AI Backend Architect

Client: Photon
Position: AI Backend Architect
Location: Tempe, AZ(Remote)
Duration: Contract & Full time

Job Summary

Photon is seeking a Backend Architect to define and drive the architecture, scalability, and modernization of large-scale cloud-native backend platforms for enterprise e-commerce and loyalty ecosystems within the Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) domain.

This role focuses on architecting highly scalable APIs, distributed event-driven systems, cloud-native microservices, and enterprise integration platforms using Python (FastAPI) and AWS-native technologies. The Backend Architect will provide strategic technical leadership across backend engineering programs, ensuring scalable, resilient, secure, and business-aligned platform capabilities supporting digital ordering, loyalty, identity, payments, and customer engagement journeys.

You will collaborate closely with engineering leaders, product teams, enterprise architects, DevOps, and business stakeholders to define modern backend architecture standards, integration strategies, platform governance, and long-term technology roadmaps.

The ideal candidate has deep expertise in distributed backend systems, cloud-native architectures, event-driven platforms, enterprise integrations, and large-scale digital ecosystems, with strong exposure to QSR, retail, or consumer-facing commerce platforms.

Key Responsibilities

Architecture Strategy & Platform Leadership

Define and own backend architecture strategy for enterprise e-commerce, loyalty, identity, and customer engagement platforms.
Architect scalable, cloud-native, and event-driven backend ecosystems using Python (FastAPI) and AWS-native services.
Establish architecture standards, governance models, engineering principles, and platform best practices across backend systems.
Drive platform modernization initiatives, integration architecture, and reusable service design patterns.
Define scalable hub-and-spoke orchestration architectures for integrating loyalty, commerce, payment, CMS, identity, and customer engagement platforms.
Provide architectural leadership across multiple engineering programs and enterprise delivery initiatives.

Event-Driven Systems & Distributed Architecture

Architect enterprise-scale event-driven systems using asynchronous processing, streaming platforms, message queues, and pub-sub patterns.
Define architecture patterns for high-volume event ingestion, transformation, orchestration, and real-time customer interaction workflows.
Design resilient distributed systems with idempotency, retry mechanisms, dead-letter queues (DLQs), circuit breakers, and graceful degradation strategies.
Guide teams on performance optimization, scalability engineering, concurrency management, and low-latency system design.
Establish best practices for distributed messaging and event orchestration using Kafka, AWS MSK, RabbitMQ, SQS, SNS, and EventBridge.

API & Integration Architecture

Define enterprise API architecture standards for RESTful services, authentication, authorization, versioning, governance, and observability.
Architect high-throughput API gateways, proxy layers, caching mechanisms, and traffic routing strategies.
Design secure integrations with identity providers, loyalty platforms, payment gateways, CMS platforms, and commerce ecosystems.
Drive API security strategies including OAuth2, JWT, identity federation, rate limiting, and zero-trust integration models.
Establish reusable integration frameworks and service abstraction layers across enterprise systems.

Data & Persistence Architecture

Define enterprise data architecture strategies across relational and NoSQL database platforms.
Architect scalable persistence solutions using SQL databases and cloud-native NoSQL platforms such as Amazon DynamoDB and Azure Cosmos DB.
Establish standards for partitioning, indexing, caching, consistency models, replication, and high-availability database architectures.
Design data transformation and processing architectures supporting transactional, analytical, and event-driven workloads.
Ensure platform scalability, resiliency, and low-latency performance for QSR-scale traffic and global customer engagement use cases.

Cloud, DevOps & Observability

Lead cloud-native backend architecture on AWS leveraging services such as Lambda, ECS/EKS, API Gateway, DynamoDB, SQS, SNS, EventBridge, Redis, and Kafka/MSK.
Define Infrastructure as Code (IaC) standards using Terraform and support enterprise CI/CD modernization initiatives.
Establish observability frameworks using centralized logging, distributed tracing, OpenTelemetry, metrics collection, and monitoring strategies.
Drive architecture decisions related to resiliency, scalability, disaster recovery, security, and operational excellence.
Support platform engineering and DevOps teams in implementing production-grade backend infrastructure and deployment models.
QSR & Consumer Digital Platform Alignment

Ensure backend architecture aligns with QSR operational workflows including ordering, checkout, payments, loyalty accrual/redemption, and customer engagement journeys.
Partner with business and product stakeholders to translate customer experiences and commerce workflows into scalable enterprise platform architectures.
Drive architectural decisions that support omnichannel customer engagement across web, mobile, kiosk, and third-party integrations.
Support scalability requirements for peak traffic events, promotions, campaigns, and global digital platform operations.

Leadership, Governance & Collaboration

Provide technical leadership, mentorship, and architectural guidance to backend engineering teams.
Lead architecture reviews, technical governance discussions, and enterprise solution design workshops.
Collaborate closely with architects, engineering managers, DevOps teams, QA teams, and product owners in Agile delivery environments.
Act as the primary technical escalation point for architecture, scalability, integration, and backend platform challenges.
Drive continuous improvement initiatives related to engineering standards, architecture governance, platform resiliency, and delivery excellence.

Required Qualifications

12+ years of backend engineering and architecture experience with strong expertise in Python-based backend ecosystems.
Deep expertise in FastAPI, REST API architecture, asynchronous programming, and distributed systems design.
Proven experience architecting and leading large-scale event-driven platforms and cloud-native microservices ecosystems.
Strong understanding of data structures, distributed computing, event processing, and high-performance backend architecture.
Extensive experience designing scalable systems on AWS cloud platforms.
Proven experience defining enterprise backend architecture for high-scale distributed systems and customer-facing digital platforms.
Strong understanding of e-commerce ecosystems, digital ordering workflows, loyalty programs, identity systems, and customer engagement platforms.
Experience defining architecture standards for CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code (Terraform), DevOps, and observability practices.
Strong leadership, stakeholder management, communication, and cross-functional collaboration skills.

Nice to Have

Direct experience with Paytronix or similar enterprise loyalty platforms.
Experience in QSR, retail, hospitality, or large-scale consumer digital ecosystems.
Exposure to Kafka, RabbitMQ, AWS MSK, and enterprise event-streaming platforms.
Experience with feature flags, canary deployments, blue-green deployments, and progressive delivery models.
Knowledge of OAuth2, JWT, identity federation, and enterprise API security frameworks.
Exposure to multi-region cloud architectures, global scalability strategies, and enterprise resiliency patterns.
Experience driving enterprise modernization and digital transformation initiatives.