WHO WE ARE

Greetings from PlanetBids, where we soar as the interstellar pioneers of web-based procurement solutions in the expanse of the United States! Harnessing a constellation of cutting-edge technologies, our modular suite of stellar offerings empowers governmental, non-profit, and educational entities to navigate the procurement cosmos with unparalleled agility.
Since our inception in 2000, our celestial crew has been on a trajectory of excellence, propelling us to the forefront of the industry with a gravitational pull of unparalleled client service. Our orbiting team not only upholds the celestial standard but also radiates with boundless creativity and ingenuity, continually pushing the boundaries of innovation.
If you seek to embark on a journey of collaborative exploration, where flexibility and creativity intersect in the cosmic dance of procurement, then your quest ends here. Join us in our cosmic odyssey, where camaraderie and innovation converge in the endless expanse of opportunity!

REQUIRED AND DESIRED SKILLS

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Information Technology, or another relevant field is preferred but not required
• 2+ years as an architect; 5+ years in software delivery
• Previous experience building software for multi-tenant SaaS applications
• Polyglot technologist that shows the ability to adapt; our primary tech stack is NodeJS, React, and AWS, with Python and Ember also in the mix
• Energized by system-of-systems thinking and gaining stakeholder alignment
• Demonstrated success decomposing monoliths into domain-aligned services using Domain-Driven Design, event-driven, or other cloud-native patterns
• Knowledge of Generative AI implementations, including RAG, agentic, and MCP capabilities
• Hands-on ownership of one-table or single-table design in Amazon DynamoDB and/or deep relational schema design at scale
• Production experience with AWS core services such as EKS, S3, SNS/SQS, Kinesis
• Solid grasp of secure coding and audit/compliance frameworks common to government SaaS, such as SOC2
• Ability to define SLOs and integrate distributed tracing, structured logging, and metrics via Datadog/ELK stack
• Proven record of writing crisp design docs/ADRs and influencing cross-team engineering direction in a remote, async environment
• Procurement/GovTech domain exposure
• Event streaming and CQRS experience
• Data-analytics pipeline familiarity to support product insights/business intelligence
• Exposure to cost-optimization practices in multi-tenant SaaS
• Front-end architecture patterns in React and accessibility compliance
• The ability to travel to the Los Angeles, CA or Ormond Beach, FL office around once per quarter.
• Ability to work both autonomously as well as within a team in a remote work environment.
• As a requirement, all candidates must be physically based in the United States and able to legally work for any employer.

ABOUT THIS ROLE

PlanetBids is expanding our engineering team to gear up for the next big leap in digital procurement innovation. As the software architect within the team, you will work closely with product and engineering leadership to design and oversee scalable solutions that will withstand the test of time while bringing valuable new features to PlanetBids’ clients and their suppliers and vendors.

ROLE RESPONSIBILITIES

• Own the architectural roadmap for critical business domains, balancing near-term feature delivery with long-term scalability, reliability, and cost targets
• Author and maintain Architecture Decision Records (ADRs), technical design documents, sequence diagrams, and threat models; verify implementation through design reviews and production audits
• Work closely with the CTO and engineering managers to identify new technology trends and capabilities that can be adopted and implemented by PlanetBids to improve the platform or developer experience
• Embed with squads as a coding architect (~20 % hands-on) to unblock complex stories and mentor senior engineers on design best practices
• Identify, quantify, and drive down architectural/tech debt, tying remediation work to measurable risk or cost of delay
• Maintain and socialize a quarterly Technology Radar that guides tech adoption, deprecation, and experimentation
• Experimenting with and developing rapid POCs that align with our product innovation goals
• Set service-level objectives (SLOs) and enforce baseline security/observability standards (logging, tracing, metrics)