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.
