Staff Software Architect - Advanced

Established in 2021, Independence Pet Holdings is a corporate holding company that manages a diverse and broad portfolio of modern pet health brands and services, including insurance, pet education, lost recovery services, and more throughout North America.

We believe pet insurance is more than a financial product and build solutions to simplify the pet parenting journey and help improve the well-being of pets. As a leading authority in the pet category, we operate with a full stack of resources, capital, and services to support pet parents. Our multi-brand and omni-channel approach include our own insurance carrier, insurance brands and partner brands. 

About Clarus 

Clarus is a pet health data technology company modernizing how information flows between insurers, veterinarians, and pet owners. We build cloud-native platforms that power automation, real-time decisioning, and trusted data exchange across the pet healthcare ecosystem. Our engineering culture emphasizes strong domain ownership, modern architecture, and tight alignment between Product, Architecture, and Engineering. 

The Role 

We are hiring Staff Software Architects to translate product vision into scalable technical reality. 

Architecture at Clarus sits at the critical intersection of Product strategy, domain modeling, and engineering execution. You will work upstream with Product to shape solutions and downstream with engineering teams to ensure designs are implementable, maintainable, and aligned with our long-term platform strategy. 

You are not a slideware architect — you define domain boundaries, integration patterns, and technical design standards that directly drive how teams build software. 

This role is ideal for someone who excels at: 

• Turning ambiguous product ideas into structured domain designs 

• Deciding when to extend existing systems vs introduce new domains 

• Designing distributed, event-driven systems in a modern Azure ecosystem 

Where You Fit in Our Delivery Process 

Clarus follows a structured Product Development Lifecycle (PDLC) from discovery through execution. Architecture plays a pivotal role in the early and middle phases: 

• Partner with Product during Discovery & Solutioning to assess feasibility and shape solution direction 

• Lead Architecture and Technical Design stages by decomposing features into domains, services, and integration patterns 

• Enable Engineering during Sprint Planning & Execution by providing clear, implementable technical designs 

Your job is to ensure that what enters engineering is: 

• Technically viable 

• Architecturally consistent 

• Aligned with platform standards 

What You Will Own 

1. Domain Architecture & System Decomposition 

• Translate product initiatives into domain-level architecture 

• Define when to enhance existing bounded contexts versus introduce new domains 

• Apply Domain-Driven Design (DDD) to establish clear service boundaries 

• Prevent tight coupling by enforcing proper integration patterns 

You are the steward of domain clarity and long-term system shape. 

2. Event-Driven & Distributed Systems Design 

• Define asynchronous communication patterns using Azure Service Bus and Event Grid 

• Design resilient, decoupled services that maintain data integrity in distributed systems 

• Establish patterns for state management and eventual consistency 

• Guide teams on trade-offs between synchronous APIs and event-based flows 

3. Azure Application Architecture 

Design the application layer using our core Azure stack: 

• Azure Functions for event-driven/serverless workloads 

• Azure App Service for web and API workloads 

• Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) where container orchestration is required 

• Azure API Management (APIM) for API governance, security, and throttling 

• Azure Front Door for global traffic routing and resilience 

• Azure Key Vault and App Configuration for secure, consistent configuration 

You define when each compute model is appropriate and document standards for their use. 

4. Data Integration & Platform Connectivity 

• Architect how operational systems integrate with the broader data ecosystem 

• Define data ownership boundaries between applications and the data platform 

• Design integration patterns with Azure Data Factory and Databricks pipelines 

• Establish patterns for relational (Azure SQL) vs document (Cosmos DB) storage 

You ensure that applications are data-aware without becoming data-platform heavy. 

5. API Strategy & External Integrations 

• Define API security, versioning, and traffic management standards via APIM 

• Architect reliable partner integrations and external system connectivity 

• Ensure services are built for extensibility as new partners are onboarded 

6. Technical Leadership & Governance 

• Produce Domain Design Documents (DDD) and work with Engineering to produce Technical Design Documents (TDD) 

• Mentor senior engineers and tech leads on architecture and design patterns 

• Review designs for alignment with platform standards 

• Collaborate with DevOps to ensure designs are deployable and observable 

• Promote security, resilience, and cost-aware design principles 

Required Qualifications 

• 10+ years in software engineering, with 3–5+ years in Architecture roles 

• Deep experience with Domain-Driven Design (DDD) and system decomposition 

• Strong expertise in event-driven and distributed system design 

• Hands-on experience with the Azure application stack (Functions, App Service, Service Bus, APIM) 

• Experience designing systems in .NET-centric environments 

• Ability to manage data consistency and state across services 

• Excellent communication skills across Product, Engineering, and leadership 

Preferred Qualifications 

• Experience with Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) 

• Experience integrating with Databricks or data lakehouse architectures 

• Experience in regulated or integration-heavy ecosystems 

• Experience designing AI/ML integration into operational systems 

Why Join Clarus 

Platform Impact – Your designs directly shape how our entire engineering organization builds software. 

Modern Stack – Cloud-native, event-driven Azure ecosystem. 

Ownership – Influence domain structure, integration standards, and system evolution. 

Collaboration – Tight partnership with Product, Data, and Engineering. 

Flexibility – Remote-first culture focused on outcomes. 

If you enjoy bringing order to complex domains and designing systems that scale both technically and organizationally, this is the role for you. 

#clarus

All of our jobs come with great benefits including healthcare, parental leave and opportunities for career advancements. Some offerings are dependent upon the location of where you work and can include the following:

• Comprehensive full medical, dental and vision Insurance
• Basic Life Insurance at no cost to the employee
• Company paid short-term and long-term disability
• 12 weeks of 100% paid Parental Leave
• Health Savings Account (HSA)
• Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA)
• Retirement savings plan
• Personal Paid Time Off
• Paid holidays and company-wide Wellness Day off
• Paid time off to volunteer at nonprofit organizations
• Pet friendly office environment
• Commuter Benefits
• Group Pet Insurance
• On the job training and skills development
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP)