---
title: 'Lead Architect / Principal Engineer at Litmus'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/lead-architect-principal-engineer-litmus-santa-clara-jg469sqpdnz6'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-16'
---

# Lead Architect / Principal Engineer at Litmus

- **Company:** Litmus
- **Location:** Santa Clara, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-10-01
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-16
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/litmus/15bd537f-1b14-4a2e-b735-d5f38c01181a

## Job description

Who is Litmus Litmus is building the data foundation that powers industrial AI. AI doesn’t work without real-world, contextualized data - Litmus makes that data usable. As AI adoption accelerates, most industrial environments still can’t access or use their operational data. We solve that gap. We’re a growth-stage software company helping manufacturers access, structure, and use real-time data from machines, systems, and sensors at the edge. Our platform sits at the intersection of edge computing, AI, and industrial operations, enabling some of the world’s largest companies to run operations in real time, reduce downtime, and optimize production. Backed by leading investors and trusted by global manufacturers and partners like Google, Microsoft, Dell, Oracle, and Mitsubishi, Litmus is powering the shift toward software-defined manufacturing.

## Why join Litmus

Build the infrastructure that makes industrial AI possible AI is moving beyond the cloud and into the physical world. At Litmus, you’ll build the infrastructure that enables real-time data to power AI and machine learning systems in production environments.

Work on problems where software meets the real world Most AI systems fail without access to real-world data. You’ll build the layer that makes them viable in production. We solve challenges at the intersection of distributed systems, real-time data, and industrial constraints — where reliability, scale, and performance are non-negotiable.

Have real impact, fast You’ll work on systems used by real customers in production, with direct impact on product and company trajectory. As a scaling company, we move quickly. You’ll have ownership, visibility, and the ability to shape both product and company as we scale.

Join a high-performance team We’re building a team that holds a high bar and pushes each other to improve. You’ll work alongside experienced operators, engineers, and leaders who have done this before and are building again at scale. We hire people who take ownership, move quickly, and care about outcomes. No passengers.

Our culture At Litmus, the team is collaborative, curious, and low ego. People are scrappy, take ownership, and look for ways to make an impact. We value empathy just as much as execution, whether that’s in how we build, how we communicate, or how we support each other. We’re a growing company, so things move quickly and not everything is perfectly defined. If you enjoy figuring things out, working closely with others, and making steady progress, you’ll do well here.

## What You'll Do

- Own the overall technical architecture of the platform — set the long-term vision and make the hard calls that balance speed, scale, and maintainability.
- Drive architectural decisions across multiple teams and systems, ensuring consistency, reliability, and developer velocity.
- Identify systemic engineering problems early and lead solutions that create org-wide leverage.
- Partner with engineering leads to design and review critical systems before they're built — not after.
- Champion and standardize engineering patterns, tooling, and infrastructure best practices across the organization.
- Evaluate emerging technologies with clear-eyed judgment and guide adoption where it genuinely moves the needle.
- Mentor and develop senior and staff engineers — raise the technical bar and help your colleagues do their best work.
- Represent engineering architecture in cross-functional discussions with product, operations, and leadership.
- Contribute to hiring decisions and help shape what world-class engineering looks like at our company.

## What We're Looking For

- 15+ years of software engineering experience, with a clear track record of org-wide architectural impact.
- Expert-level Go and deep knowledge of distributed systems design, microservices, and large-scale service architectures.
- Mastery of Docker and Kubernetes — you've designed production-grade, large-scale deployments and know where things break.
- Deep Linux/Unix expertise — you understand the systems your architecture runs on, from the OS level up.
- Proven ability to make irreversible architectural decisions thoughtfully, with an eye on long-term consequences.
- Strong communicator — you can make complex technical tradeoffs clear to both engineers and non-technical stakeholders.
- Experience leading through influence, not authority — you bring people along rather than dictating direction.
- Solid understanding of cloud-native infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, and DevOps best practices.

## Nice to Have

- Experience with industrial IoT, edge computing, or real-time data pipelines (MQTT, NATS, OPC-UA).
- Published Architecture Decision Records (ADRs), technical writing, or open source contributions.
- Background in platform engineering, developer productivity, or DevSecOps.
- Experience with multi-cloud or hybrid cloud strategies.
- Time at a high-growth startup — you've felt the pressure of scaling fast and learned from it.

