Software Architect

Our client is building an industrial platform from their technology hub in Abu Dhabi, with applications across mining, energy and industrial operations. They are looking for an experienced Architect to own the platform architecture end to end. This is a senior individual contributor position. You will set the technical direction for the platform rather than manage a team, and you will stay close enough to the build to prove your own designs. KEY RESPONSIBILITIES • Define the target-state architecture, standards and reusable patterns for the platform across on-premise, cloud-native and hybrid environments • Design the streaming and ingestion layer for high-frequency time-series and event data • Architect how operational data is contextualised – asset models, ontologies and graph-based relationships that turn raw telemetry into something an operator can act on • Architect integration with source systems: devices, gateways, historians, enterprise applications and maintenance systems • Design secure data pipelines for model hosting, vector databases and real-time observability • Establish governance: safety frameworks, data privacy controls, cost optimisation and compliance • Work across product, engineering, operations, AI and security teams, and engage directly with customers and vendors on technical direction WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR • 15 or more years of experience, with a substantial period at architect level • Strong, current .NET and C# foundations, with a hands-on engineering background before moving into architecture • Apache Kafka or equivalent event-streaming platforms at production scale • Graph databases and semantic data modelling – Neo4j, RDF, ontologies, knowledge graphs or similar • Microservices, event-driven architecture, containerised deployment and API design • Experience handling high volumes of real-time or time-series data • Evidence of owning a complete platform architecture rather than a single component, layer or workstream • Bachelor's or master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Data Engineering or a related field DOMAIN BACKGROUND Industrial automation or industrial IoT is our first preference – experience with SCADA, PLCs, OPC UA, MQTT, historians or plant data is a significant advantage. We will also consider strong architects from: • Building automation and smart buildings • Medical devices and life sciences • Aerospace and avionics • Automotive and connected mobility • Financial services, where you have worked with genuinely high-volume, real-time data DESIRABLE • Applied AI on operational data – LLM integration, agent frameworks, MCP, RAG pipelines or MLOps • Time-series platforms such as InfluxDB, TimescaleDB or OSI PI • Multi-tenant and multi-site platform design • Familiarity with industrial security standards such as IEC 62443