Senior Platform Architect (Vibe Architect / Lead)

Job Title: Senior Platform Architect (Vibe Architect / Lead)

Location: Hybrid 3 days/week onsite at (Chicago, IL); 2 days/week onsite at Zion Cloud Solutions office (Deerfield, IL)

Engagement Type: Full-time contract (13 months) supporting the Enterprise Architecture Vibe Coding / AI-Assisted Development practice

Role overview

Zion Cloud Solutions seeks a dynamic, highly credible Senior Platform Architect to lead the AI-Assisted Development (Vibe Coding) practice. This is a client-facing, strategic technical leadership role: the Architect will define standards and governance, run Phase-1 ramp-up, and regularly brief and advise Agency CIOs, executive sponsors, and leadership. The ideal candidate combines deep hands-on cloud and modern web architecture experience with polished executive presence and proven ability to operate at the C-suite level.

Key responsibilities

• Serve as Vibe Architect / Sr. Platform Architect , acting as their day-to-day technical lieutenant for the Vibe Coding practice.
• Act as primary technical advisor and representative in meetings with CIOs, executive leadership, and senior agency stakeholders translate technical tradeoffs into business and risk terms for executives.
• Define and enforce AI-assisted development governance (system prompts, .cursorrules, prompt libraries), architecture boundaries, and quality gates aligned to DoIT and NIST guidance.
• Evaluate/select/configure AI dev toolchains (Cursor, Claude, Gemini), rapid UI platforms, Dockerized environments, and CI/CD/testing frameworks.
• Lead Phase-1 ramp up: finalize tooling, pipeline/repo structure, onboarding artifacts, and baseline coding standards.
• Lead and participate in AI-assisted feature delivery (Next.js 15, PostgreSQL/pgvector, Azure Entra ID), code reviews, automated test strategies, and sprint demos.
• Own Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) and the architectural decision log; present decisions and tradeoffs to the Chief Architect and executive stakeholders.
• Provide executive-level status, metrics and recommendations (monthly reports, roadmap updates), and be prepared to present outcomes and ROI to CIOs.
• Mentor and coach the delivery team; ensure the practice s outputs are production-grade and transition-ready.
• Lead knowledge transfer and author the Vibe Coding Playbook and runbooks for Organization adoption.

Required qualifications

• Bachelors in computer science/engineering or equivalent experience.
• 10+ years in software engineering/architecture, with 5+ years leading cloud-native architecture and engineering teams.
• Demonstrated experience advising and presenting to C-level executives (CIOs) and acting as a trusted technical deputy to senior architects or technology executives.
• Hands-on experience with Next.js / modern JavaScript (Node/React) and backend systems using PostgreSQL; familiarity with pgvector/Supabase preferred.
• Strong experience with Azure Entra ID / enterprise identity and cloud security best practices.
• Practical experience evaluating and integrating AI-augmented developer tooling and large models (Gemini, Claude) into delivery workflows.
• Deep DevSecOps competencies: Docker, CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, security scanning (TestRigor/Mabl or equivalent).
• Demonstrated knowledge of accessibility (Section 508) and enterprise architecture governance; experience authoring ADRs.
• Executive presence, excellent verbal/written communication, and polished stakeholder management skills.
• Ability to comply with on-site schedule: 3 days/week at Chicago; 2 days/week at ZCS Deerfield.

Preferred qualifications

• Master s degree.
• Prior public-sector / state government experience and familiarity with procurement/contracting constraints.
• Experience standing up Centers of Excellence, developer enablement programs, or engineering practices.
• Familiar with rapid UI generation tools (v0.dev, Bolt. New), semantic/vector search and RAG patterns.
• Knowledge of NIST security frameworks and methods to validate/mitigate hallucination or bias in AI outputs.

Competencies & soft skills

• Dynamic, persuasive, and strategically minded. Comfortable briefing CIOs and influencing enterprise strategy.
• Trusted advisor mindset able to be the trusted advisor to customer during planning, delivery, and transition.
• Strong facilitation and negotiation skills; political acuity when engaging cross-agency stakeholders.
• Mentorship ability to upskill teams and drive adoption of standards.
• Pragmatic balance of speed and governance: accelerate delivery while preventing technical debt and security drift.

Additional information

• Candidate will lead Phase-1 ramp up and remain pivotal across the 13-month engagement culminating in knowledge transfer and the Vibe Coding Playbook.