--- title: 'Principal System Architect at LI-COR' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/principal-system-architect-li-cor-united-states-g53z2g26zrhn' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-11-07' --- # Principal System Architect at LI-COR - **Company:** LI-COR - **Location:** United States - **Work type:** remote - **Posted:** 2026-09-23 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-07 - **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/licor/jobs/8226207 ## Job description Primary Work Location Lincoln, NE or Remote in the U.S. ## Overview The Principal System Architect provides technical direction and hands-on engineering for LI-COR Environmental's connected products and cloud platforms. This individual contributor works across instruments, firmware, connectivity, cloud services, data, and applications to build systems that are reliable, secure, scalable, supportable, and economically sustainable. The architect partners with engineering, product, science, quality, IT and DevOps, and external technology partners to turn complex needs into practical technical direction. Professional Qualifications Education - Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related discipline, or equivalent demonstrated experience. A master's degree is preferred. ## Qualifications - Typically 12 or more years of software and cloud engineering experience, including significant experience as a system, solution, platform, or principal architect for production systems. - Demonstrated architecture ownership for a commercial IoT, connected device, industrial, scientific, telemetry, or other high volume data platform. - Deep experience with AWS or a comparable public cloud, including compute, containers, networking, databases, storage, identity and access, observability, security, resiliency, and infrastructure as code. - Strong backend engineering and API design skills, with hands-on proficiency in at least one modern backend language. - Experience with event driven and distributed systems, device ingestion, message delivery, high volume time series data, data modeling, and data lifecycle management. - Experience with CI/CD, automated testing, observability, incident response, and secure software delivery at production scale. - Ability to connect architecture decisions to delivery effort, operational cost, product economics, and customer impact. - Strong communication, technical judgment, systems thinking, and the ability to lead through influence across teams and external partners. ## Preferred Experience - Architecture spanning embedded devices or firmware, cellular or gateway connectivity, cloud ingestion, web or mobile applications, and analytics. - Regulated, validated, or quality controlled systems with requirements for data access, retention, privacy, auditability, and change control. - Platform modernization, microservice simplification, globally distributed teams, or blended employee and contractor delivery models. - Professional level cloud certification or equivalent practical expertise. General - Self starter and motivated. Enjoy challenges. Proven drive to achieve goals. - Creative. High insight, curiosity and problem solving ability. High attention to detail. - Good interpersonal and networking skills. - Team player. Enjoys and works well with other people in a team environment. - Effective oral and written communication skills in English. - Dependable, positive attitude and good attendance. - High ethics, integrity, honesty, patience. Position Responsibilities Architecture and Platform Direction: - Define and maintain the target architecture, system boundaries, data models, integration patterns, and technical roadmap for connected products and cloud platforms. - Lead architecture reviews for services, APIs, data pipelines, databases, identity, applications, deployment patterns, and device-to-cloud communication. - Simplify the platform by identifying unnecessary coupling, duplicate processing, fragile patterns, and services that should be consolidated, redesigned, or retired. - Guide platform modernization and the use of managed cloud services based on product needs, customer continuity, cost, portability, security, reliability, and operational burden. - Maintain architecture decisions and documentation so LI-COR retains the knowledge, access, data portability, and technical control needed to make sound future decisions. Device to Cloud Architecture: - Guide how devices produce data and how cloud services receive, process, store, and present it, including schemas, batching, retries, deduplication, derived data, and retention. - Partner with Firmware and Hardware Engineering to identify connectivity, scalability, reliability, support, and cost implications early in product development. - Review new products and sensor integrations for downstream effects on cloud services, storage, analytics, applications, and cost-to-serve. Reliability Security and Operations: - Define end-to-end observability and nonfunctional requirements for availability, performance, security, privacy, scalability, recovery, and supportability. - Partner with Engineering and IT and DevOps on CI/CD, infrastructure as code, release architecture, incident response, disaster recovery, vulnerability remediation, and operational readiness. - Provide technical leadership during significant incidents and recurring performance or connectivity issues, driving root cause correction and durable improvement. - Ensure platform designs support applicable validation, data separation, retention, privacy, auditability, and customer contractual requirements. Technical Leadership: - Serve as a technical partner to the Software and Cloud leader and as an architecture authority across