Software Architect

About this role

<p><strong>Location:</strong> Shanghai, China (Global Engineering Hub) <strong>Position Type:</strong> Full-time | Hands-on Technical Leadership</p> <h3><strong>Position Summary</strong></h3> <p>As a <strong>Software Architect</strong>, you will join our core engineering leadership team to drive system design, technical innovation, and architectural excellence across multiple business domains. This is a highly influential, dual-capability role designed for a strategic thinker who actively balances system-wide technical vision with hands-on coding execution.</p> <p>You will dive deep into our systems, identifying technical debt and designing long-term optimization strategies. At the same time, you will remain active in the codebase, building prototypes, delivering features, and establishing standard patterns for our engineering teams. Additionally, you will lead the evaluation and adoption of cutting-edge open-source and commercial solutions to keep our technology stack at the frontier of high-velocity, high-quality development.</p> <h3><strong>Key Responsibilities</strong></h3> <ul> <li><strong>System Architecture &amp; Design:</strong> Own the end-to-end technical architecture for high-impact initiatives across different domains, translating complex commercial goals into robust, scalable, and secure designs.</li> <li><strong>Hands-on Technical Execution:</strong> Maintain a strong presence in the codebase by developing critical components, executing high-value features, and creating functional prototypes to validate design concepts.</li> <li><strong>System Modernization &amp; Tech Debt Management:</strong> Map our legacy applications, identify technical debt, and formulate incremental, cloud-native service decomposition strategies to optimize reliability and reduce complexity.</li> <li><strong>Technical Vendor &amp; Open-Source Evaluation:</strong> Proactively research, audit, and integrate best-in-class third-party software, libraries, and tools from the market to accelerate feature delivery.</li> <li><strong>Engineering Governance &amp; Mentorship:</strong> Define clear service boundaries, API contracts, and database schema standards while mentoring engineering teams on system design best practices and coding discipline.</li> <li><strong>AI-Native Infrastructure Evolution:</strong> Lead the architecture's preparation for AI-native workflows, designing Model Context Protocol (MCP)-ready endpoints and tools to enable automated, agentic code generation and testing workflows.</li> </ul> <h3><strong>Required Qualifications</strong></h3> <ul> <li><strong>Professional Experience:</strong> 8+ years of software development experience, with at least 3+ years operating in an architect or principal-level role guiding technical direction across multiple teams or products.</li> <li><strong>Development Mastery:</strong> Expert hands-on coding skills in at least one major language, such as <strong>Java, C#, Go, or Node.js/TypeScript</strong>.</li> <li><strong>Relational Database Expertise:</strong> Extensive experience with high-scale relational database modeling, index optimization, and performance tuning (specifically with <strong>PostgreSQL or SQL Server</strong>).</li> <li><strong>Cloud-Native &amp; Platform Infrastructure:</strong> Solid experience building and scaling applications using modern cloud infrastructures (such as AWS, GCP, or Azure), containerization (<strong>Docker/Kubernetes</strong>), Ingress controllers, and edge/CDN technologies like <strong>Cloudflare</strong>.</li> <li><strong>Design Rigor:</strong> Proven expertise in modern software architecture patterns, including event-driven systems, domain-driven design (DDD), and high-availability transactional architectures.</li> <li><strong>Communication Skills:</strong> Exceptional ability to articulate complex technical trade-offs clearly to both local engineering teams and transnational executive stakeholders.</li> </ul> <h3><strong>Preferred &amp; "Nice-to-Have" Qualifications</strong></h3> <ul> <li><strong>E-commerce or High-Volume Fintech Experience:</strong> Prior experience engineering high-volume transactional platforms, or distributed retail inventories.</li> <li><strong>AI-First Developer Experience:</strong> Practical familiarity with LLMs, prompt engineering, and integrating developer-facing AI tools (such as <strong>Claude Code</strong>, Cursor, or Copilot) into the daily software development lifecycle.</li> </ul> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>#LI-OJ1</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p><div class="content-conclusion"><hr> <p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>Staffing Agency Submission Notice</strong></span> <br>iHerb does not accept unsolicited 3rd party ("Agency") candidates. If you are an Agency, please send any requests to be considered as a supplier in our Vendor Management System to <a href="mailto:staffingvendors@iherb.com" target="_blank">staffingvendors@iherb.com</a>. Do not contact iHerb employees directly. If requested to work on a role, any Agency candidates would be presented through the internal recruiting organization.</span></p> <hr> <p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>About iHerb<br></strong></span></span>iHerb is on a mission to make health and wellness accessible to all. We offer Earth’s best-curated selection of health and wellness products, at the best possible value, delivered with the most convenient experience.<br><br>We’re the world’s largest eCommerce platform dedicated to vitamins, minerals, and supplements, and other health and wellness products. For more than 25 years, we’ve been making it simple for people all over the world to purchase the highest quality products. From supplements to skincare to grocery items, we ship over 50,000 products, from over 1,800 brands direct to our customers in 180+ countries.<br><br>Our vision is to become the #1 destination for hea