Principal Architect – Distributed Platforms & Systems
Location: Liège (Hybrid & Flexible)
Language: English
Contract: Freelance or Permanent
Duration: Long-term collaboration
We are supporting a large organisation operating in a complex, distributed environment, currently evolving a modern digital platform spanning multiple domains, technologies, and teams.
This is a highly transversal Principal Architect role, operating end-to-end across systems, platforms, integrations, and data-heavy environments. The role combines strong architectural vision and systems thinking with deep hands-on engineering involvement, ensuring architecture decisions align with business strategy, time-to-market, and long-term platform evolution.
The Role
As Principal Architect, you will own architecture end-to-end, operating across platforms, integrations, and data-heavy systems rather than within a single domain.
You will:
* Define and evolve end-to-end architecture aligned with business strategy, delivery speed, and long-term scalability
* Design and validate distributed, event-driven systems and integration patterns
* Work closely with Data and Platform teams to improve system design, delivery efficiency, automation, and quality
* Stay close to engineering teams, stepping in when needed to review designs, validate workflows, and unblock delivery
* Continuously assess the engineering funnel to ensure strong technical execution and scalability
* Maintain a clear architectural inventory (APIs, platforms, integrations, capabilities) using tools such as Ardoq
Technical Scope
* .NET, Python, Node.js, React; strong hands-on engineering
* Distributed, event-driven systems (Kafka, RabbitMQ, Service Bus)
* CI/CD, automated testing, DevEx, scalability and resilience
What We’re Looking For
* Principal / Lead Architect experience in complex environments
* Hands-on, execution-focused, pragmatic
* Strong stakeholder skills
* Comfortable with ambiguity and continuous improvement