Vice President of Architecture

ABOUT THE ROLE

Accela is seeking a Vice President of Architecture to serve as a senior technology leader responsible for defining and driving the company's technology strategy, application architecture, and cloud infrastructure architecture.

This role is intended for a developer at heart-someone who fully understands the modern cloud stack end-to-end and has successfully led application development, DevSecOps, and infrastructure teams. The VP of Architecture brings both hands-on technical depth and executive level leadership, enabling them to guide teams, influence outcomes, and make durable architecture decisions that support Accela's products and platforms.

This leader will work closely with the CTO and engineering leadership to ensure Accela's technological choices drive velocity, quality, scalability, and security, while remaining aligned with business and customer needs.

SPECIFIC RESPONSIBILITIES

Architecture & Technology Strategy

• Define and evolve application, platform, and infrastructure architecture within a cloud-native SaaS environment
• Establish architectural principles, standards, and reference models that guide teams while preserving appropriate flexibility
• Lead architecture decisions for major initiatives, products, and platforms
• Balance near-term delivery needs with long-term sustainability and scalability

Cloud & Platform Leadership

• Own and deeply understand the full cloud stack, including:
  
  
  
  • Cloud infrastructure and networking (IaaS / PaaS)
  • Container platforms and orchestration
  • Application architecture (APIs, microservices, distributed systems)
  • CI/CD pipelines, DevSecOps, observability, and reliability engineering
  
  
  
  
• Champion pragmatic, cloud-native approaches that improve resilience, scalability, and developer productivity
• Embed security and regulatory requirements into architectural designs in partnership with Security and Compliance

Engineering Leadership & Influence

• Provide technical leadership across product, engineering, and professional services teams
• Mentor architects, principal engineers, and senior technical leaders
• Lead through influence-driving clarity, alignment, and technical direction across teams
• Step in to resolve complex or high-risk technical challenges

Reuse, Frameworks & Engineering Velocity

• Promote shared platforms, reusable frameworks, and standardized tooling to enhance speed and quality
• Reduce duplication and fragmentation through thoughtful architectural design
• Strengthen engineering practices that scale teams while maintaining craftsmanship
• Deploy AI-powered solutions or agentic AI frameworks to accelerate engineering velocity and automate architectural insights
• Implement AI capabilities within SaaS products in alignment with business strategy and customer value

Executive Partnership & Enterprise Impact

• Serve as a trusted technical advisor to executive leadership
• Translate complex technical concepts for technical and non-technical audiences
• Represent platform and architectural considerations in company-level planning
• Build and scale a high-performing architecture organization
• Foster a culture of security, empowerment, and ownership across the company
• Partner with executive leadership to define and advance the security strategy and roadmap

Travel

• Up to 15-20% travel for executive meetings, customer engagements, industry conferences, and critical incident response

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• 12+ years of progressive experience in software engineering and architecture leadership
• Proven executive-level leadership in cloud-native SaaS environments
• Deep hands-on expertise across modern cloud infrastructure, distributed systems, APIs, container orchestration, and DevSecOps
• Demonstrated success leading large-scale architecture decisions and platform modernization efforts
• Experience embedding security and compliance into system design
• Track record of mentoring senior technical leaders and influencing cross-functional teams
• Experience deploying AI/ML or agentic AI frameworks within SaaS environments
• Strong executive communication skills

DESIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Experience in GovTech or highly regulated industries
• Background scaling architecture teams in mid-market or growth-stage SaaS organizations
• Demonstrated success improving engineering velocity through platform standardization and AI enablement
• Experience presenting at industry conferences or serving as a technical spokesperson
• Familiarity with enterprise customer environments and large-scale platform integrations

ABOUT ACCELA
For nearly 20 years, Accela has been an industry leader in designing and delivering government software to improve efficiency, increase citizen engagement and enable the development of thriving communities. Today, citizens are savvy to how services should be delivered, and expect a consistently convenient, openly transparent view into their local government. While government agencies struggle to do more with less, our mission has never been more critical. Accela provides a robust, cloud-based platform of government software solutions that accelerate growth, efficiency, and transparency in communities of all sizes. From planning, to building, to service request management and more, Accela's SaaS offerings level the playing field for small and medium governments and enable smaller agencies to leverage larger city technologies. Our open and flexible technology helps agencies address specific needs today, while ensuring they are well prepared for the emerging challenges of the future.

OUR COMMITMENT TO DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION
Accela believes in developing and nurturing a workplace community where our differences are celebrated, and everyone feels a sense of psychological safety and belonging. Accela is committed to putting resources and attention towards evolving our practices, policies, and philosophies to enable diversity to thrive and to support equity in opportunity for everyone.

COMPENSATION AND WELL-BEING
The annual base salary range for this full-time position is $250,000-$275,000 (less applicable taxes). The actual annual base salary offered may be adjusted based on a variety of factors, including but not limited to, location, education, skills, training, and experience. In addition to an annual base salary, this position is eligible for an annual bonus target. This is a discretionary bonus awarded based on company and individual goal achievement.

Accela's U.S. team members will receive a generous benefits package consisting of options including flexible time off, comprehensive medical, dental, and vision plans, family planning benefits, 401(k) retirement savings plan with company match, health savings account with company contributions, flexible spending account, life, accident, and disability coverage, business travel insurance, employee assistance programs, and other well-being benefits.

Accela is an Equal Opportunity Employer/Affirmative Action Employer and will respond to requests for job accommodations.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, sex, color, religion, national origin, protected veteran status, or based on disability, gender identity, and sexual orientation

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