Surface Pattern Designer Jobs in Colorado (NOW HIRING)

The Colorado Governor's Office of Information Technology is in the middle of a transformation worth joining. We're building cross-functional pod teams that partner directly with agencies to design, deliver, and continuously improve services that work for Coloradans. Good government depends on technology that works, and OIT exists to make that true for every Coloradan. The State of Colorado is seeking a Sr Delivery Engineer to help build the next generation of public services. We're looking for people who want to do the best work of their careers in the service of the public.

The Sr Delivery Engineer serves as the technical lead in the pod: the pod's technical authority and Enterprise Architecture's (EA) eyes in the agency. The Sr Delivery Engineer is responsible for evaluating build/buy/SaaS options, overseeing vendor technical quality, and flagging architecture gaps and exceptions before they impact delivery. This position provides the technical governance necessary to ensure agency solutions are sustainable, secure, and aligned with state standards.

What you'll do:

• Evaluate vendor proposals, architecture designs, and deliver code for technical quality, security, and EA alignment.
• Conduct meaningful technical reviews of vendor work products, including demos, code repositories, and documentation; provide substantive feedback to hold teams to quality standards.
• Lead structured evaluation processes for custom development vs. commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) vs. SaaS options, producing documented technology decisions.
• Ensure alignment with state technology patterns by reviewing and identifying technology decisions with enterprise implications.
• Translate OIT EA standards, cloud strategies, and security baselines into practical guidance for agency stakeholders.
• Adapt architecture standards to agency-specific legacy systems and constraints.
• Utilize security fundamentals to identify potential risks and engage CISO/security resources appropriately to ensure compliance.
• Draft technical language for SOOs and develop evaluation criteria for vendor selection.
• Review mission outcomes and delivery timelines with the Product and Delivery Manager to align technical feasibility.
• Produce defensible, documented technology recommendations even when working with limited or imperfect information.
• Write or contribute to business cases that communicate the "business-value proposition" of technical decisions to pod and agency leadership.
• Serve as a technical advisor during complex production issues, helping the IT Director and agency leadership understand the nature and severity of the problem, evaluating vendor response, and escalating to OIT enterprise resources as appropriate.
• Participate in post-incident reviews after system failures, contributing architectural analysis of root causes and ensuring that systemic weaknesses are surfaced to the IT Director and documented as inputs to EA standards or vendor accountability conversations.
• Participate in user testing and demos of vendor-delivered work to evaluate whether technical solutions meet functional requirements and architectural standards, escalating concerns before acceptance.
• Partner with Sr Service Designer to ensure architectural decisions don't negatively impact the interface or user journey.

What you bring:

• Knowledge of modern software architecture patterns, including cloud-native design, APIs, microservices, data architecture, and integration approaches.
• Knowledge of or ability to rapidly learn OIT Enterprise Architecture standards, approved technology patterns, cloud strategy, and security baselines
• Knowledge of security and compliance fundamentals sufficient to identify risk and engage CISO/security resources appropriately.
• Knowledge of vendor contract structure, including technical language for SOOs and evaluation criteria.
• Ability to assess vendor proposals, commercial off-the-shelf options, and custom development tradeoffs in a government context.
• Ability to evaluate code and system design through code reviews, demos, and technical documentation that has been written by others.
• Ability to identify and flag technical debt, architecture drift, and security gaps early in the development lifecycle, and communicate them to non-technical stakeholders.
• Ability to explain technical decisions and tradeoffs to agency program staff, Agency CIO, procurement staff, and other non-technical staff.
• Ability to serve as a trusted technical advisor to agency leadership without overcomplicating or mystifying technology decisions.
• Ability to hold vendor teams to quality standards even when under delivery pressure.
• Ability to proactively identify decisions with enterprise implications and escalate to OIT pod leadership when necessary.
• Ability to evaluate a wide range of technology options with limited perfect information and arrive at a well-reasoned recommendation.
• Ability to adapt quickly to agency-specific technology landscapes, legacy systems, and constraints.

Minimum Qualifications:

• A minimum of five (5) years of experience as a technical lead in the delivery of technology products, which includes working in or leading cross-functional teams using iterative, user-centered methods.
• A track record of working across disciplines — design, engineering, policy, or operations — to ship things that work for real people.

Substitutions:

• Additional appropriate education will substitute for the required experience on a year-for-year basis, but cannot completely substitute for the qualifications.
• Training or Certification related to the work assigned to the position will be assigned credit towards substitution for experience and/or education, but cannot completely substitute for the qualifications.
• If the minimum qualifications include a degree requirement, additional appropriate paid or unpaid experience will substitute for the required education on a year-for-year basis.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Relevant certificate from a major cloud provider such as AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional or Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert.
• Experience drafting technical requirements for Statements of Objectives (SOOs) and leading the technical evaluation of multi-million dollar vendor proposals within a government or highly regulated environment.
• Experience modernizing large-scale legacy systems and adapting modern architecture standards (microservices, APIs) to meet the constraints of established agency-specific technology landscapes.
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipeline design and Infrastructure as Code approaches sufficient to evaluate vendor implementations, identify quality and security gaps, and provide meaningful technical feedback — without necessarily building these systems directly.

Conditions of Employment:

This position may require travel within the specified geographic area, and to locations across the state as needed.