Solutions Architect

Supervisory Responsibilities

• Leads and directs one or more teams of Software Development Engineers and/or projects. 
• May supervise or train lower-level Software Development Engineers. 
• Works under little direction or supervision. 

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Constructs appropriate solutions with fast and slow, large and small data. 
• Architects test platforms to support distributed systems. 
• Identifies performance issues with software applications and troubleshoot performance problems in distributed systems. 
• Creates architectures for clients as well as provides guidance on existing architecture, including technical architecture design and review. 
• Owns all aspects of project quality in the software development lifecycle (SDLC) from requirements through to deployment of an application or distributed system. 
• Enhances system architecture to improve continuous software integration and deployment model within a DevOps environment. 
• Sets up the foundation of an agile process for a client. 
• Identifies new opportunities to leverage technologies for the organization and collaborates with Technical Directors to assess and implement them. 
• Constructs clear and concise documentation to explain technical concepts and approaches across a wide range of consumers including technical and non-technical audiences. 
• Independently performs discoveries and assessments. 
• Identifies systematic problems and identify solutions for the client. 
• Extracts a value-based solution to solve the technical and business concerns. 
• Create work breakdown structures for new projects. 
• Setup new projects including agile practices and tooling (i.e., SCM, Slack, Wikis, Harvest, Jira). 
• Perform maturity assessments of clients CI/CD processes. 
• Participates in public speaking opportunities or writing tech articles. 
• Ensures code, design, architecture quality practices are being met and mentor other developers on these best practices. 
• Work with sales on new project opportunities including scoping then creating proposals and SOWs. 
• Develop new business approaches with sales to drive client and project leads. 

Required Skills and Abilities

• Technical Skills 
• Understands how frameworks influence deployment, solution lifecycle management and software delivery teams. Understands how operations are affected by library and language choices. 
• Understands different types of programming methodologies (functional vs. object-oriented, imperative vs. declarative) and scenarios where each would be applicable. 
• Able to define a full DevOps lifecycle for distributed systems. 
• Participates in public speaking opportunities or writing tech articles. 
• Top technical talent at Nortal. Highly proficient in all of the SDE III and SDE IV skills. 
• Promotes guidance on architecture to clients. 
• Ability to construct appropriate solutions for small to very large problems with fast and slow, large and small data. 
• Possesses an extremely broad range in technical abilities and continually seeks out special interests in other technology. 
• Comfortable with modern web frameworks and technologies. 
• Comfortable with cloud infrastructure and technologies. 
• Ability to discuss technologies, approaches, pros and cons on the following topics: security, authentication/authorization, logging aggregation, monitoring, metrics, stack-based infrastructure delivery, immutable infrastructure, API gateways. 


Consultative Skills 
• Has the ability to scope out opportunities within a project and sell the project in meetings with the client. 
• Earns respect and trust of leadership within the company as a vital technical resource for collaborative decisions in the client organization and Nortal. 
• Ability to construct appropriate feedback when presented with differences of opinion or direction. Builds consensus and acts as a tie-breaker where needed. 
• Ability to extract a value-based solution to solve the technical and business concerns. 
• Construct clear and concise documentation to explain technical concepts and approaches across a wide range of consumers including technical and non-technical audiences. 
• Strives to become a trusted advisor, remaining flexible and putting customer needs first. 
• Communicates clearly and professionally to a wide range of audiences. 
• Perpetuates and expands Nortal's presence at client through networking. 
• Feel very comfortable with whiteboard sessions. 
• Ability to construct appropriate feedback when presented with differences of opinion or direction. 

Education and Experience

• Bachelor’s in Computer Science or equivalent. 
• 10+ years of hands-on experience contributing on a team to the delivery of two or more projects. 
• Has a “polyglot mindset” with experience and expertise in more than one programming language. 
• Has experience leading teams and leading technology efforts on multiple projects. 
• Experience with containers i.e. Docker and at least one cloud platform i.e. AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure cloud platforms (or similar). 
• Several years of previous experience with consulting are highly desired. 
• Experience designing and implementing solutions that coordinate many disparate systems and a wide range of data types. 
• Hands-on experience with Agile SDLC for more than 6 years. 
• Experience with CI/CD processes. 
• Expert Java skills