Shipping Companies

Cyprus

Columbia Shipmanagement LTD

DevOps, Cloud & Infrastructure

<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.smart-sea.com/">SmartSea</a>, formed by industry leaders SITA (aviation) and Columbia Shipmanagement (maritime), leverages aviation-grade technology and expertise to deliver the next wave of maritime digital applications on an innovative unified platform—transforming how shipping companies operate.&nbsp;Job DescriptionWe are seeking an experienced Platform Architect to shape, govern, and continuously evolve the SmartSea Vision platform that underpins all current and future products. This is a senior, hands-on architecture role focused on platform coherence, composability, and long-term sustainability—not individual application design.&nbsp;Working at the intersection of technology strategy, product engineering, and delivery, you will ensure SmartSea Vision evolves as a resilient, extensible, and secure platform, capable of supporting a growing portfolio of SaaS products in a regulated, mission-critical maritime environment.The Platform Architect is accountable for the clarity and quality of architectural decisions and for how architecture shows up in day-to-day delivery. This is not an ivory-tower role. Success is measured by clear decisions, lightweight governance, and architecture that teams actively use to move faster—rather than by documents alone&nbsp;Main Duties and Responsibilities<ul><li>Platform Architecture &amp; Strategy<ul><li>Define, own, and continuously evolve the target platform architecture for SmartSea Vision, aligned with business strategy, product roadmaps, and long-term scalability goals.</li><li>Establish and maintain clear architecture principles, standards, and guardrails across cloud, integration, data, security, and application layers.</li><li>Ensure the platform remains composable, enabling autonomous product teams to build, deploy, and evolve services without tight coupling.</li><li>Maintain and publish platform reference architectures that reflect real-world usage and guide day-to-day design decisions.</li></ul></li><li>Architectural Decision-Making &amp; Learning<ul><li>Design and own a lightweight Architectural Decision Record (ADR) approach, embedded into existing delivery tools and workflows.</li><li>Ensure architectural decisions are explicit, documented, and can be revisited in time.</li><li>Facilitate architectural trade-off discussions, helping teams converge on pragmatic decisions.</li><li>Establish feedback loops to assess the impact of architectural decisions and evolve principles and standards based on learning.</li><li>Foster a culture where architecture is treated as a shared learning system, not a compliance exercise.</li></ul></li><li>Cloud, Integration &amp; Data Foundations<ul><li>Design and govern cloud-native architectures leveraging Azure (or equivalent), containerisation, and event-driven patterns.</li><li>Define integration standards and patterns (APIs, events, messaging) to enable interoperability between SmartSea products, third-party systems, and legacy maritime platforms.</li><li>Collaborate with data and product stakeholders to establish consistent data models, data ownership, and data flow principles across the platform.</li><li>Ensure platform designs support scalability, resilience, observability, and operational excellence.</li></ul></li><li>Architecture Governance &amp; Enablement<ul><li>Act as the architectural authority for the platform, ensuring alignment with agreed principles while avoiding unnecessary delivery friction.</li><li>Embed architecture touchpoints into product discovery, initiative shaping, planning, and cross-team initiatives.</li><li>Establish and run a regular architecture review cadence focused on decision-making and learning, not sign-off.</li><li>Continuously evolve governance mechanisms to remain lightweight, proportionate to risk, and scalable across teams.</li><li>Actively identify and remove architectural processes that slow teams down without improving outcomes.</li></ul></li><li>Technology Evolution &amp; Risk Management<ul><li>Own the technology evolution roadmap for the platform, identifying modernization opportunities, technical debt, and emerging technologies.</li><li>Proactively assess and mitigate architectural risks related to security, compliance, scalability, resilience, and operational complexity.</li><li>Ensure platform architecture supports high availability, disaster recovery, and regulatory requirements relevant to a SaaS maritime platform.</li></ul></li><li>Collaboration &amp; Leadership<ul><li>Work closely with Product Management, Engineering, Security, DevOps, and Delivery leadership to ensure architectural decisions are understood, actionable, and aligned.</li><li>Mentor senior engineers and architects, building a strong architectural community and shared ownership mindset.</li><li>Influence without authority, helping teams align around common architectural intent.</li><li>Act as a trusted technical advisor to senior stakeholders, translating complex architectural topics into clear business implications.</li></ul></li></ul>Skills and QualificationsEssential<ul><li>Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Engineering, Information Systems, or equivalent practical experience.</li><li>5+ years of experience in software engineering and architecture roles, with demonstrated ownership of platform-level or enterprise-scale architectures.</li><li>Proven experience designing and governing cloud-native, distributed systems in complex, regulated environments.</li><li>Strong understanding of modern architectural patterns: microservices, event-driven architectures, APIs, domain-driven design, and platform engineering.</li><li>Deep experience with cloud platforms (Azure preferred), container orchestration (Docker/Kubernetes), and CI/CD ecosystems.</li><li>Solid understanding of identity, access management, security-by-design, and compliance considerations in SaaS platforms.</li><li>Strong understanding of Agile and product-centric delivery models in multi-team environments.</li><li>Proven ability to design architecture that enables team autonomy while maintaining overall system coherence.</li><li>Pragmatic decision-maker, comfortable making trade-offs between ideal architecture and delivery constraints.</li><li>Skilled facilitator of technical discussions and decision-making across diverse stakeholders.</li></ul>Desirable<ul><li>Experience in maritime, logistics, transportation, or other asset-intensive industries.</li><li>Experience integrating low-code platforms, enterprise systems, and custom-built services into a cohesive ecosystem.</li><li>Excellent communication skills, with the ability to influence without authority and align diverse stakeholders.</li><li>Systems thinker with a long-term mindset, capable of designing for growth, change, and uncertainty.</li><li>High level of ownership, accountability, and professional integrity.</li></ul>What we offerSmartSea is an Equal Opportunity Employer and values a diverse workforce with many different countries and cultures represented across the organisation.&nbsp;<ul><li>Competitive salary and discretionary bonus</li><li>Thirteen salaries</li><li>Pension fund</li><li>Medical insurance</li><li>Opportunities for professional growth and architectural leadership</li><li>Flexible working from home policy</li><li>A collaborative, product-driven and innovation-focused culture</li></ul>To apply, please send your CV to <a href="mailto:careers@csmcy.com">careers@csmcy.com</a> with the subject line “Application for Platform Architect Role.”

Platform Architect (SmartSea)

Platform Architect (SmartSea)

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