Application Architect

IRG is looking for an Application Architect

Duration 10+ Months

Are you a proven technical leader who wants to work on a meaningful public-service software project? Are you an engineer with experience working on large, complex systems looking to step into a leadership role? Read on, this role may be for you.

As a Technical Architect you will provide technical leadership, support, and direction to internal engineering teams and external vendors' teams creating and maintaining our client's systems.

• Technical leadership. You will define the technical direction for the the clients systems, and work alongside engineers to execute this technical vision and deliver a high-quality solution for the constituents of the Commonwealth. You will translate the complexity of a multi-application, multi-team project into clear written guidance for engineers, and support these engineers when they need help.
• Software engineering practice. You will define and implement software engineering processes and tooling that will empower technical staff and help make the project successful. You will define the Git workflow, coding standards, code review process, continuous integration / continuous deployment tooling, and anything else you believe will keep the technical teams working efficiently and delivering high-quality work.
• Project leadership. You will collaborate with engineers, the DFML product owner, and our vendors' technical leads to define and estimate work, plan implementation efforts, and help define and iterate on the DFML's technical roadmap.
• Technology organization alignment. You will collaborate with the Commonwealth's executive technology leadership from Office of Technology Services and Security (EOTSS) to align the client's technical direction with the Commonwealth's standards. Our technical leaders will support you in solving problems that the Commonwealth has already tackled and look to you to advocate for the best technical solutions for our client where those standards might not be a fit.

The Paid Family and Medical Leave program is new to the Commonwealth, and the systems you'll be working on will launch in January 2021. Technical work on these systems will begin in earnest in late 2019. In your first few months you'll have the opportunity to help lay the foundation for the DFML's success by helping with:

• Vendor selection and onboarding. Work with the client's procurement team to select external vendors and establish the working agreements between the various technical teams.
• Hiring. Work with the teams to plan, interview, and hire our internal technical team.

• Technical design and prototyping. Design and build prototype software that will help the various teams to test assumptions and envision the solution.

You'll be a good fit for this role if you have experience:

• Leading software engineering teams. This is a senior role, and other members of the team will look to you for guidance on advanced technical concepts and for mentorship to grow as engineers and team members.
• Working with large-scale web applications. The solutions you will oversee will be available to roughly 3.7 million eligible workers in Massachusetts, and process roughly 160,000 individual claims per year. Software projects at this scale present specific complexities and challenges, and we think you'll be most successful if you have previously held a senior technical role on at least one large scale software project.
• Modern tools and programming languages. We would like you to have deep hands-on experience with a few of these things, familiarity with most, and willingness to be proactive and learn about these or any other technologies selected for DFML's solution:
  • Backend languages and frameworks: Node.js, Python, Java, PHP.
  • REST or GraphQL API frameworks in your preferred language(s).
  • Front end JavaScript frameworks: React, Angular, Vue.
  • Relational database systems: MySQL, Postgres.
  • WAF and CDN services (CloudFlare, Akamai).
  • Version control systems and package managers: Git, Mercurial, npm, pip, composer.
  • CI/CD tools for your preferred language(s)
  • Automated testing frameworks for your preferred language(s)
• Working on projects with external vendors. This project team will be composed of both external vendors and internal team members. We will rely on you to advocate for the client with our vendors to ensure that all our teams are delivering high-quality software. We will also rely on you to help build expertise internally on the solutions delivered by our vendors.

We'd also like, but don't require, experience with the following:

• Project teams that follow an implementation of Scrum, or a similar Agile framework.
• Writing and implementing security controls.
• Performance testing and tuning.
• Infrastructure-as-a-service providers: Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform.