Principal Engineer, Forward Deployed – E2E BSS Solution Architect

About Circles

Circles is a global technology company founded in 2014, reimagining the telco industry with an innovative SaaS platform. The company empowers telco operators worldwide to launch innovative digital brands and accelerate their transformation into techcos. Circles partners with leading operators including KDDI Corporation, Etisalat Group, AT&T, and Telkomsel.

Role Overview

As a Principal Engineer, Forward Deployed, you will serve as the trusted technical advisor to customer CIOs, CTOs, and enterprise architects, driving technology strategy and enterprise architecture for large-scale Telecom BSS transformation programs. This is a customer-facing leadership role based in Rabat, Morocco.

Main Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end business, solution and enterprise architecture across Telecom Business Support Systems (BSS), including CRM, Billing, Real-Time Charging, Order Management, Enterprise Product Catalogue, Digital Channels, and OSS/BSS integrations.
• Own the overall technical vision, target architecture, transformation roadmap and implementation strategy from solution design through production launch and operational excellence.
• Drive customer technology strategy, architecture governance and roadmap planning aligned with business objectives and long-term platform evolution.
• Lead technical discovery workshops, architecture reviews, design sessions and executive steering committees to drive key business and technology decisions.
• Own solution architecture for functional and non-functional requirements including scalability, availability, resiliency, security, observability, performance and disaster recovery.
• Lead end-to-end integration architecture across CRM, Billing, Charging, Product Catalogue, Order Management, Provisioning, Digital Channels, OSS, Enterprise Applications and third-party ecosystems.

Key Requirements

• 15+ years of experience in Telecom BSS/OSS with deep expertise in CRM, Billing, Real-Time Charging, Order Management and Telecom System Integration.
• Proven experience leading enterprise architecture and technology strategy for large-scale Telecom BSS transformation and modernization programs.
• Extensive experience as a customer-facing technology leader engaging directly with CIO, CTO and executive stakeholders.
• Strong consulting background with demonstrated experience driving business transformation and architecture governance engagements.
• Deep understanding of cloud-native platforms, API-first architecture, microservices, event-driven systems and distributed applications.
• Strong knowledge of cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, OCI), Kubernetes, Docker, CI/CD, DevSecOps and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE).
• Excellent executive communication, stakeholder management and strategic thinking skills with ability to influence technical and business decisions.
• Proficiency in both English and French is mandatory.

Additional Responsibilities

• Provide architectural leadership across multiple technical workstreams, ensuring alignment between product engineering, delivery, operations and customer IT organizations.
• Drive cloud-native architecture, API-first design, event-driven architecture and microservices platform modernization initiatives.
• Lead production readiness, go-live planning, cutover strategy and transition to operations while ensuring service stability and business continuity.
• Partner closely with Product Management, Engineering, Delivery, Infrastructure, Cloud, Security, QA, SRE and Operations teams to accelerate customer deployments.
• Act as the primary technical escalation point for customer-facing issues, delivery risks and cross-functional technical decisions.
• Support business development and pre-sales by defining transformation strategies and solution proposals for new and existing customers.
• Mentor solution architects, engineering teams and technical leaders while promoting architecture best practices and engineering excellence.