Principal Architect

Principal Architect – Distributed Platforms & Systems Location: Liège (Hybrid & Flexible) Language: English Contract: Freelance or Permanent Duration: Long-term collaboration We are supporting a large organisation operating in a complex, distributed environment, currently evolving a modern digital platform spanning multiple domains, technologies, and teams. This is a highly transversal Principal Architect role, operating end-to-end across systems, platforms, integrations, and data-heavy environments. The role combines strong architectural vision and systems thinking with deep hands-on engineering involvement, ensuring architecture decisions align with business strategy, time-to-market, and long-term platform evolution. The Role As Principal Architect, you will own architecture end-to-end, operating across platforms, integrations, and data-heavy systems rather than within a single domain. You will: Define and evolve end-to-end architecture aligned with business strategy, delivery speed, and long-term scalability Design and validate distributed, event-driven systems and integration patterns Work closely with Data and Platform teams to improve system design, delivery efficiency, automation, and quality Stay close to engineering teams, stepping in when needed to review designs, validate workflows, and unblock delivery Continuously assess the engineering funnel to ensure strong technical execution and scalability Maintain a clear architectural inventory (APIs, platforms, integrations, capabilities) using tools such as Ardoq Technical Scope .NET, Python, Node.js, React; strong hands-on engineering Distributed, event-driven systems (Kafka, RabbitMQ, Service Bus) CI/CD, automated testing, DevEx, scalability and resilience What We're Looking For Principal / Lead Architect experience in complex environments Hands-on, execution-focused, pragmatic Strong stakeholder skills Comfortable with ambiguity and continuous improvement