Founding Principal Systems Architect

About Viqal Viqal builds communication infrastructure for hotels. We help hotels manage guest conversations through channels guests already use, such as WhatsApp, enabling 24/7 concierge interactions without apps, installations, or extra friction.

Founded and based in Amsterdam, Viqal is built by a small, senior team with deep experience in hospitality, product, and engineering. The platform is used by both individual hotels and multi-property groups across Europe, supporting real, day-to-day guest operations.

Viqal connects guest messaging with core hotel systems such as the PMS and other operational tools, allowing hotels to coordinate workflows, automate responses, and scale service quality across locations. As the company grows, maintaining clarity, reliability, and trust in this core platform becomes increasingly important.

About the role As a Founding Principal Systems Architect, you are accountable for how the Viqal platform behaves in production as scale and complexity increase.

“Founding” in this context means you take long-term architectural ownership of a live production system used by individual hotels and multi-property groups across Europe. You will define and enforce the structure, boundaries, and scalability of the platform as it enters its next phase of growth.

This is a hands-on role. You design, build, and evolve the technical backbone of the company, shaping engineering standards and influencing how the platform scales over the next 3–5 years.

What you’ll do Own system architecture, scalability, and reliability across all deployments Define and enforce clear system boundaries, responsibilities, and failure modes Ensure predictable system behavior under increasing customer and integration complexity Drive production readiness for multi-property and group-level deployments Reduce operational and delivery risk through simplification and standardization Work hands-on in the codebase to enforce system discipline and technical standards Make and stand by technical trade-offs under real-world constraints

You are accountable for how the system behaves in production, not just how it is implemented.

You’ll be a great fit if you Have proven experience operating and scaling a SaaS platform in production Have owned systems through real growth phases, not just initial builds Understand how product and integration decisions translate into system behavior at scale Are comfortable taking end-to-end ownership and being accountable for consequences Prefer clarity and simplicity over cleverness Are hands-on by default: you design, build, ship, and improve Are legally authorized to work in the EU

What’s in it for you Ownership of a live SaaS platform at a critical scaling inflection point Clear mandate and real decision authority over system behavior Deep involvement in product, integrations, and production reliability Hybrid-friendly setup with flexibility to work remote or from our Amsterdam office (Spaces Zuidas) Compensation consists of a substantial long-term equity stake aligned with the founding responsibility of shaping Viqal’s technical direction, alongside a base salary in the range of €35–45k annually, depending on experience and profile.