IT - Software Architect

Contract to Hire

The Cloud Platform Architect is an expert in the AWS cloud environment, and cloud computing and automation practices. Has a strong overall knowledge of IT logical and technical architecture principles with particular focus on scalable, robust and secure AWS cloud design of enterprise solutions. Responsible for translating business/technical requirements into cloud technical architecture, design and actionable deliverables that will guide the final product. Also responsible for bridging the gaps between complex business problems and solutions in the cloud, as well as among members of a product teams, including software and DevSecOps engineers. Ensures that the right technologies are selected, and re-usable frameworks defined and built to enable and accelerate product development in the cloud.

Responsibilities:

Cloud Solution Architecture and Design - Decompose current and new business initiatives and capabilities into projects, provide architecture and designs for cloud supported platforms and solutions, and develop order-of-magnitude effort, cost and operational estimates for proposed initiatives.

Thought Leadership-

• Produce and catalog cloud-based frameworks, models, and patterns that guide and direct the design of cloud infrastructure, applications and services that meet enterprise and industry security and governance practices, while meeting functional and non-functional requirements as well as cost objectives.
• Identify opportunities and drive continuous improvement in cloud solutions and infrastructure with new innovative approaches.
• Lead and/or contribute to the development and adoption of cloud engineering best practices in collaboration with Enterprise Architecture, Cloud Centers-of-Excellence and Operations.

Availability, Scalability, Reliability, Recoverability, Security, Industry Standards -

Use your Cloud expertise to design and to validate solution compliance to industry and BCBSA best practices. Includes knowledge of cloud automation, Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) using CloudFormation and Terraform stacks, DevSecOps tool chains and CI/CD pipelines.

Perform detailed design and code reviews to ensure compliance to company and industry engineering and security best practices and provide recommendations for improvement. Familiar with AWS Well Architected and its application to Platform and different classes of Cloud solutions workloads.

Project Contributions -

• Support and/or lead active initiatives by providing direction, coaching and updated design documentation to ensure implementations meet functional, non-functional, and compliance and security requirements.
• Collaborate with Product Engineering and use knowledge of cloud engineering practices and solutions design to manage and resolve differences and challenges between design and as built.

Change Agent -

Act as change agent and promotor of Cloud adoption and engineering best practices across the BCBSA Platform and Product Teams. Develop in-depth knowledge of business processes and systems and use expert knowledge to lead and optimize adoption.

Mentor -

Serve as end-to-end subject matter expert to internal and vendor architects and engineers in the design of scalable, highly available, and secure enterprise cloud and cloud-hybrid solutions in BCBS Platform and Product Teams.

Required Basic Qualifications:

• Bachelor's or advanced degree in Computer Science or Information Systems
• Minimum of 8 years IT work experience in designing and developing scalable and secure enterprise, B2B and B2C solutions
• 5 years in designing and implementing AWS-based solutions. AWS certifications in Architecture, Security, SysOps or equivalent work experience in similar work environments
• Proven knowledge of AWS platform and tools
• In-depth knowledge of current Cloud best practices and tool chains, including: Software Engineering, DevSecOps and CI/CD, Automated Testing, Operations, Disaster Recovery
• Strong leadership, team oriented interpersonal and communication skills. Must be able to collaborate effectively with a group of high performing individuals. Act as change agent and promotor of cloud adoption in the enterprise
• Excellent presentation skills and ability to maintain key relationships to achieve business objectives
• Demonstrated leadership ability to back decisions and recommendations with research and the "why," articulate alternative approaches including the pros and cons for each
• Ability to research and maintain knowledge in rapidly evolving AWS Cloud and emerging technologies, and its application to the BCBSA business solutions and IT platforms

Preferred Basic Qualifications:

• 8 years in IT with increases responsibilities as software engineer, solutions architect and/or systems architect
• 5 years designing and developing applications in the public cloud (AWS)
• Proven experience assessing compute workloads and technology landscape for Cloud suitability, and ability to design effective, reusable AWS Cloud solutions and frameworks based on industry best practices
• Experience as individual contributor in Cloud software engineering and architecture responsible for developing applications using CI/CD & DevSecOps best practices
• Experience doing design and code reviews of application logic, as well as supporting IaC and build and deployment pipelines. Ability to drive the adoption of corporate and industry standards including code quality, test automation, and DAST/SAST testing tools
• Past engineering and/or architecture team leadership a plus
• Experience integrating and/or migrating enterprise Microsoft, Open Source, or Mainframe hosted solutions to/with AWS a plus
• BCBS or health insurance industry background
• Experience leadership ability to back decisions and recommendations with research and the "why," articulate alternative approaches including the pros and cons for each
• One or more AWS Certifications in Architecture, DevOps, Security, SysOps, or Databases.