## About Litmus

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Litmus is the modern industrial data foundation platform for AI, helping manufacturers connect industrial systems, standardize operational data, and deploy analytics and AI across plants.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Growth Stage)
- **Headquarters**: Santa Clara, California, USA
- **Founded**: 2015
- **Founders**: Vatsal Shah (CEO), John Younes (COO), Sacha Sawaya (CFO)

## Core Business
- Primary industry/industries: Industrial IoT / Industrial Data Platforms / Industrial AI
- Target customers: B2B – Manufacturing operations, industrial teams (OEE, predictive maintenance, energy optimization, quality inspection), primarily Enterprise and SMB manufacturing
- Mission or purpose statement: "Turn fragmented industrial data into a repeatable system for deploying AI across every plant."

## Products & Services
- **[Litmus Edge](https://litmus.io/)** – The industrial edge data platform for connecting industrial assets, modeling operational data, and running edge applications, analytics, and AI.
- **[Litmus Edge Manager](https://litmus.io/)** – Centralized management layer for deploying, monitoring, updating, and governing distributed Litmus Edge environments across sites.
- **[Litmus Unify](https://litmus.io/)** – Governed industrial data exchange layer that standardizes, structures, secures, and distributes operational data across OT and IT systems through a Unified Namespace approach.
- **[Litmus Data Catalog](https://litmus.io/)** – Industrial metadata visibility and governance platform for discovery, lineage, governance, observability, and AI-driven contextual intelligence.
- **[Litmus MCP Server](https://litmus.io/)** – Open-source Model Context Protocol server for Litmus Edge that enables natural-language and AI-assisted interaction with industrial edge operations.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available (Private company)
- **Total Funding**: Not disclosed publicly; company has received investment from major ecosystem partners and venture investors
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Trusted by Google Cloud, Dell Technologies, HPE, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, and other global Fortune 500 companies. Partners include major cloud (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud) and data platform providers (Databricks, Snowflake, InfluxData).
- **Growth Signals**: 
  - 95 sites deployed in 18 weeks for one customer (standardized industrial data architecture)
  - 126 edge deployments for another customer
  - $3M/month savings realized by one customer (optimized packing and volume tracking)
  - Headquartered in Santa Clara with global offices in Toronto, Munich, Tokyo, and Pune (100+ employees)
  - Strong hiring signal – active careers page with open roles

## Competitive Advantages
- **One-Platform Approach**: Replaces site-by-site integration work and point solutions, combining connectivity, DataOps, UNS, governance, and AI in one architecture.
- **Built for Industrial Edge**: Runs applications and AI close to machines, with support for offline and air-gapped environments.
- **Multi-Site Scale**: Standardizes data models and deployments consistently across all plants.
- **Open Ecosystem**: Integrates with existing OT/IT infrastructure, enterprise platforms, and cloud systems.
- **Proven in Production**: Multiple verified large-scale customer deployments with measurable ROI.

## Strategic Focus
- **Industrial AI Enablement**: Positioned as the foundational data layer for enabling Industrial AI use cases (OEE intelligence, energy optimization, predictive maintenance, quality inspection, anomaly detection, digital twin).
- **Unified Namespace**: Pushing the Litmus Unify product as the standard for governed, standardized data exchange across OT and IT systems.
- **Developer Experience**: Launching Litmus Edge Developer Edition (free, unlimited two-hour sessions) and Litmus MCP Server to attract and enable the developer community.
- **Global Expansion**: Offices across North America, Europe, and Asia indicate a global growth strategy.

## Why Work Here
- **Industry-leading AI/Industrial IoT focus**: Work at the intersection of manufacturing and cutting-edge AI technology.
- **Proven traction**: Real customer deployments with measurable impact (millions in savings, hundreds of sites).
- **Culture & Work Style**: Based on job postings, Litmus appears to be a hybrid/in-office company with on-site expectations in Santa Clara (HQ) and other global offices.
- **Global Team**: Engineering and go-to-market presence across Silicon Valley, Toronto, Munich, Tokyo, and Pune, offering international collaboration opportunities.
- **Career Growth**: Active hiring across multiple functions, suggesting the company is scaling and offers upward mobility.
- **Meaningful Impact**: Directly enabling the manufacturing sector to become more efficient, reduce waste, and deploy AI – work that has tangible industrial and environmental benefits.

## Sources
1. [litmus.io](https://litmus.io/)
2. [litmus.io/en-US](https://litmus.io/en-US)
3. [jobs.ashbyhq.com (Litmus Careers)](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/litmus)
4. [builtin.com (Litmus IO Profile)](https://builtin.com/company/litmus-io)
5. [linkedin.com (Litmus Automation)](https://www.linkedin.com/company/litmus-automation)

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