Principal Architect
AF Group

The Principal Architect serves the company as an advisor on best practices and is responsible for designing and effectively implementing strategies and solutions in alignment with IT strategy and guidelines. The Principal Architect develops actionable blueprints, principles, models, designs, standards, and guidelines for assigned projects/initiatives to ensure information technology architecture is consistent, usable, secure and adds value to the business. The position facilitates design and implementation of flexible, scalable, and cost-effective solutions and provides technical guidance to subordinate group. The position is assigned to projects/initiatives of large size, complexity and risk and is relied upon to consult, negotiate, and build consensus with external and internal partners. This role is critical in designing and implementing robust network solutions that align with IT strategy and ensure the protection of enterprise assets.

• Accountable for adhering to corporate architecture standards, ensuring technology standards and best practices are maintained across the organization and contributing to corporate architecture strategy-setting.
• Leads governance processes of new technologies and solutions to ensure consistent technology life cycle management.
• Participates in formulating solution estimates and work planning including determining appropriate task sequencing and identification of technical skill sets required.
• Builds consensus around principles of infrastructure architecture and interprets and clarifies these principles.
• Serves as infrastructure design subject matter expert to business areas, project teams and vendors to apply and execute appropriate use of technology solutions and lead efforts to examine technology vision, opportunities, and challenges.
• Participates in the evaluation, selection and implementation of technology solutions including providing detailed analysis of pros and cons and build vs buy options.
• Maintains operational, architectural and design documentation including procedures, task lists, and blueprints.
• Evaluates strengths and flaws in infrastructure design including performance, quality, availability, simplicity of design, security, and total cost of ownership.
• Facilitates project handoffs including preparing documentation, educating, and supporting to ensure smooth transitions.
• Establishes and maintains relationships with IT and business area partners and provides consultation to the business teams.
• Troubleshoots, recommends, and executes action plans for issue resolution.
• Selects and designs tools that allow reuse of design components and patterns between projects.
• Continually works to enhance breadth and depth of knowledge and experience. Benchmarks technology strategies and architectures. Monitors and anticipates trends and investigates organizational objectives and needs. Prepares bench marking reports and presentations.
• Promotes implementation of new technology, solutions, and methods to improve business processes, efficiency, effectiveness, and value delivered to customers.
• Develops actual working solutions or prototypes based on their own designs and resolves any issues that arise.
• Provides technical guidance to subordinate group.
• Establishes and maintains vendor relationships to review and evaluate designs and controls and influence changes in future product releases.
• Stays updated on current technology trends and industry best practices.
• Provides technical leadership and works effectively with different teams including Product Managers, Project Managers, and Engineers.
• Fosters a healthy, collaborative, and productive scrum team culture.
• Works with other leads in a project setting to define and execute a software architecture that is sustainable, flexible, and scalable.
• Leads key initiative design, highly capable to complete tasks both independently with minimal guidance and leading a team technically.
• Exchanges information clearly and precisely, in verbal or written form, by sharing ideas, reporting facts and other information, responding to questions, and employing active listening techniques.
• Works with networks and understands internet security protocols. Analyze existing systems to ensure adequate security and business continuality.
• Routing and switching technologies including TCP, UDP, IP, BGP, OSPF, Spanning Tree, 802.x, WLAN, ISO models.
• Create designs to support appropriate technology choices.
• Create strategy for server & network technologies.
• Facilitates and creates reporting tools and automating the delivery of reports to dashboards.
• Guide project teams with the implementations consistent with company policies and practices
• Align projects with business and IT strategy to help projects sustain alignment with company policies and standards.
• Write policy and standards as needed to sustain company compliance with regulatory changes.
• Development of technology roadmaps and align efforts to meet security goals.
• Design and implement secure network architectures that are flexible, scalable, and cost-effective, ensuring alignment with business goals and compliance with industry standards.
• Develop actionable blueprints, principles, and guidelines for network initiatives, focusing on security best practices and risk management.
• Lead the evaluation and selection of network technologies, providing detailed analysis of security implications and performance metrics,
• Facilitate network segmentation to minimize attack surfaces and enhance security controls across the infrastructure.
• Serve as a subject matter expert in network security, providing technical guidance to project teams and stakeholders on the implementation of security protocols and technologies, including SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) solutions.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to integrate identity and access management solutions, ensuring that access to network resources is controlled and monitored effectively.
• Maintain operational, architectural, and design documentation, including security policies and procedures, to support governance and compliance efforts.
• Participate in the development of security strategies and roadmaps that align with business objectives and regulatory requirements.

EDUCATION

• Bachelor's degree in computer science or related area required. Master's preferred.
• Continuous learning, as defined by the Company's learning philosophy, is required.

EXPERIENCE

• Seven to ten (7 to 10) years' experience in the implementation and maintenance of enterprise level systems.
• Experience in a large complex enterprise environment, preferably in Healthcare, Insurance or similarly government-regulated environment.

QUALIFICATIONS

• Strong communication and written skills. Ability to work out differences of opinions and publish scalable and quality system design based on specification.
• Ability to diagram and document designs and requirements.
• Knowledge of Security protocols and the design, integration, and maintenance of these protocols.
• Ability to manage, assess and negotiate with vendors.
• Ability to mentor and lend guidance to team as needed.
• Expert knowledge of architectural design.
• Demonstrated ability to work in teams and capture ideas into strategy and standards.
• Ability to execute governance of cloud standards and strategy.
• Ability to set strategic architectural direction.
• Ability to identify architecture components for reuse.
• A clear understanding of the architecture standards.
• Ability to communicate effectively with Leadership, Business Partners, and IT Infrastructure team.
• Knowledge of IT and IT's priorities, strategies, and current capabilities.
• Knowledge of technology and the current technical environment.
• Ability to breakdown the requirements into projects and determine timelines and dependencies with the other domains/ projects.
• Understanding of ongoing and planned projects and their inter-dependencies/ timelines.
• Strong analytical, problem solving and planning skills.
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills.
• Ability to multi-task in a fast-paced environment.
• Flexibility to adapt readily to changing business needs.
• Enthusiastic, can-do attitude with the drive to learn and improve.

Infrastructure:

• Ability to understand networks and internet security protocols. Analyze existing systems to ensure adequate security and business continuality.
• Knowledge of network design and performance
• Familiarity of routing and switching technologies such as TCP, UDP, IP, BGP, OSPF, Spanning Tree, 802.x, WLAN, and ISO models
• Knowledge of Firewalls and ACLs
• Knowledge of VMWare ESX and Microsoft Hypervisor
• Familiarity of Cloud Infrastructure including infrastructure as code (prefer Azure and AWS)
• Knowledge of patching and assessment technologies
• Strong knowledge of modern Identity Management protocols and standards, frameworks, federation technologies and solutions (for example ADFS, SAML, MFA, LDAP, Service Principals).

WORKING CONDITIONS:

Work is performed in an office setting with no unusual hazards.

The qualifications listed above are intended to represent the minimum education, experience, skills, knowledge and ability levels associated with performing the duties and responsibilities contained in this job description.

Pay Range

Actual compensation decision relies on the consideration of internal equity, candidate's skills and professional experience, geographic location, market and other potential factors. It is not standard practice for an offer to be at or near the top of the range, and therefore a reasonable estimate for this role is between $79,300 and $207,800

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. Diversity is valued and we will not tolerate discrimination or harassment in any form. Candidates for the position stated above are hired on an \"at will\" basis. Nothing herein is intended to create a contract.

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