Senior Architect / Head of Technology

Location

Fairfax, Virginia, on-site

Employment Type

Full-time

Work Authorization

U.S. citizenship required; visa sponsorship is not available

Role Focus

Hands-on C/C++ architecture, engineering delivery, production troubleshooting, and team leadership

Reporting

Reports to the CEO and works closely with development, QA, project management, customers, and partners

BizFirst is assisting our client with the search for a hands-on Senior Architect / Head of Technology who will serve as the working architect and day-to-day technical leader for the organization. This person will own architecture, engineering delivery, development and QA leadership, internal IT, infrastructure, security operations, and technical customer engagement.

This is not a strategy-only executive role. The company has a lean technical team, so this leader must be comfortable working directly in the codebase, troubleshooting production problems alongside engineers, and handling the less-visible work required to keep a mature software platform running reliably.

The CEO currently carries much of the day-to-day technical leadership. This hire will learn the existing product closely, identify what is not working, and make practical changes to how the company develops, tests, releases, documents, and supports its software.

Our client develops data-intelligence and performance-monitoring software used across complex IT and industrial environments. Its platform helps commercial, enterprise, and government customers analyze large volumes of data, identify root causes, and anticipate performance issues.

• Own the product architecture and technical roadmap, including platform decisions, technical-debt priorities, and incremental modernization of long-lived software components.
  
• Work directly in the existing C/C++ codebase by reading, modifying, reviewing, and debugging code and helping resolve difficult production issues.
  
• Investigate problems using application code, SQL, logs, data, and system behavior; identify root causes and guide or implement the right fix.
  
• Improve engineering execution across planning, Agile delivery, code review, testing, quality gates, releases, documentation, and production support.
  
• Directly manage a small development and QA team, including work allocation, coaching, performance management, hiring, knowledge sharing, and delivery accountability.
  
• Work with the SQL-backed data platform and time-series environment to address application, data-quality, and performance issues.
  
• Take practical ownership of internal IT, infrastructure, operating environments, backups, security operations, and compliance-related technical work.
  
• Lead technical customer escalations and partner integrations, communicate risks and tradeoffs clearly to the CEO, and reduce key-person risk through better documentation and knowledge sharing.
  

The following qualifications are essential for this role:

• 10+ years of software engineering and architecture experience, including responsibility for a complex enterprise software product.
  
• Current or recent hands-on C/C++ development in production. You must be able to read, modify, review, and debug a mature codebase; architectural oversight alone is not sufficient.
  
• Experience owning architecture and incrementally modernizing a mature product with long-lived components and active customer dependencies.
  
• Experience directly leading a small development and QA team, generally 5 to 15 people, while remaining a hands-on technical contributor.
  
• A track record of improving engineering execution across Agile planning, code review, testing, releases, documentation, and production support.
  
• Strong SQL and time-series data experience, including production troubleshooting and the use of Grafana or a comparable observability platform.
  
• Practical breadth across infrastructure, internal IT, and security, with the willingness to operate without a large management or support structure.
  
• Clear customer-facing and executive communication, including the ability to explain technical facts, risks, priorities, and tradeoffs.
  

Any of the following would be helpful, but none is required:

• Enterprise Java technologies such as Java EE/J2EE, JBoss or WildFly, JSF or PrimeFaces, and Hibernate or JPA.
  
• InfluxDB, Kafka, OpenTelemetry, or comparable time-series, monitoring, and event-streaming technologies.
  
• Linux and Windows environments, AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, application security, vulnerability remediation, or performance tuning.
  
• Regulated or private-equity-backed environments, including security compliance, acquisitions, technical due diligence, or post-acquisition integration.
  

The strongest candidate is a candid, low-ego player-coach who stays close to the work. When something breaks, this person joins the team, works through the details, and helps solve it rather than managing only through delegation and status updates.

This leader must also be comfortable driving meaningful change. The goal is to understand the existing product and organization, determine what needs to improve, and introduce better practices without pursuing a disruptive rewrite for its own sake.

The title reflects the breadth of ownership, but the work remains close to the technology. The role is best suited to a principal architect, hands-on engineering director or manager, or senior technical lead who wants broad responsibility while continuing to work directly with the code and team.

• Within 90 days, understand the architecture, codebase, data platform, infrastructure, team, and development process; participate directly in troubleshooting; and identify the highest-priority risks and improvements.
  
• Within six months, own architecture, engineering delivery, releases, and infrastructure, with clearer accountability, stronger development and QA practices, and better documentation.
  
• Within 12 months, establish a reliable technical organization that operates independently without the CEO serving as the day-to-day technical backstop.
  

This is an opportunity to take meaningful ownership at an established enterprise software company with long-standing commercial and government customers. You will report directly to the CEO, have visibility to the board, and play a central role in improving both the product and how the company builds and supports it.

• Medical, dental, vision, life, and disability insurance.
  
• 401(k) plan with company match and health savings account.
  
• Paid time off and parental leave.
  
• Professional-development support, flexible schedule, and free on-site parking.