VP of Architecture

For the past 25 years, Bullhorn has dedicated itself to building industry-leading, cloud-based software for the staffing and recruitment industry.

Led by the original co-founder, partnered with venture capital, and powered by seasoned leaders across a global workforce with an eye toward innovation, Bullhorn has had year over year growth, making it the market leader in the recruitment software space while allowing for new opportunities for over 29 % of our employees to advance their careers in the past 12 months.

We are a remote-first organization and over 38% of our employees reside outside the United States. Headquartered in Boston, we also have offices in London, Brighton, Rotterdam, Frankfurt and Sydney (just in case you’re in the area to stop by).

Whether you’re local or remote, our vision is to ensure every employee has a sense of belonging, a voice that is heard, and a clear path for success.

Your incredible experience as an employee will consist of flexible work hours to ensure a positive work-life balance and use Zoom, Slack, and other tools to stay connected.

About this role :

As a VP of Software Architecture at Bullhorn, you will work closely with a variety of technical leaders to craft and refine the architectural vision, philosophy, and practice of our engineering teams.

This role will lead technical design & problem solving across a variety of products, technical stacks, and business units within Bullhorn.

You will be a critical business and technical leader, collaborating with executives to set technical direction and priorities.

You will also be mentoring and coaching architects within teams to lead strategy and technical execution across their respective roadmaps.

For this role, we are looking for strong technical expertise as well as strong leadership capabilities. We need someone that can build credibility across leadership teams and drive effective collaboration throughout all of our leadership functions.

Why this job is important :

Bullhorn is a rapidly growing software company with a variety of SaaS software solutions, and we need strong architectural guidance to ensure those solutions can meet the rising needs of performance and scale.

Through acquisitions and organic growth, Bullhorn has created an extensive collection of products that need to interact seamlessly with each other for a unified customer experience.

Meeting this goal will require strong architectural guidance across the portfolio.

With an R&D team of over 500 people, Bullhorn needs an influential leader to help align technical strategy across complex initiatives to drive success across the business.

A typical day might include :

Collaborating with senior leadership across the product & technology organization to define the Bullhorn architectural vision and strategic priorities

Coaching Architects through iterative technical design, and helping the team break down complex initiatives into practical milestones

Working closely with operational teams to better understand and improve system health, performance, and stability

Offering ideas on how we can better leverage AI / ML systems and patterns to enhance Bullhorn products or optimize our team efficiency, and driving initiatives to make those ideas a reality

Facilitating technical debates around design options and helping steer the team to the best near term and long term solutions

Helping architects clearly articulate and document design patterns to clarify the work for the engineering team

Collaborating with Product Management executives to guide a proper balance of technical initiatives vs. new feature builds

Mentoring architects and development managers on how to influence team members to build better software

Promoting healthy design patterns and architectural philosophy globally across Bullhorn development teams

Leading Architects and Development managers to encourage and train upcoming architects and technical leads

Occasionally deep diving into engineering challenges to help teams break through technical blockers and see a clear path forward

Fostering and influencing leadership discussions on healthy trade-offs between features and nonfunctional priorities

Guiding the architecture and engineering teams in the continual evolution of architecture principles and best practices

Defining and evolving nonfunctional standards of excellence for our software teams

Championing technical ownership and responsibility across the engineering teams

Defining systems and metrics to showcase product and team health and performance

Representing Bullhorn at industry conferences, symposiums, and standards bodies

Collaborating across the Bullhorn executive team to make strategic decisions on priorities, team structure, and R&D investments

This role is a fit for you if

You’ve earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or a related field, or you’ve been building software long enough to learn through experience.

You MUST be able to understand engineering challenges and speak credibly with engineers at a technical level.

You have 10+ years of experience architecting and building software for scalable, fault-tolerant distributed systems. Not only should you recognize patterns that work and scale well, but you should also easily recognize anti-patterns that fail to do so.

You have 5+ years in a management role with a proven track record of leading effective teams, particularly remote teams.

You have experience and comfort building alignment with Product executives to drive clarity and healthy prioritization

You are comfortable communicating and debating technical ideas both in writing and verbally. You’re able to consolidate and compact a large amount of detail into a clear and concise, readable document that clarifies what we’re doing and why.

You’re also a master at drawing diagrams that clearly articulate architectural or system designs

You have demonstrated success in coaching and empowering influential technical leaders

You’re comfortable creating (or changing) processes to improve efficiency and effectiveness, and are also comfortable recognizing how to measure whether those are successful

You recognize how to deliver with excellence without getting trapped in the search for perfection, and you’re able to steer teams towards higher standards that are practical to deliver.

You have demonstrated success in mentoring development teams in consistent architectural best practices

You are comfortable driving decisiveness and helping the team move forward rather than getting paralyzed with analysis

You have led Agile teams and are comfortable guiding teams toward continuously improving processes.

You have strong experience designing architecture for Software as a Service (SaaS) products.

You are comfortable in creating systems to gather and analyze performance metrics and log data from SaaS systems.

You are confident in contributing to designs that leverage diverse technologies for databases, indexed search, messaging, etc.

You have a keen ability to create, interpret, and challenge architectural design documents and specifications

You’re willing to foster innovation to solve complex problems with novel approaches where they make sense

Bonus Points

Expertise in designing SaaS systems for fault tolerance and high availability, including the systems that monitor and alert for issues.

Experience architecting and monitoring event-driven architectures.

Expertise in application containerization (Kubernetes, Docker, etc.)

Deep experience with software design and delivery on cloud platforms (like AWS) with an understanding of economic and business models for software in the cloud.

Experience building and working with applications written on or integrating with Salesforce.com

What we offer...

• Benefits eligibility effective DAY ONE including Medical, Dental, Vision, 401(k), 401(k) Match, and more
• Unlimited Planned Paid Time Off
• Global Mental Health Support
• On-Demand Learning & Development
• Quarterly paid volunteer days
• Lucrative Employee Referral Program (eligible for prior to your first day)
• Company-wide mentor program

Bullhorn's core purpose is to create an incredible customer experience, which starts with first creating an incredible employee experience.

Our vision is for every employee to have a sense of belonging, a voice that is heard, and a clear path for success. We are committed to building diverse and inclusive teams, and our culture is shaped by our five core values : Ownership, Energy, Speed & Agility, Service, and Being Human.

We are a people-first culture where everyone’s contribution is valued and respected. We're looking for smart, forward-thinking individuals who aren't afraid to challenge the status quo and bring fresh perspectives to the table.

If you're someone who thrives in a casual, yet fast-paced and agile environment, we'd love to have you join us.