Principal Lead

Role Mission: Define and drive the enterprise middleware strategy aligned to business goals, cloud adoption, API-first architecture, and integration modernization. Set architectural standards, design patterns, and best practices across APIs, integration, messaging, and event platforms; ensure solutions are scalable, secure, and resilient. Ensure high availability, observability, performance, and operational readiness of middleware platforms in production, meeting SLAs for mission-critical systems. Lead modernization initiatives (legacy to cloud, monolith to microservices, on-prem to Kubernetes), evaluate new technologies, and continuously improve platform capabilities. Coach architects and engineers, influence cross-functional teams, and work closely with business, security, infrastructure, and vendors to deliver high-impact integration outcomes. Accountabilities: Middleware Platform Ownership Architecture Governance & Standards Delivery & Operational Excellence Transformation & Modernization Execution People, Stakeholder & Vendor Leadership Responsibilities: Lead the design, review, and approval of middleware solutions, ensuring compliance with enterprise architecture, security standards, and non-functional requirements. Work closely with delivery teams to plan, prioritize, and execute API, integration, and messaging initiatives, providing hands-on guidance for complex or high-risk implementations. Oversee production readiness, capacity planning, DR strategies, and support models; act as the highest technical escalation point for middleware incidents and issues. Assess middleware products, cloud services, and open-source technologies; provide recommendations for adoption, replacement, or optimization based on cost, risk, and scalability. Establish best practices for DevSecOps, CI/CD, automation, documentation, and knowledge sharing; coach teams to improve engineering maturity and delivery consistency. Team Scope/ Stakeholders: Provide technical leadership and direction to middleware engineers, senior engineers, and solution architects across multiple delivery squads and platforms. Collaborate closely with Enterprise Architecture, Application Development, Cloud & Infrastructure, SRE, DevOps, Security, and Network teams to deliver integrated, end-to-end solutions. Work with L2/L3 support, NOC, and ITSM teams to ensure operational readiness, incident resolution, root cause analysis, and continuous service improvement. Minimum Profile/ Track Record: 8–12+ years of experience in enterprise middleware, integration, or platform engineering roles, with at least 5+ years in a senior technical leadership or principal architect capacity. Proven track record of designing and running large-scale middleware platforms covering API management, ESB/integration, messaging, and event-driven architectures in complex, high-volume environments. Demonstrated success leading legacy-to-cloud migrations, monolith to microservices transitions, and middleware modernization initiatives using cloud-native and container-based platforms.