Principal Architect, IT - Architects

At Ascensus, technology is more than just a solution. It powers the business that helps millions of people save for what matters—retirement, education, and healthcare. Our technology experts tackle exciting challenges in collaborative teams, but work in an environment where individual and career development is always valued. Technology associates leverage their talents and passion, building new and innovative platforms, creating programs founded in automation in agile frameworks, and driving existing and new markets—all of which supports the rapid growth of a dynamic industry leader.

Section 1: Position Summary

The Principal Architect is the senior-most technical resource within the Infrastructure department, responsible for technical leadership and guidance within the Infrastructure organization. The Principal Architect is responsible for designing and deploying solutions with a focus on scalability, performance and availability of the infrastructure. This position provides technical leadership to Infrastructure teams and provides the highest level of support for issues in the production and development environments. This position is responsible for working with all IT teams to define the future IT strategy and deliver on technical objectives which align with the overall vision.

Section 2: Job Functions, Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Responsible for protecting, securing, and proper handling of all confidential data held by Ascensus to ensure against unauthorized access, improper transmission, and/or unapproved disclosure of information that could result in harm to Ascensus or our clients.
• Our I-Client service philosophy and our Core Values of People Matter, Quality First and Integrity Always® should be visible in your actions on a day to day basis showing your support of our organizational culture.
• Evaluate, recommend, and deliver on performance improvements through implementation of third party solutions and overseeing performance tuning of the environment
• Technical leadership within the Infrastructure organization in developing a future vision and roadmap which align with business goals
• Evaluate new technologies to enhance performance and efficiency
• Enable DevOps practices and provide leadership and direction for DevOps practices in the infrastructure environment, with a focus on automation
• Review and optimize overall hardware configurations, and develop plans to integrate new hardware and software components
• Lead the evaluation and delivery of a cloud strategy
• Lead the evaluation and delivery of an enhanced Disaster Recovery practice, and continued progress towards full redundant active datacenters.
• Identify and lead other projects and tasks that achieve the goals of scalability, performance and stability.
• Provide Executive Leadership updates on three year plan and progress against that plan. Lead the course correction as needed.
• Assist with other tasks and projects as assigned
  
  

Supervision

• N/A
  
  

Section 3: Experience, Skills, Knowledge Requirements

• Expert level knowledge of the hardware and software environment, including Windows-based environment, UNIX, RHEL/LINUX
• Proven expertise across the entire compute, storage, automation and cloud stack
• Expertise in networking, load balancing. Clustering, HA
• Excellent consultative, verbal/written communication skills, analytical ability
• Excellent presentation skills and executive delivery
• Excels in a results focused organization
• Possesses an innovative and change-orientated personality that isn’t afraid to proceed where it was deemed difficult or off limits.
• Vision, leadership, problem solving, initiative, judgment
  
  

Preferred technology skills:

• Large enterprise environment:
• Cisco UCS/IBM Bladecenter environment
• Flash and traditional disk storage systems (PURE/NetApp/IBM)
• Azure and/or AWS deployments
• Cisco-based networking
• Experience across many platforms, including:
• VMWare
• Citrix/VDI
• Active Directory
• Powershell
• Messaging
• .NET/IIS
• DevOps/Automation toolsets
• Enterprise architecture and technical design experience
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent work experience
• 10 years’ experience in IT, including 2 years developing cloud strategies
• Experience with a variety of database platforms, operating system platforms and application development including MS SQLServer, Sybase, Visual Basic and current Windows server versions
• Excellent organization skills, proven analytical abilities and decision making skills
• Ability to participate in scheduled non-business hour implementation and maintenance activities
• Available after hours as needed
• Excellent oral and written communication skills
  
  

We are proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer

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