industrial MRI products.

• Adept at transforming complex requirements into structured, sustainable solutions with a practical and value-focused approach.

• Strong background in domain-driven design, microservices architecture, event-driven systems, and data management platforms.

• A track record of proactively managing technical debt and making strategic decisions to prevent future architectural bottlenecks.

Leadership

• An engaged, collaborative team leader with excellent communication skills, capable of disagreeing and committing. 

• Proven cross-functional leadership skills for developing technology products.

• Leading enterprise technical transformations of legacy systems to facilitate scalability and/or from a start-up to a scale-up phase.

• Skilled in leading integration projects that merge software, hardware, and AI technologies.

• Encouraging experimentation and learning from failures within a blameless culture, emphasizing process and tool improvement.

• Significant experience in mentoring and coaching senior engineers, tech leads, and aspiring architects, fostering their growth and elevating the overall technical capabilities of an organization.

• Extensive experience collaborating effectively with Product Management to translate business needs and "product truth" into sound, scalable technical strategies

What makes you stand out from other candidates

• You simplify under extreme complexity: a definition of “genius” is the capacity to make complex things look simple. Many can design complex systems; few can consistently distill extreme technical complexity into remarkably simple, elegant, and maintainable architectures. 

• You are impact-driven and deeply understand that technology serves a purpose, creating customer value in the short and long term. 

• You are a transformation agent, beyond designing systems, you exercise an inclusive leadership that will drive evolution. 

What we offer

• International Environment: Join a team with 40+ nationalities across 5 continents, all driven by a shared purpose: shedding light on the world’s toughest challenges.

• Attractive Compensation Package:

  • Stock Options: Share in Orbem’s success.

  • Visa & Relocation Support: Seamless support for your move to Germany.

  • Learning & Development: €1,750 annual budget for personal growth.

  • Fitness Membership: Access to Urban Sports Club or Wellpass.

  • Childcare Reimbursement: Support for Kita/Kindergarten fees.

  • Deutschland Ticket: Full coverage of public transportation.

• Work-Life Integration:

  • Flexible Hours & Home Office: Work when and where it suits you.

  • WFH Perks: Get €185 to upgrade your home office + a sleek external monitor on us!

  • 30 Days Paid Leave: Plenty of time to recharge.

  • Personal Leave: Flexibility for life’s important moments.

  • Work from Anywhere: Experience new cultures and environments for up to 60 days per year.

• Make a Difference: Join an ambitious, fast-growing team working on breakthrough technology. In our scale-up environment, you’ll have the freedom to lead your projects and make an impact. We provide a platform for you to explore, innovate, and define your vision for the future. At Orbem, we’re committed to helping you discover your strengths, and while we aim to teach you, we also want to learn from you. 

Your team

As a Principal of Architecture, you become part of our diverse and international team. Learn more about the team members, their work, and challenges here: https://orbem.ai/company/  

At Orbem, we're committed to building a smart, diverse team, and we recognize that self-doubt can prevent talented individuals from applying. If you feel you don't meet every requirement, we'd love to hear from you anyway!