Principal Software Architect - Calgary - Syndio

Description

Principal Software Architect (Calgary, Canada)

Join to apply for the Principal Software Architect (Calgary, Canada) role at Syndio.

Do you want to empower organizations to build smarter compensation strategies while ensuring fair pay for all employees?

Syndio is a Series C technology company leveraging advanced technology and responsible AI to accelerate decision-making, streamline compliance, and democratize insights for consistent, equitable compensation practices at scale. Backed by $83M in investments from Bessemer Venture Partners, Voyager Capital, and Emerson Collective, we are expanding our team and products to help companies align their rewards strategies with their business goals.

Our customers are our greatest asset. Syndio partners with many of the world's most recognized and respected enterprises, helping them implement leading-edge compensation solutions with expert guidance. We analyze pay for over 10 million employees across dozens of countries, ensuring fair, defensible rewards that drive better business outcomes.

Join us in our mission to help companies make smarter pay decisions they can trust

About The Role

Syndio is redefining how compensation decisions are made — embedding intelligence, equity, and speed into every step. We are seeking a hands‑on Technology & Product Architect to partner with our engineering teams on converging multiple product swimlanes into a cohesive, scalable, and AI‑native platform that accelerates delivery of customer value.

This is a rare opportunity to shape the architecture of a product at the intersection of AI, compensation intelligence, and compliance, helping us transition from compliance‑led to AI‑native decision platforms. You will guide the journey from "here and now" pragmatic execution to a resilient and extensible long‑term architecture.

Why this job is exciting

• Architect the convergence of disparate systems and swimlanes into a unified, composable platform powering AI‑native solutions.
• Guide technical integration of modern agentic patterns with existing systems, including monolithic legacy services and micro front‑ends.
• Lead design and application of graph‑based data models and graph databases to power contextual, explainable, and interconnected compensation intelligence workflows.
• Serve as a bridge between present‑day constraints and future‑state goals, helping teams move fast today without sacrificing tomorrow.
• Work with Product leadership to anticipate roadmap needs and ensure platform capabilities scale with Syndio's product evolution.
• Lead cross‑functional technical design reviews, aligning engineers, product, and design on implementation strategies that balance speed, scalability, and customer value.
• Help shape a headless architecture that powers flexible user experiences, including embeddable workflows across platforms like Slack, Teams, and HRIS tools.
• Provide hands‑on technical leadership — pairing with teams, writing proofs of concept, and refactoring key components when needed.
• Model and promote a crawl‑walk‑run approach, enabling fast iteration and progressive investment in architecture and testing.
• Act as a technical steward and mentor, helping to raise the bar on architectural thinking, system design, and engineering maturity across the org.
• Translate complex technical concepts into clear narratives for product, customer success, sales, and leadership.
• Partner with security, data, and AI teams to ensure the platform is scalable, secure, and explainable.
• Define logging, observability, and auditability frameworks across agent workflows to meet EU AI Act and pay transparency compliance requirements.

About You

• Proven track record building and scaling multi‑tenant SaaS applications on major cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure), including designing for elasticity, high availability, and global performance.
• Deep understanding of agentic systems, LLM integration patterns, and AI‑native design principles.
• Practical experience designing and using graph databases (e.g., Neo4j, Amazon Neptune, ArangoDB) in production environments — especially to model relationships between data entities for context‑aware reasoning or recommendation systems.
• Hands‑on experience with headless frontend architectures, including GraphQL, BFF patterns, and composable UI.
• Familiarity with legacy system integration, monolith decomposition, and pragmatic trade‑offs.
• Experience building with AI development tools (e.g., Github Copilot, Cursor, etc.).
• Pragmatic problem solver who knows when to take risks and when to invest deeply — especially when navigating from MVP to scale.
• Background in API lifecycle management (design, governance, versioning, deprecation strategies).
• Familiarity with compensation, HR tech, or other highly regulated domains where explainability and compliance are critical.
• Track record of designing secure, privacy‑preserving architectures that handle sensitive/PII data.
• Comfort building cross‑functional alignment between product, data science, Engineering and platform teams in ambiguous environments.

How We Work

We believe in start simple, soon — progress over perfection. We value architectural clarity and execution speed. You'll be joining a team that's small, ambitious, and committed to high trust and low ego collaboration. We empower engineers to make bold moves and back it up with a culture that supports learning through iteration.

Applicants must currently reside within commuting distance of Calgary, Alberta, Canada for consideration. Relocation is not currently offered.

Kindly note, employees must also be eligible to work in Canada indefinitely for any employer, as Syndio is NOT able to provide visa support or assistance.

Why you'll love it here

• Competitive Compensation. Base salary targeted at $180-215k CAD.
• Syndio Equity.
• 20 days annually + paid sick & safe time, compassion leave, and voting leave.
• Pension Contribution.
• Remote‑First (within commuting distance of Calgary).

Role Progression

• In the First Month: Focus on understanding Syndio's existing architecture, key product swimlanes, and immediate technical challenges, while building relationships with engineering and product leadership.
• In the Second Month: Actively contribute to technical design reviews, propose initial architectural convergence strategies, and provide hands‑on mentorship.
• By the Third Month: Lead the design and application of specific architectural initiatives, such as graph‑based data models or headless frontend architectures, and mentor engineers to raise the bar on architectural thinking across the organization.

The Interview Overview

• 30 min phone call with a member of our Talent Team
• 45 min Zoom interview with the Hiring Manager
• 4 video interviews with several key members — 45 min each

Equal Opportunity Employer

Syndio is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are building an inclusive and collaborative workplace as we grow, and we welcome team members regardless of gender/identity, sexual orientation, race or cultural background, religion, physical disability and age.

Seniority level

Mid‑Senior level

Employment type

Full‑time

Job function

Engineering and Information Technology

Industries

Software Development

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