Senior Principal Solutions Architect (Remote)

About the role

At 8th Light, we bring life to the best ideas. Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Chicago, we are a technology solutions consultancy that partners with organizations from early-stage startups to the world's largest companies. We take on hard software challenges and turn them into durable results. We build agentic products, the platforms they run on, and the engineering and design at every layer. Our commitment to quality means we deliver solutions we're truly proud of, while our curiosity sparks innovation and breakthrough thinking. 8th Lights thrive in an environment that champions continuous education, fueling our growth through mentorship and hands-on work. We foster an open, collaborative culture grounded in honesty that builds trust, and believe true success is measured by the outcomes we create for our clients. If this kind of work and our kind of people energizes you, you've found the right place.

Responsibilities

• As a go-to architect and strategist within 8th Light, you'll partner with one or two clients a year on their hardest architecture challenges, while deepening your and our collective expertise over the course of your career with us.
• How You'll be Supported
• At 8th Light, we believe our people are our greatest asset. Their growth, well-being, and success shape our future.
• Our wellness package is designed with the Whole YOU in mind and includes:
• A robust L&D program featuring unlimited access to thousands of books, courses, and expert-led training on the O'Reilly learning platform.
• Annual financial stipend and time allotment for learning & development
• Coworking support for our global team
• Flexible PTO
• 12 weeks of new parent leave available for eligible employees
• See our full list of Benefits .
• A Note on Compensation
• At 8th Light, we are committed to a compensation philosophy that is transparent, fair, and helps us attract and retain top talent in alignment with our company's strategic growth goals and clients' needs.
• We benchmark our salaries using Geographic Structures to establish competitive pay ranges within the regions where 8th Lights live. Our pay ranges for our Principal Engineer position within our four US structures are as follows:
• Structure 1 (Tampa Metro, Ohio, Tennessee, Wisconsin)
• RANGE: $173,585- $216,882 USD
• Structure 2 (Chicago Metro, Miami Metro, Philadelphia Metro, Raleigh Metro )
• RANGE: $182,328-$227,910 USD
• Structure 3 (Austin Metro, Boston Metro , DC Metro)
• RANGE: $194,091-$242,613 USD
• Structure 4 (Los Angeles, Seattle, New York City)
• RANGE: $202,325-$252,906 USD
• Reach out to recruiting@8thligh

Requirements

• You've spent over 10 years architecting large, distributed systems across complex, multi-stakeholder environments. You move comfortably between long-term planning and hands-on design, building trust with executives focused on business value and the engineers who own implementation.
• You'll be well-suited if you have:
• Deep experience in enterprise architecture at scale, across large, distributed systems
• Strong data fluency, dependency mapping, data mesh enablement, high-availability and low-latency design
• Hands-on experience with the stack: Kubernetes, Kafka, Cassandra, Java, TypeScript, AWS, protobuf, Databricks, GraphQL, and REST
• Comfort using AI-assisted development and agentic coding tools to accelerate delivery and enable non-technical teams
• A track record of working across teams on complex, multi-stakeholder technical decisions, including trade-off and risk analysis (e.g. SPADE, architecture decision records)
• Credibility and trust building across a group including executives who will be focused on business value and senior technical stakeholders who will be focused on implementation
• Strong domain-driven design instincts and comfort with the ambiguity of both greenfield and legacy work

Benefits

Additional Information

Senior Principal Solutions Architect

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