Tech Lead/Senior Software Architect (Remote: PT)

Alongside partners with organizations to drive digital transformation and build high-performing tech teams.

We're building a real-time facility navigation and asset-tracking platform for industrial and logistics sites - GPS/BLE-based positioning, live forklift and asset overlays, zone/dwell analytics, and a driver-facing mobile app, running on a distributed, actor-model backend, as well as an admin portal.

The Role

We're hiring a senior Tech Lead / Software Architect to own the technical direction of the platform's backend architecture, with a specific focus on its actor-model distributed system (built on Microsoft Orleans). Beyond architecture, this person leads the engineering team day-to-day: coordinating closely with the Project Manager on planning and delivery status, and joining client calls to speak to technical progress and tradeoffs. This is a fractional engagement - roughly half-time, spread across the full length of the project.

Responsibilities - Architecture & Engineering

• Own and evolve the architecture of a distributed, actor-model backend (Microsoft Orleans) handling realtime positioning and telemetry data at scale

• Set technical direction for the .NET backend: API design, data pipelines, service boundaries

• Design the path toward multi-node Orleans clustering as the platform scales

• Review code and provide hands-on technical guidance to backend and full stack engineers

• Identify and remediate security and architectural risk areas (authentication, data handling, system hardening)

• Partner with data/telemetry and QA engineers on ingestion pipeline and analytics architecture decisions

• Advise on CI/CD, staging environment, and release practices

Responsibilities - Team Leadership & Communication

• Act as engineering team lead: set priorities, unblock the team, and own technical quality across the engineering group

• Coordinate closely with the Project Manager on sprint planning, delivery status, and risk/blocker escalation

• Join client calls run by the project team, speaking directly to technical progress and tradeoffs when needed

• Mentor other engineers, raising the technical bar across the team

Requirements

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience, including senior/lead-level architecture responsibility

• Hands-on experience with actor-model distributed systems

• Strong backend expertise in C#/.NET — API design, services, data pipelines at scale

• Experience architecting systems that process realtime/streaming data (telemetry, sensor data, WebSockets)

• Proven track record leading a small engineering team — code review, mentoring, setting technical direction

• Experience working closely with a Project Manager on planning and delivery, including joining client calls to speak to technical topics

• Strong written and spoken English — comfortable communicating with both engineers and non-technical stakeholders

• Security-conscious architecture practices (authentication, PII handling, system hardening)

Nice to Have

• Experience with GPS/BLE positioning or realtime geospatial systems

• Background in industrial, logistics, or IoT/telemetry domains

• Experience designing for multi-node clustering / horizontal scaling

• Cloud infrastructure experience (Azure preferred, given the .NET/Orleans stack)

Benefits

• Remote work (Portugal-based)
• Estimated project duration: 19 weeks
• Part-time schedule: 4 hours per day, aligned with Portugal business hours (WET/WEST)
• Freelance / Service Agreement
• Hourly Rate: 38€ - 40€