Sr Architect

HMH is a learning technology company committed to delivering connected solutions that engage learners, empower educators and improve student outcomes. As a leading provider of K–12 core curriculum, supplemental and intervention solutions, and professional learning services, HMH partners with educators and school districts to uncover solutions that unlock students’ potential and extend teachers’ capabilities.

HMH serves more than 50 million students and 4 million educators in 150 countries. HMH Technology India Pvt. Ltd. is our technology and innovation arm in India focused on developing novel products and solutions using cutting-edge technology to better serve our clients globally. HMH aims to help employees grow as people, and not just as professionals. For more information, visit www.hmhco.com

Educational Services Platform

About the Role

We are seeking a Senior Architect who will serve as the key technical and business liaison for our educational services product lines. This is not a pure engineering role. The ideal candidate brings deep understanding of the educational services industry — curriculum delivery, assessment systems, institutional procurement, compliance requirements, and the operational realities of schools, districts, and ministries of education. You will own the intersection of product strategy, customer requirements, and system architecture.

You will be the person our product and engineering teams rely on to translate market needs and customer workflows into actionable architectural decisions.

Primary Focus Areas

Business & Product Ownership (60%)

• Serve as the resident domain expert on educational service delivery — understanding how educational content reaches learners, how institutions evaluate and procure platforms, and how regulatory and accessibility requirements shape product decisions.
• Partner directly with product management to define product requirements grounded in real customer workflows, institutional constraints, and market dynamics.
• Own the business case for architectural decisions: cost of ownership, time-to-market, customer impact, and competitive positioning.
• Engage with customers, partners, and internal stakeholders to capture requirements, validate assumptions, and prioritize the product roadmap from a technical feasibility standpoint.
• Translate complex customer and regulatory requirements (accessibility standards, data privacy regulations, content localization, multilingual support) into clear product and engineering specifications.
• Drive build-vs-buy-vs-partner decisions for platform capabilities, with defensible analysis rooted in customer value and total cost.

Architecture & System Design (40%)

• Lead architectural evolution for multi-tenant, large-scale SaaS platforms serving educational institutions, with emphasis on modularity, scalability, and long-term maintainability.
• Architect data flows and storage strategies that respect data sovereignty, privacy, and compliance requirements specific to education markets.
• Design and guide AI-driven features — including LLM integration, RAG-based reasoning, and multi-agent workflows — with a clear line of sight to measurable customer outcomes.
• Define integration strategies for institutional systems (SIS, LMS, rostering, single sign-on, content repositories).
• Ensure architectural choices account for variable infrastructure maturity, connectivity constraints, and deployment models across diverse customer environments.

Required Experience

Business & Domain

• 7+ years in a product-facing technical role within educational technology, educational publishing, or institutional learning platforms.
• Demonstrated track record of translating customer and market requirements into product and architectural decisions.
• Direct experience with institutional sales cycles, procurement processes, and compliance frameworks in the education sector.
• Familiarity with content standards (e.g., LTI, QTI, SCORM/xAPI, Ed-Fi, SIF) and accessibility mandates (WCAG, Section 508, local equivalents).
• Experience working across culturally diverse markets and adapting product strategies to regional educational practices and regulatory environments.

Technical Architecture

• 14+ years total technology experience, with 5+ years in architecture leadership.
• Strong background in multi-tenant SaaS platforms: microservices, containerization, serverless, cloud-native patterns.
• Proficiency in Java/Spring Boot; working knowledge of Python and TypeScript/JavaScript.
• Experience with AI/ML integration in production systems — LLM APIs (OpenAI, Azure AI, AWS Bedrock), RAG pipelines, agent architectures (A2A, MCP patterns).
• AWS ecosystem depth: EKS, Lambda, API Gateway, RDS/Aurora, S3, and related services.
• CI/CD proficiency — GitHub Actions, DevSecOps practices.
• Data platform experience: SQL/NoSQL, REST/GraphQL, data pipeline design.

Desirable

• Experience with LlamaIndex, vector stores, or other RAG tooling.
• Exposure to Terraform, Kubernetes/Helm at scale.
• Experience migrating legacy educational platforms to modern architectures.
• Familiarity with explainable AI and interpretable AI components in educational contexts.
• AWS Solutions Architect certification or equivalent.

Responsibilities

Product & Customer Alignment

• Own the technical product vision for assigned product lines, ensuring architecture serves demonstrable customer needs.
• Participate in customer engagements and advisory sessions to maintain direct line of sight to market requirements.
• Produce clear requirement documents, decision logs, and design rationale that connect architectural choices to business outcomes.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and industry trends for applicability to our customer base.

Delivery & Execution

• Partner with product owners, engineers, and delivery teams to decompose requirements into buildable components with clear interfaces.
• Lead agile planning with attention to business priority, technical debt, and customer commitments.
• Drive modernization of legacy systems using AI-assisted analysis and refactoring.

Communication & Leadership

• Communicate architectural decisions and tradeoffs to non-technical stakeholders in business terms — cost, risk, customer impact, timeline.
• Mentor engineers and tech leads on both architectural thinking and customer-oriented development practices.
• Collaborate across product, platform, security, and operations teams.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field.
• Strong analytical skills, clear written and verbal communication, and the ability to influence across functions.
• Willingness to operate across time zones and engage directly with distributed teams and customers.

HMH Technology Private Limited is an Equal Opportunity Employer and considers applicants for all positions without regard to race, colour, religion or belief, sex, age, national origin, citizenship status, marital status, military/veteran status, genetic information, sexual orientation, gender identity, physical or mental disability or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws. We are committed to creating a dynamic work environment that values diversity and inclusion, respect and integrity, customer focus, and innovation. For more information, visit https://careers.hmhco.com/. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube.