Come join our Goddard Systems, LLC (GSL) corporate team! We are a great place to work and offer many employee-friendly perks and benefits. GSL is the manager of the Goddard School franchise system that supports over 600 schools which delivers a high-quality, play-based learning program to families all over the United States. Our successful franchise business model supports franchisees through partnerships with teams of seasoned professionals who draw over 30 years of business, marketing, IT, franchise, finance, and education experience. Because of this, The Goddard School has grown into an institution that parents and families trust, reaching more than 80,000 students in 38 states – and growing.

This is a remote position. 

Position Summary

As a Solution Architect, you will develop, execute, and own technology platform standards and solutions architecture for the enterprise. Your role ensures the strategic IT architectural direction aligns with business strategy and overarching technology systems strategy. You will ensure that new and existing systems are sustainable, flexible, scalable, and optimized for total cost of ownership and return on investment.

Key Responsibilities:

• Provide leadership, facilitation, analysis, and design tasks required for developing an enterprise’s technical architecture, ensuring the governance, assurance, and standards compliance.
• Lead the analysis of the current technology environment, detect critical deficiencies, and recommend improvements. Evaluate industry trends and their impact on the enterprise architecture.
• Collaborate closely with business partners and internal technical teams to provide architectural vision, ensuring alignment with customer needs and delivering targeted business outcomes.
• Develop and maintain IT application roadmaps and lifecycle management for core business applications, leveraging new technologies to drive digital innovation.
• Stay abreast of technology trends, and anticipate new capabilities to drive value and competitive advantage for the enterprise.
• Define high-level migration plans to address gaps between current and future state architectures, ensuring synchronization with IT budgeting and planning processes.
• Build solid working relationships with IT peers, business resources, external clients, service partners, and vendors, fostering an environment of collaboration and trust.
• Work with offshore and 3rd party partners ensuring completeness of work products.

• Build and lead the IT architecture capability, staying on top of technology trends.
• Develop and maintain IT application roadmaps and lifecycle management.
• Analyze enterprise business context and change requirements to drive future state technology architecture.
• Drive digital innovation by leveraging new technologies to transform the existing technology base.
• Lead technology/vendor selection processes aligned with business and technology strategy.
• Establish and communicate architectural design policies and standards.
• Identify and recommend competitive and new alternative technologies.
• Guide application architects, technical leads, and developers in software design patterns and system blueprints.
• Undertake system reviews to ensure adherence to prescribed system blueprint and reference architecture models.

Experience and Competencies

Minimum Requirements

• 10 years of experience in technology and solution architecture.
• Strong balance between architecture strategy, technical IT skills, and business process knowledge.
• Experience with technology platforms including Microsoft Azure, Cloud Computing, SaaS, IPaaS, IaaS, BI, and Data Warehousing.
• 5 years of design and implementation experience in IT across application development, APIs, middleware, servers, storage, database management, and operations.
• 5 years of experience in enterprise architecture development and implementation.

Skills and Competencies:

• Excellent analytical skills, capacity to extend the knowledge base, and stay updated on new technologies.
• Ability to lead effectively with limited information, driving quick and informed decision-making.
• Ensure compliance with IT standards and controls, maintaining high quality in technical decisions.
• Ability to mentor and guide other architects and developers in system design initiatives and ensure compliance with architectural standards.

Highly Desired

• Bachelor’s degree in technology-related discipline preferred (Computer Science, Software Development, MIS).
• Software development (ASP.NET, C#.Net).
• Microsoft Azure environment, including CICD/DevOps deployments.
• WCF, REST API.
• SaaS solutions and cloud-native applications.

There will be periodic requirements to travel for in-person events, at the discretion of your manager or the requirement of the company.