Solutions Architect

Solution Architect

Job Overview:

The Solution Architect is responsible for assessing the current system architecture, identifying deficiencies, and designing the future-state system architecture to support the company's long-term annuity product strategy. The role involves defining a clear transition path through incremental project-based improvements, ensuring alignment across engineering teams. The Solution Architect will collaborate closely with Technical Software Architects, Product Owners, and business stakeholders to define technical expectations early in business projects and create a scalable, maintainable, and high-performance system architecture.

Department Overview:

The Solution Engineering department plays a critical role in supporting the company's software development, infrastructure, security, and DevOps functions. The team is responsible for ensuring that all technical solutions align with long-term business objectives and follow cloud-native principles, microservices architecture, and best practices in software engineering. Through close collaboration with engineering teams and business stakeholders, the department enables incremental development toward the company's enterprise architecture goals while maintaining high standards for security, scalability, and performance.

Job Details

Architecture & System Assessment

• Evaluate and document the current system architecture for annuity administration.
• Identify strengths, weaknesses, and gaps in the existing technology landscape.
• Collaborate with Enterprise Architects and Technical Software Architects to map out existing patterns, dependencies, and constraints.

Design Future-State System Architecture

• Define a scalable, maintainable, and high-performance system architecture for annuity product administration.
• Align the architecture with cloud-native principles, microservices, API-driven design, and best practices in Python, C#, Docker, and Azure.
• Ensure that the architecture supports custom software development, allowing for faster, more maintainable annuity products.

Collaboration & Technical Expectations

• Work with Product Owners and business stakeholders to define technical requirements early in the project planning phase.
• Ensure business initiatives align with the long-term software engineering vision, reducing technical debt.
• Establish a process for early-stage architectural reviews to improve maintainability, scalability, and security.

Transition Framework for Engineering Teams

• Develop a structured transition framework for engineering teams to progressively shift to the future-state architecture.
• Provide guidelines, milestones, and best practices for implementing architectural improvements.
• Define KPIs and success criteria to measure the effectiveness of the transition.

Identify & Address Architectural Deficiencies

• Conduct gap analysis to identify bottlenecks, inefficiencies, security vulnerabilities, and scalability limitations.
• Recommend solutions and work with Technical Software Architects and Engineering Managers to ensure feasibility.

System Monitoring & Performance

• Enhance system observability and real-time monitoring of key architectural components.
• Work with DevOps teams to implement logging, monitoring, and alerting solutions for proactive issue detection.

Work in a Fast-Paced, Startup Environment

• Mentor engineers and foster cross-team collaboration on architectural best practices.
• Support a small but growing software engineering organization as it scales.

Job Requirements

Required

• Education: MS in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent experience.
• Experience:
  • 10-15 years in software development & architecture.
  • 5-8 years in an architectural or technical leadership role (Solution Architect, Principal Engineer, etc.).
• Technical Expertise:
  • Programming: Strong expertise in Python, C#.
  • Cloud & Infrastructure: Extensive experience with Azure (App Services, Functions, Kubernetes, Virtual Networks, Security).
  • DevOps & Containerization: Hands-on experience with Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines.
  • Database Architecture: Strong proficiency in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS).
  • Security: Deep understanding of IAM, data encryption, and cloud security frameworks.
  • Architecture Principles: Experience designing microservices architectures and event-driven systems.

Desired

• Certifications: Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert.
• Experience in AI/ML solutions and data engineering within the Azure ecosystem.
• Familiarity with enterprise architecture tools for mapping, modeling, and documentation.