Principal Technical Architect

At One App Guarantee, our mission is to make sure everyone has access to housing so they can build financial stability, establish strong community roots, and create better futures for themselves and their families. We build market-driven solutions that reduce risk for property owners while opening doors for renters who need a second chance.

As we grow, we’re expanding our platform and launching new products that reshape how the rental housing industry thinks about access, inclusion, and protection. We're proud to partner with many of the country’s largest property management companies and are scaling quickly, with an ambitious goal to help 1 million people secure housing by 2032.

Position Summary

We’re seeking a Principal Technical Architect with recent hands‑on coding experience, deep technical expertise, and product‑execution discipline to lead architecture and delivery strategy across our core platform and new products. This role is critical in bridging our in‑house product vision with outsourced engineering partners, ensuring we translate ideas into scalable, maintainable systems. You’ll own the master development calendar, turning high-level priorities into committed release targets and adjusting them as priorities evolve.

You’ll be the technical authority shaping how we translate product ideas into production‑ready solutions. You’ll define solution architecture, enforce MVP discipline, audit development work, and ensure all builds align with roadmap objectives. While this is not a people‑management role, you will be the key point of technical accountability and quality enforcement.

This role reports to the COO. You’ll collaborate cross‑functionally with stakeholders in Product, R&D, Risk, and Rev Ops to ensure we build the right products, and build them the right way.

• Two‑week Scrum sprints with a distributed engineering pod.
• Engineers develop locally, then deploy to cloud‑based staging and production environments.
• Source code is currently managed in Git Lab, with a planned migration to Git Hub; familiarity with Git workflows, CI/CD pipelines, and remote, asynchronous collaboration is essential.

Key Responsibilities

• Own MVP Architecture – Translate product ideas into right‑sized, scalable solutions, setting architecture patterns, APIs, and long‑term infrastructure strategies.
• Lead Delivery & Timelines – Turn the roadmap into sprint‑level development, UAT, and release schedules; work with Product to right-size MVPs early, avoid feasibility churn, and ensure all stakeholders are aligned on clear, realistic delivery commitments.
• Ensure Technical Quality & Scope Discipline – Review pull requests and other artifacts, enforce coding standards and documentation, and keep scope focused on MVPs to avoid over‑engineering.
• Guide Outsourced Engineering Partners – Serve as the primary technical liaison, aligning requirements, quality standards, and velocity goals with our external engineering pod.
• Optimize Development Processes – Continuously improve agile practices, CI/CD, sprint QA, and tech‑debt management to boost throughput and reliability.
• Advise Product Execution Strategy – Collaborate with Product and Design on feasibility, trade‑offs, and sequencing to deliver customer value quickly.

Qualifications

• Recent, hands‑on coding experience as a senior engineer or tech‑lead; comfortable reading, reviewing, and—when needed—writing code in modern web stacks (e.g., Spring
  
  MVC, MySQL,Type Script/Node.js, Python, React).
• 8+ years of experience in product architecture, technical architecture management, or software engineering.
• Strong background in SaaS platforms, API design, and scalable system architecture.
• Fluent in agile development, preferably Scrum; experienced guiding distributed squads through sprint planning, reviews, and retros.
• Deep experience reviewing and auditing outsourced or offshore development work.
• Comfortable leading architectural planning without managing a dev team.
• Adept at translating product requirements into buildable, scalable technical solutions.
• Experienced in startup or growth‑stage environments where scrappiness, speed, and focus matter.
• Skilled at balancing technical excellence with business…