Application Modernization Architect || Onsite in Phoenix, AZ || W2

Application Modernization Architect

Role Summary
The Application Modernization Architect is a hands-on modernization leader who actively designs, codes, and deploys modern architectures. This role requires enterprise-wide awareness of application landscapes and the ability to demonstrate modernization patterns through working implementations.

The architect is expected to deliver architecture as executable code, including reference microservices, CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure templates, and event-driven patterns.

Key Responsibilities

1. Enterprise Modernization Strategy with Concrete Delivery

• Define modernization roadmaps validated through prototypes and PoCs, not theoretical models.

• Apply replatforming, refactoring, re-architecting, and containerization by personally shaping and validating implementations.

• Maintain enterprise-level visibility into modernization progress, dependencies, and technical debt.

2. Architecture as Code

• Design and build API-first, microservices, and event-driven systems, providing production-ready reference implementations.

• Define architecture standards as code: base services, templates, Terraform modules, Helm charts, CI/CD workflows.

• Partner with teams to ensure architectures are actually deployed, observable, and resilient.

3. Cloud-Native & Distributed Systems (Hands-on)

• Architect and implement systems using Kubernetes, service mesh, serverless, and managed cloud services.

• Define and validate resilience, scalability, and fault-tolerance through real load and failure scenarios.

• Own architectural decisions across runtime, data, integration, and operational layers.

4. DevOps, Platform & Observability Integration

• Design and implement CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure-as-code, and GitOps patterns.

• Ensure systems are production-grade with observability, tracing, auto-scaling, and zero-downtime deployments built in.

• Embed security and compliance directly into pipelines.

5. Leadership Through Engineering Excellence

• Lead by example—code, review, mentor, and pair-program when necessary.

• Act as an enterprise advisor whose recommendations are based on practical system ownership.

• Actively evaluate emerging technologies through hands-on experimentation.

Required Skills & Experience

• 10+ years in application architecture or software engineering with deep hands-on delivery.

• Strong experience designing and implementing distributed systems at scale.

• Expertise in microservices, APIs, event-driven architectures, Kubernetes, and cloud-native platforms.

• Hands-on experience across cloud providers (AWS / Azure).

• Broad experience in data stores, streaming platforms, search, and observability tooling.

• Ability to communicate architecture through code, working systems, and results.