It's fun to work in a company where people truly BELIEVE in what they're doing!
Fullsteam is a leading provider of vertical software and embedded payments technology dedicated to helping businesses flourish by providing their customers with seamless experiences. With a dynamic and growing team of over 1,900 employees, we are committed to driving innovation and delivering best-in-class software and payment solutions that empower small and medium-sized businesses across numerous industries. Our purpose is to help our customers grow their businesses and delight their customers. Join us and be a part of a forward-thinking company that values growth, excellence, and the success of our clients.
Job Summary: As the Principal Software Architect for the Retail Vertical, you will serve as the main technical authority across our entire portfolio of retail software solutions reporting to the VP of Software Engineering. You will partner directly with executive leadership to shape the technical vision that drives our business growth, ensuring our architecture is not only scalable but also financially efficient and commercially viable.
This role requires a rare blend of deep technical expertise, and financial acumen. You will be responsible for defining the architectural roadmap for the entire vertical, optimizing cloud spend, engaging with key enterprise clients, and leading a transformative rollout of AI-driven engineering tools such as Copilot, Cursor, Claude, etc to revolutionize our development velocity and quality.
Primary Responsibilities:
Vertical-Wide Technical Governance (Strategic Scope):
- Architectural Authority: Act as the primary decision-maker for all major architectural choices across the Retail Vertical, ensuring alignment between diverse product lines and the overarching business strategy.
- Scalable Strategy: Design and enforce a unified architectural vision that prioritizes scalability and maintainability across a multi-product portfolio, preventing technical debt before it starts.
- Executive Partnership: Collaborate with technical leads to translate high-level business goals into a technical roadmap that delivers measurable ROI.
AI Innovation & Engineering Efficiency:
- AI Tooling Strategy: Lead the evaluation, implementation, and validation of AI-assisted development tools like GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Claude, and others—to modernize the engineering workflow.
- Automated Quality: Drive the adoption of these AI tools to automate complex tasks such as peer reviews, unit test generation, UI test generation, and bug fixing, establishing a new standard for code quality and developer velocity.
Client & Commercial Advisory:
- Technical Evangelism: Serve as the technical face of the Retail Vertical for key enterprise accounts and partners, articulating our security, scalability, and AI capabilities to help close high-value deals.
- Trust & Security: Provide architectural assurance to stakeholders regarding data privacy and security, turning our technical infrastructure into a competitive sales advantage.
Mentorship, Coding & Leadership:
- Hands-on Leadership: Despite the strategic scope, remain hands-on in the codebase to set the gold standard for quality, resolve critical architectural bottlenecks, and mentor/Level up senior engineers, and BU Leaders.
- Culture of Excellence: Foster a culture of innovation by leading technical reviews and mentoring the engineering team on advanced design patterns and the effective use of AI assistants.
Primary Qualifications:
- Education: Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, or a related field, or equivalent work experience.
- Experience: 8+ years of software engineering experience, with 4+ years in a lead role managing complex, multi-product portfolios.
- Strategic Authority: Proven track record of making high-stakes technical decisions that span multiple product lines or business units.
- Commercial Acumen: Experience interacting with external clients or executive stakeholders, with the ability to explain technical value in business terms.
- AI & Tooling Proficiency: Practical experience with modern AI coding assistants and a vision for how to integrate them into CI/CD and QA workflows.
- Technical Stack: Deep expertise in Microsoft .NET, React, JavaScript, and microservices architectures.
- Retail/SaaS Focus: Prior experience in Retail Technology or high-volume SaaS is strongly preferred.
Fullsteam supports an inclusive workplace that values diversity of thought, experience, and background. Fullsteam is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, age, physical or mental disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, pregnancy, veteran status, marital status, creed, status with regard to public assistance, genetic status or any other status protected by federal, state, or local law.
Skills Required
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent experience
- 8+ years software engineering experience with 4+ years in a lead role managing complex, multi-product portfolios
- Proven track record of making high-stakes technical decisions spanning multiple product lines or business units
- Experience interacting with external clients or executive stakeholders and explaining technical value in business terms
- Practical experience with modern AI coding assistants (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Claude) and integrating them into CI/CD and QA workflows
- Deep expertise in Microsoft .NET, React, JavaScript, and microservices architectures
- Prior experience in Retail Technology or high-volume SaaS
Fullsteam Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Fullsteam and has not been reviewed or approved by Fullsteam.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Flexible PTO, paid company holidays, and paid parental leave are part of the package. Feedback suggests time-away flexibility is a notable plus alongside remote options.
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Retirement Support — A retirement savings plan includes a company match, complemented by role-dependent short- and long-term incentives. Feedback suggests this foundation supports longer-term financial security.
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Healthcare Strength — Medical, dental, and vision coverage are offered with HSA/FSA options, company-paid life insurance, and support services such as an EAP and Health Advocate. Feedback suggests the core health benefits cover essential needs.
Fullsteam Insights
What We Do
Fullsteam is a leading payments and technology company that is actively acquiring software businesses across multiple verticals. We provide our family of companies with streamlined payments infrastructure and enhanced operational support in order to increase growth and improve profitability. Backed by Aquiline Capital Partners, Fullsteam is based in Auburn, Ala.
