Senior Software Architect, Audience Lifecycle

About the Role

NPR seeks a Senior Software Architect to lead technology decisions, design scalable solutions, and guide data lifecycle infrastructure that powers audience-facing products across the organization. This role works with leaders and cross-discipline teams to shape long-term strategic technology decisions, coordinate complex projects impacting multiple teams, and partner with stakeholders to ensure successful outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Architect Personalization & Data Systems: Lead the design, optimization, and scaling of real-time data ecosystems and event-driven pipelines that power personalized audience experiences across NPR digital platforms.
• Establish Self-Service Infrastructure: Design robust frameworks, governance standards, and APIs that enable engineering, analytics, and marketing teams to autonomously leverage data and personalization tools.
• Guide Technology Strategy & Standards: Evaluate emerging technologies, establish modern architecture standards (including medallion architecture and orchestration frameworks), and drive adoption across product lines.
• Technical Oversight & Governance: Provide technical direction and cross-divisional oversight for complex, high-impact engineering projects impacting multiple teams and systems.
• Collaborative Solutioning & Planning: Partner with product managers, engineering leaders, and stakeholders during OKR planning, roadmap development, and technical proposal reviews.
• Code & Architecture Quality: Mentor engineering peers through substantive design reviews, code standards definition, security/privacy alignment (GDPR/CPPA), and cost-optimization practices.
• Production Excellence & Operational Support: Participate in system deployments, establish CI/CD best practices, troubleshoot production incidents, and join the engineering on-call rotation after initial onboarding.
• Team Growth & Inclusion: Assist in onboarding new technical staff, participate in inclusive hiring practices, and proactively contribute to continuous process improvements within scrum environments.

Minimum Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience designing and leading solutioning and architecture planning in a multi-team environment.
• 5+ years of experience designing systems with scalability, reliability, and cost-efficiency as first-class concerns.
• 5+ years of experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, etc) and infrastructure as code (e.g., Terraform).
• 5+ years of experience building applications that span multiple platforms such as web, mobile, voice, APIs, and system integrations using modern languages and frameworks.
• Demonstrated experience integrating with external APIs / services.
• Ability to design and lead practical technical design.
• Demonstrated expertise in designing real-time integrations and data-centric applications & services that power personalized user experiences at scale.
• Expertise in data governance strategy and implementation.
• Familiarity with medallion architecture.
• Fluent in Node/TypeScript and Python.
• Experience building consumer-facing high-traffic applications and related concerns — SEO, browser performance, CDN configurations, etc.
• Experience with data privacy and compliance (GDPR, CPPA, etc.) concerns.
• Experience with test and development automation.
• Experience working with a version control system (Git preferred).
• Experience with cost-optimization & controls, forecasting, and evaluating trade-offs for high availability systems.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with large-scale data processing frameworks (e.g., Apache Spark, Snowflake) or medallion architecture implementations.
• Familiarity with machine learning architectures, distributed search engines (Elasticsearch), or NoSQL databases (DynamoDB).
• History of contributing to open-source software projects or public technical communities.

Required Skills & Competencies

• System Architecture & Design: Deep understanding of distributed systems, event tracking, and API integration design.
• Technical Leadership & Collaboration: Ability to guide cross-functional teams and synthesize technical feedback into actionable designs.
• Data Strategy & Governance: Practical knowledge of end-to-end data lifecycles, refinement, and activation.
• Problem Solving & Resiliency: Strong operational mindset for diagnosing high-traffic production challenges and optimizing cloud costs.
• Inclusive Communication: Skill in explaining complex architecture concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Pay

$184,758.33 – $211,081.45 annually

Schedule & Work Location

This is a full-time, exempt position. This role is remote-permitted; you may work remotely from any U.S. location supported by NPR, on-site at an NPR facility (based on desk availability and approval), or a combination of both. Travel to other locations may be expected from time to time.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance
• Life/accidental death and dismemberment insurance
• Long-term and short-term disability coverage
• Paid time off
• Voluntary retirement savings plan