Hybrid Principal Engineer – Solutions Architect, PHP, AWS, LLMs

at ClearPoint

• Job title: Principal Engineer – Solutions Architect, PHP, AWS, LLMs
• Job type: Contract
• Experience level: Lead
• Salary: Not specified
• Degree requirement: Professional Certificate
• Tech skills: AWS, MySQL, PHP
• Location requirements: Hybrid, Auckland, New Zealand

About the role

• Principal Engineer leading architectural analysis and design for a high-impact client project. Extensive PHP and AWS experience required for scalability solutions.

Responsibilities

• Lead the architectural analysis and design of a critical subsystem within a large-scale, high-throughput platform.
• Solve complex scalability constraints by deconstructing a monolith into a modularised, domain-led architecture.
• Work as part of the client’s leadership group to provide the blueprint for their next phase of enterprise growth.
• Analyse the current "billing trigger" subsystem and design a target architecture that removes database-locking constraints and supports bulk API actions.
• Formalise and document a cohesive tech strategy to guide engineering squads and measure the success of the new design.
• Use current observability tools and add granular metrics to capture and analyse database load and performance bottlenecks.
• Identify bounded contexts and define clear interfaces and event-driven boundaries between domains.
• Create a work breakdown with T-shirt-sized milestones and transition stages to "break apart the tentacles" of the existing monolith.
• Build and validate POCs to test domain boundaries and validate architectural choices.

Requirements

• Extensive experience with PHP, MySQL, and AWS environments is essential.
• Proven experience with evolutionary design and incremental architecture patterns such as Strangler Fig, anti-corruption layers, and shadow traffic.
• A deep ability to see through a monolith to identify coupling types, transactional boundaries, and underlying domain seams.
• The ability to influence engineering leaders and create alignment while prioritising business value over technical purity.
• Comfort working in low-test, high-risk environments by using observability-driven validation to get legacy systems under control.
• Experience using LLMs (e.g., Claude Opus) for accelerated analysis of legacy codebases is highly appropriate for this role.

Benefits

• Immediate Start: This project is ready to move into execution quickly.
• Co-working access across NZ and Australia.