engineering, product, science, quality, and operations. - Remain hands-on through backend design and implementation, prototypes, technical investigations, code reviews, and resolution of high risk production issues. - Translate product intent into technically complete approaches and communicate tradeoffs, risks, costs, and recommendations to technical teams and business leaders. - Mentor engineers and strengthen architecture capability across employees and partners so knowledge and decision quality do not depend on one person. - Act as LI-COR's technical counterpart with cloud, data, connectivity, and engineering partners while business leaders retain commercial and contract authority. General - Periodic travel to LI-COR locations, partner sites, or team working sessions may be required. - Other job related duties as assigned. ## About LI-COR ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: LI-COR designs, manufactures, and markets high‑quality instrument systems for plant research, gas analysis, drug discovery, and environmental monitoring. - **Entity Type**: Private (acquired by Battery Ventures in 2021) - **Headquarters**: Lincoln, Nebraska, United States - **Founded**: 1971 - **Founders**: Bill and Elaine Biggs ## Core Business - **Primary industries**: Environmental monitoring, biotechnology, life sciences, drug discovery, and climate research. - **Target customers**: Researchers, universities, government agencies (e.g., USDA), agricultural enterprises, and environmental consultants (B2B, academic, and government). - **Mission statement**: “Impacting lives through science” – providing high‑quality measurement solutions to help solve global challenges in food security, water management, energy reliability, and climate change mitigation. ## Products & Services - **Environmental Monitoring Instruments** – Hardware and software for measuring CO₂, CH₄, N₂O, NH₃, soil health, water quality, and microclimate. Includes gas analyzers, soil flux systems, and weather stations. - **HOBO Data Loggers (via Onset acquisition)** – Remote monitoring solutions for temperature, humidity, and other environmental parameters. Integrated with LI‑COR Cloud® for data management. - **Biotechnology Products** – Instruments and reagents for drug discovery, protein research, and small animal imaging (e.g., Odyssey® imaging systems, near‑infrared fluorescent dyes). - **Managed Services & Consulting** – Turnkey environmental monitoring projects, from sensor deployment to data analysis and reporting. ## Market Standing - **Valuation / Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed (private company). - **Key Metric**: Annual revenue estimated at **$25M–$50M** (LinkedIn data); **330+ employees** globally (company‑stated). - **Notable Investors / Partners**: Owned by **Battery Ventures** (global tech‑focused investment firm). Recent acquisitions include **Onset Computer Corporation** (2024, maker of HOBO loggers) and **Anemoment** (2022, ultrasonic anemometers). - **Growth Signals**: Active in **150+ countries**, instruments used in **73,000+ research publications**, **1,208 universities** as customers. Expanded into cloud‑based monitoring (LI‑COR Cloud). Opened subsidiaries in Germany, UK, and China. ## Competitive Advantages - **50+ years of domain expertise** – Trusted brand in environmental and life‑science research. - **End‑to‑end solutions** – Hardware, software, cloud, and consulting under one roof. - **Global footprint** – Instruments deployed on all seven continents and in space. - **Strong IP and regulatory compliance** – ISO 9001:2015 certified; frequent award winner (R&D 100, Governor’s Bioscience Award, etc.). - **Acquisition strategy** – Integrates complementary technologies (HOBO loggers, anemometers) to broaden the product portfolio. ## Strategic Focus - **Environmental monitoring as a service** – Growing the cloud‑based data platform and managed services to help customers make data‑driven decisions. - **Climate and agriculture applications** – Emphasizing solutions for greenhouse gas quantification, soil health, and precision agriculture. - **Continued R&D** – Developing next‑generation sensors and analytical tools for both environmental and biotechnology markets. - **Geographic expansion** – Strengthening presence in Europe and Asia via subsidiaries and channel partners. ## Why Work Here - **Culture**: Strengths‑based approach; new voices are valued regardless of seniority. Celebrated for high employee engagement (Quantum Workplace Employee Voice Award). - **Benefits**: 401(k) with one‑to‑one match up to 7%; medical/dental/vision insurance; tuition assistance; on‑site wellness programs; paid holidays, vacation, and parental leave. - **Work Environment**: On‑site roles at Lincoln, NE (headquarters) and Bourne, MA; also offices in Bad Homburg (Germany) and Cambridge (UK). Hybrid/remote policy not explicitly stated, but most roles appear to be location‑based. - **Perks**: Free snacks/fruit, monthly wellness breakfasts, Pi Day celebrations, food trucks, and community volunteer programs. - **Community**: Lincoln is part of the “Silicon Prairie” with a vibrant tech scene, excellent schools, and outdoor recreation. ## Sources 1. [licor.com/careers](https://www.licor.com/careers) 2. [licor.com](https://www.licor.com/) 3. [licor.com/corp/history](https://www.licor.com/corp/history) 4. [linkedin.com/company/li-cor](https://www.linkedin.com/company/li-cor) 5. [job-boards.greenhouse.io/licor](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/licor) ## Other roles at LI-COR - [Customer Operations Specialist](https://feeny.ai/job/customer-operations-specialist-li-cor-lincoln-ztvkg9cm1yzk) — Lincoln - [Montagetechniker I – Environmental](https://feeny.ai/job/montagetechniker-i-environmental-li-cor-gmbh-2d1q5kch29ek) — GmbH