Functional Architect

Horizontal Role — Cross-Domain| AI-Native Systems Thinker

AI Native Cross-Domain NFR Ownership Business-Tech Bridge

ABOUT THE ROLE

We are seeking an exceptional Functional Architect to operate horizontally across all four of our business sectors: Education, Commerce, Industrial, and Compliance. This is not a siloed role — you will own the functional system design fabric that stitches together business logic, domain models, and technical architecture across a diverse product portfolio.

The ideal candidate is AI-Native: someone who does not just use AI tools, but thinks through systems design with AI at the core. A background that starts in technical architecture and evolves into functional mastery is the trajectory we prize. We understand this is a rare profile — and we are prepared to assess potential as much as current fit.

CORE MANDATE

What You Own

Functional System Design: Define the functional architecture across all four domains — Education, Commerce, Industrial, Compliance.
Business Object Modeling: Identify, name, and formalize key business objects, entities, and their relationships across domains.
Non-Functional Requirements (NFRs): Own NFRs from Day 1 — scalability, reliability, security, compliance, performance, and extensibility.
Domain-to-Tech Bridge: Translate domain-specific business language and rules into structured functional specifications that engineering can act on.
Cross-Domain Consistency: Establish shared vocabulary, data contracts, and design patterns that scale across all verticals.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Functional Design & Modeling

Lead functional architecture reviews across Education, Commerce, Industrial, and Compliance products.
Create and maintain domain models, entity-relationship diagrams, and functional data flows.
Define bounded contexts and integration patterns between domain modules.
Develop canonical data models that enable interoperability across sector platforms.
Document functional specifications in collaboration with domain SMEs and engineering leads.

NFR & Architecture Governance

Own a comprehensive NFR register from project inception — not as an afterthought.
Define architecture guardrails: latency, data residency, auditability, fault tolerance.
Review and approve technical designs for functional compliance.
Identify cross-cutting concerns (auth, audit logs, multi-tenancy) and design shared solutions.
Champion AI-first architecture patterns — agents, embeddings, retrieval augmentation.

Stakeholder & Domain Alignment

Serve as the functional authority in cross-functional product and engineering meetings.
Partner with Product Managers across verticals to translate strategy into architecture.
Facilitate domain modeling workshops with business owners.
Identify gaps between business intent and technical implementation — and resolve them.

AI-Native Capabilities

Design architectures that are AI-ready: modular, event-driven, and embedding-aware.
Evaluate AI/ML tooling (LLMs, vector DBs, RAG pipelines) for fit within each domain.
Prototype functional AI interactions: intelligent search, compliance co-pilots, adaptive UX.
Maintain an AI capability map across the portfolio — tracking where AI adds the highest ROI.

CROSS-DOMAIN SECTOR CONTEXT

Sector

Education

Commerce

Industrial

Compliance

QUALIFICATIONS

Ideal Candidate Profile

Originated as a Technical Architect (software/systems design) and evolved into a Functional Architect — this trajectory is highly valued.
AI-Native mindset: actively designs systems with LLMs, agents, embeddings, and intelligent automation as first-class components.
Proven experience creating domain models, entity-relationship diagrams, and functional specifications across complex B2B product ecosystems.
Demonstrated NFR ownership: authored and enforced scalability, security, compliance, and performance requirements from project kickoff.
Comfortable working across multiple business domains without deep domain expertise in each — pattern recognition and fast context-switching are key.
Strong communicator able to translate between business stakeholders and engineering teams with equal fluency.

Technical Foundation

API design (REST, GraphQL, event-driven)
Data modeling: relational, document, graph
Cloud architecture: AWS / Azure / GCP
Microservices and domain-driven design (DDD)
AI/ML infrastructure: vector DBs, RAG, agents

Functional Skills

Business process modeling (BPMN, UML)
Functional spec authoring and review
NFR frameworks and quality attributes
Stakeholder facilitation and domain workshops
Architecture decision records (ADRs)

WHY THIS ROLE

What Makes This Unique

Horizontal mandate: you will have a birds-eye view of the entire product portfolio — four sectors, dozens of platforms.
Build the functional architecture practice from the ground up — this is not a maintenance role.
Work alongside AI-native product and engineering teams who value architectural rigor.
Influence product strategy directly — functional architecture shapes what can and cannot be built.
Rare opportunity to apply AI-first thinking across industries: EdTech, Retail, Industrial, and Compliance.