Job Description

Senior Staff Software Architect– Cloud Data Platform & Industrial SaaS

Level: Senior Staff Software Architect– Cloud Data Platform & Industrial SaaS
Experience: 20+ years
Reporting to: SVP, Engineering
Role Type: Enterprise Platform Architecture Leadership

Role Mission

Picarro is building a hardware‑enabled Cloud Data Platform (CDP) to power multiple regulated industrial SaaS applications for Oil & Gas, chemical plants, and refineries, including emissions compliance (HON, RSR), leak detection, and workplace safety.

The mission of this role is to define, own, and govern the Cloud Data Platform as a long‑lived enterprise SaaS foundation, enabling multiple products to be built quickly, consistently, and compliantly, without fragmenting data models, services, or architecture over time.

This role exists to solve problems above the application level. Required experience includes architecting enterprise SaaS platforms, not just distributed applications; proven ownership of canonical data models and foundational platform services that support multiple products over long lifetimes; track record preventing platform entropy as product count, regulations, and customers scale.

What This Role Owns (Platform Scope)

Canonical Information Architecture (Critical)

• Define and govern canonical, cross‑product data models that represent:
• Instruments, assets, and deployments
• Measurements and telemetry
• Events, investigations, and findings
• Regulatory evidence, audit artifacts, and lineage
• Ensure platform data models are:
• Independent of any single product or regulation
• Stable across hardware generations and SaaS releases
• Evolvable through explicit versioning and backward‑compatibility strategies
• Prevent schema drift, product‑specific forks, and accidental coupling between applications

In short, ensure that data models stay canonical and services stay platform‑level. Applications stay consumers – not redefiners – of the platform.

Platform Services Architecture (Not Application Services)

• Design and own foundational platform services, such as:
  • Identity, tenant, and environment lifecycle
  • Asset and instrument registry
  • Measurement normalization and provenance
  • Regulatory evidence, audit, and traceability
  • Data retention, purge, and legal hold
• Define clear boundaries between:
  • Platform services (built once, reused everywhere)
  • Application services (product‑specific logic and workflows)
• Establish governance so platform services remain durable and uncluttered by product needs

Enterprise SaaS Platform Foundations

• Own the multi‑tenant SaaS architecture, including:
  • Tenant isolation and hierarchy
  • RBAC and authorization at platform scale
  • Auditability, compliance‑by‑design, and data residency
• Ensure the platform can support multiple products, customers, and regulatory regimes concurrently.
• Design for 10+ year data lifecycles typical of regulated industrial customers.

Architectural Governance & Decision Authority

• Serve as the final architectural authority for platform‑level decisions.
• Establish and enforce:
• Reference architectures
• Allowed and disallowed patterns
• Evolution and deprecation rules
• Balance short‑term delivery pressure with long‑term platform integrity and cost.

Architect Leadership & Amplification

• Lead and align existing architects (e.g., platform data architects and application architects).
• Clarify decision boundaries:
• Platform architects define foundations and invariants
• Application architects extend the platform without redefining it
• Raise architectural maturity across the organization without centralizing all design work.

What This Role Explicitly Is NOT

• Not a senior application architect
• Not a data‑pipeline or analytics specialist
• Not a product‑specific domain expert
• Not a hands‑on IC building features or workflows

This role is about architectural ownership, coherence, and longevity

Required Experience & Profile

Must‑Have

• 20+ years in software architecture, with clear ownership of enterprise platforms
• Prior experience designing or governing large‑scale SaaS platforms (e.g., Salesforce, Oracle Fusion, Adobe Cloud, ServiceNow, or equivalent)
• Proven expertise in:
• Canonical data modeling across multiple products
• Platform service architecture (not just microservices)
• Multi‑tenant SaaS security and compliance
• Executive‑level technical judgment and decision‑making credibility

Strongly Preferred

• Experience with regulated industries (energy, industrial, healthcare, finance)
• Platforms integrating hardware / telemetry / edge systems
• Track record of building platforms meant to outlive individual products

Success Looks Like

• New industrial SaaS applications launch without redefining data models or core services
• Regulatory capabilities are implemented once and reused across products
• Platform complexity grows sub‑linearly as products scale
• Architectural decisions are consistent, explicit, and durable
• Application teams move faster with fewer architectural negotiations

Why This Role Matters at Picarro

Picarro’s competitive advantage depends on reusing a single, coherent platform across:

• Multiple gas‑measurement modalities
• Multiple regulatory frameworks
• Multiple industrial customer workflows

Without strong platform leadership, speed today becomes fragmentation tomorrow.
This role ensures that does not happen.

About Picarro:

We are the world's leader in timely, trusted, and actionable data using enhanced optical spectroscopy. Our solutions are used in a wide variety of applications, including natural gas leak detection, ethylene oxide emissions monitoring, semiconductor fabrication, pharmaceutical, petrochemical, atmospheric science, air quality, greenhouse gas measurements, food safety, hydrology, ecology, and more. Our software and hardware are designed and manufactured in Santa Clara, California and are used in over 90 countries worldwide based on over 65 patents related to cavity ring-down spectroscopy (CRDS) technology and are unparalleled in their precision, ease of use, and reliability.

At Picarro, we are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, sex, color, religion, national origin, protected veteran status, gender identity, social orientation, or disability. Posted positions are not open to third-party recruiters/agencies, and unsolicited resume submissions will be considered free referrals.

At Picarro, we strive to ensure that all individuals, regardless of their abilities, have equal opportunities. If you are an individual with a disability and require reasonable accommodation to complete any part of the application process or are limited in the ability or unable to access or use this online application process and need an alternative method for applying, please contact Picarro, Inc. at  disabilityassistance@picarro.com for assistance.