Principal Software Architect, IQGeo

• This is a role for a highly accomplished technologist who wants to help shape the next decade of telecom operations – creating the industry’s first continuously self-correcting network model
• Experience in building large-scale distributed systems and event-driven architectures. Examples include:
• Complex data pipelines, ETL/ELT, and real-time streaming frameworks
• Sensor-driven computing: computer vision, telemetry systems, OTDR/test equipment data, geospatial data
• Knowledge graphs, graph databases, semantic/ontology-based modelling, or advanced schema-driven systems
• Designing architectures that unify heterogeneous data sources into coherent decision-making frameworks
• Experience of building systems on at least one major cloud vendor’s platforms (AWS preferred)
• Performance and scale: you have demonstrable experience of architecting and building systems that can ingest and process millions of events per day
• Hands-on: you enjoy writing code and building prototypes, as well as helping to guide others in the productization phase. We expect that you’ll personally write significant portions (up to 50%) of the initial prototypes, then heavily contribute to the production code base
• Comfortable with uncertainty: there is a lot that we don’t yet know how to solve. You’ll be at the centre of finding solutions
• Ability to lead and influence: you’ll have a track record of working with multiple engineering teams to deliver complex products, convincing them of your approach, and marshalling the work
• Communication: you’ll be happy debating with engineering teams on a whiteboard as well as presenting to executives using a slide deck, and you’ll know how to adjust your style to each audience
• Curiosity: you will not know everything about the domains across which you’re working (AI, fibre networks, geospatial information systems, distributed systems) so you’ll need to be good at listening and learning quickly
• Willingness to travel to other IQGeo offices (Denver, Ghent, Paris) for ~1 week at a time, approximately one trip/quarter
• Fluent written and spoken English
• Bachelor’s (or higher) degree from an accredited university in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field; or equivalent industry experience

Desirable

• Telecoms companies today frequently don’t have good data on how their networks are physically connected, which means wasted time and money, plus it’s a blocker to deploying AI because the source data has holes in
• At IQGeo we’re on a mission to change that, by making a digital twin of the physical network that is updated in real-time from a whole host of sources
• We’re looking for a Principal Software Architect who can lead that effort, doing the initial research, be hands-on creating prototypes, and then working with multiple Engineering teams around the globe to productise the solution
• Our Engineering teams are in Cambridge (UK), Denver (USA), Salt Lake City (USA), Ghent (Belgium), and Paris (France) and are responsible for designing and developing our geospatial products which are available both as cloud services and for on-premises deployment
• You will be helping to develop the next generation of innovative geospatial products that support mission-critical operations for our global customer base
• We’re looking for someone hands-on who can both define the system architecture and create the first prototypes themselves, then work with our teams around the world to build a true product that runs at scale at tier 1 telcos, globally
• This is not easy: it will require true innovation as well as development of production software
• It's a system-of-systems problem touching computer vision, AI/ML reasoning, heterogeneous sensor data ingestion, graph modelling, large-scale distributed systems, and workflow orchestration
• You will work closely with a Principal Product Manager as they define the vision and goals for the product, and you determine the best ways to achieve those goals
• The outcomes we’re looking for are:
• 3 months in: you have built the first rough prototype that proves the problem is tractable
• 6 months in: working with a team, you’ve built the first alpha of the product, and we can demo it to customers
• 12 months in: the first customer is live
• This is not a management role, but you will be working with multiple managers and architects to engage their teams. Influencing skills are therefore key