As Senior Staff Architect for Octopart, you’ll own the long-term architecture of the Octopart product and platform: how the domain evolves, how it aligns with the Common Data Model, and how the API serves teams across Altium, customers and partners. You’ll drive a model-first, domain-driven approach to design, so teams agree on the domain before the implementation.
You will:
- Define the long-term architecture and direction of Octopart as a product and a platform, with engineering and product leadership.
- Lead domain-driven design for Octopart: bounded contexts, shared domain models and alignment with the Common Data Model.
- Set API standards for the Octopart API: consistency, versioning, deprecation and schema evolution.
- Shape how Octopart integrates with Altium's products and with customer and partner systems.
- Guide the architecture of data ingestion and search as data volumes and sources grow.
- Work with the Altium teams that use the Octopart API, and with customers and partners through the Developer Center, and turn their needs into platform capabilities.
- Advise teams through the architecture advice process, and own cross-cutting decisions and their ADRs.
- Build prototypes and proofs of concept to test ideas before teams commit to them.
- Review designs and mentor engineers.
- This is a hands-on role: expect deep dives into a large codebase and high-volume production systems.
Essential skills
- 10+ years in software development, with substantial experience as an architect of a large-scale, data-intensive platform.
- Practical experience with domain-driven design and model-first approaches, including introducing them to other teams.
- A track record of setting long-term architecture direction and seeing it through over several years.
- Experience designing public APIs, ideally GraphQL: versioning, compatibility and schema evolution.
- Experience with large-scale data ingestion, processing and search.
- Strong understanding of distributed systems and data storage.
- Strong engineering skills in a modern language, and the ability to prototype quickly.
- Ability to quickly grasp complex systems and work with incomplete information.
- Excellent written and verbal communication, and experience working with many consuming teams, customers and partners.
- Hands-on use of AI coding tools, with the discipline to review their output.
Nice to have
- Experience with Go.
- Experience with React and Next.js.
- Experience with Elasticsearch, and with ScyllaDB or Cassandra.
- Experience with GraphQL federation and schema governance.
- Experience with common or canonical data models shared across products.
- Experience running a public API as a product: plans, limits and developer experience.
- Experience with MCP, LLM-based tools or agentic systems.
- Experience with electronic components, supply chain or distribution data, or the electronics industry.
Why Octopart?
Octopart is a global electronic component search and discovery platform that helps engineers and procurement professionals find, compare, and source the parts behind modern electronics. With 95+ million components from 11,000+ manufacturers and 600+ distributors, it brings technical specifications, pricing, and availability together in one place. Octopart reached 20 million unique users, giving our engineering team the opportunity to build products used at global scale.
What makes this role different
From search engine to platform. Octopart is where engineers find parts, pricing and stock. We’re turning it into a platform: the Octopart API is a GraphQL API organised by bounded context, available to customers and partners through the Altium Developer Center .
Connected across Altium. Octopart data flows into Altium Designer, Altium 365 and other products across Altium's portfolio, and into custom integrations built by customers and partners.
Data at scale. Part details, offers, pricing and stock from manufacturers and distributors are imported every day, in large volumes.
A domain worth modelling. Parts, manufacturers, sellers, offers, part families, reference designs and BOMs, aligned with Altium's Common Data Model . Model-first, domain-driven design is at the core of this role.
The long view. Octopart has a strong engineering team running the product. This role adds long-term thinking about how the Octopart domain and platform evolve.
Close to the team and the code. You’ll work side by side with the Octopart engineering team in Cambridge, and still prototype and work in the code.
Why the Architecture team?
Join our Architecture team and help shape the future of Altium's products. The team works across Altium Designer, Altium 365 and Octopart; in this role you’ll focus on Octopart and the products, customers and partners that build on it.
Octopart combines high-volume data ingestion, search and a public API, with technology ranging from Go services and a React/Next.js front end to Elasticsearch, ScyllaDB and GraphQL.
We work cross-functionally with engineering teams across the organisation, its locat
Senior Staff Architect, Octopart in Cambridge employer: renesaselectronics
Altium is an exceptional employer, fostering a culture of innovation and collaboration in the heart of Cambridge Science Park. With a strong focus on employee growth, we offer extensive professional development resources, a supportive work environment, and generous benefits including private health insurance and a pension scheme. Our commitment to work-life balance is evident through our flexible remote working options and emphasis on mental health and wellbeing, making Altium a rewarding place for talented individuals to thrive.
