Software Architect

In this role, you will be responsible for designing and building the systems and services that power cross-cutting data capabilities across our organization and their integration with Autodesk's existing and future AEC products. A key focus area will be the design and evolution of AEC data schemas—the semantic models and data structures that enable seamless interoperability between design, construction, and operations workflows.

This opportunity is for you if you have a passion for data modeling and schema design, experience with complex system architectures, and are excited by the idea of transforming how AEC professionals use data to capture knowledge, inform decisions, and deliver projects.

As a Software Architect in the AEC Data team, you will be at the forefront of designing the next generation of capabilities for the Autodesk Forma Industry Cloud. You'll collaborate with software architects, domain experts, and product teams across Revit, Civil 3D, AutoCAD, Autodesk Construction Cloud, and Autodesk Forma. You'll define the software architecture that reimagines the continuous flow of AEC Data (e.g., 3D models, 2D drawings, issue tracking, cost, sensor streams, etc.) and information throughout the entire lifecycle of a built asset, from design and construction through operation and maintenance. This is an individual contributor role reporting to the Distinguished Architect, AEC Data team.

Responsibilities

• System Architecture: Define and evolve cross-team architecture for data platforms and services in the AEC Data organization; design distributed systems including APIs, event streams, and data pipelines.
• Schema Design & Evolution: Design, document, and evolve data schemas for AEC domain entities (buildings, infrastructure, spaces, systems, components, relationships) ensuring extensibility and backward compatibility; create semantic data models that capture AEC domain knowledge, including property sets, classification systems, and relationship hierarchies.
• Schema Governance: Establish schema versioning strategies, deprecation policies, and migration patterns; maintain a schema registry and change management process; define schema validation rules, constraints, and quality checks.
• Standards & Governance: Establish standards, reference architectures, and reusable components; lead architectural decision records (ADRs) and run design reviews across teams.
• Interoperability: Define and implement schema mappings between industry standards (IFC, COBie, CityGML, LandXML) and Autodesk's internal data models.
• API & Service Design: Design APIs and services optimized for REST, GraphQL, and gRPC interfaces; define serialization formats (JSON Schema, Avro, Protobuf) and ensure backward compatibility at scale.
• Reliability & Performance: Ensure reliability, security, and performance of systems; define SLOs and drive observability (metrics, tracing, logging).
• Cross-Team Alignment: Partner across the AEC organization's product and platform teams to align roadmaps, gather requirements, validate against real-world use cases, and drive adoption.
• Communication: Communicate architectures with clear views and diagrams (e.g., C4) and executive-ready narratives; produce comprehensive documentation and onboarding materials.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, or equivalent experience.
• 10+ years as a Software Architect in data-intensive cloud environments.
• Experience with cloud services, API design, database architecture, big data tools and frameworks.
• Strong understanding of data modeling and schema design, including proficiency in schema definition languages (JSON Schema, etc.) and experience with schema versioning, backward/forward compatibility, and evolution strategies.
• Excellent knowledge of software design and architecture patterns.
• Demonstrated ability to influence without authority and drive cross-team alignment.
• Mastery of taking complex ideas and conveying them in a concise and impactful manner.
• Excellent verbal, written communication, and presentation abilities to effectively communicate software architecture strategy to a variety of stakeholders.
• Ability to collaborate with a global team.

Preferred Qualifications

• AEC Domain Knowledge: Experience in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction industry; familiarity with industry standards (IFC, COBie, gbXML, CityGML, LandXML, UniFormat, OmniClass).
• Cloud Services: Experience with AWS strongly preferred (EC2, ECS, Lambda, API Gateway, S3, DynamoDB, RDS).
• Database Architecture: Experience with Snowflake, relational databases, NoSQL; understanding of data modeling best practices.
• Event-Driven Architectures: Kafka or Kinesis; exactly-once processing; schema registries (Confluent, AWS Glue).
• API & Service Design: REST, gRPC, GraphQL; versioning and backward compatibility at scale.
• Distributed Systems: Microservices, service mesh, event-driven architecture, stream processing.
• Observability/SRE: OpenTelemetry, distributed tracing, metrics/SLOs for data services.
• Semantic Technologies: Knowledge graphs, RDF/OWL, property graphs, or feature stores for ML (nice-to-have).
• BIM Expertise: Experience with Building Information Modeling concepts, Revit families, or similar parametric modeling systems.

About the Team

The AEC Data team is building the foundational data infrastructure that powers Autodesk's vision for connected construction. We're creating the platforms, services, and unified data models that span the entire built asset lifecycle—from initial design concepts through construction, operations, and eventual renovation or decommissioning. Our work enables the seamless flow of information across Autodesk products and third-party integrations, helping AEC professionals make better decisions with better data.

Why Join Us

• Shape the future of AEC data platforms and standards at an industry-leading company.
• Design systems and schemas that will be used by millions of architects, engineers, and construction professionals worldwide.
• Collaborate with world-class software architects and engineers across Autodesk's AEC portfolio.
• Contribute to open standards and interoperability initiatives that benefit the entire industry.
• Be part of a team that values technical excellence, innovation, and continuous learning.