Enterprise Applications Architect CTH

*We are unable to sponsor for this 6+ month contract to hire role*

Prestigious Institution is currently seeking an Enterprise Applications Architect with strong experience around application development, data governance, security, compliance, and Cloud and on-prem platform integration. The successful candidate will define architecture frameworks and work alongside crossfunctional teams to design and modernize our application, data, and security architectures across hybrid onprem and multicloud environments (AWS and Azure). This role will partner with data scientists, researchers, engineers, security, and business stakeholders to align technology decisions with research and business objectives, enable secure collaboration with external partners, and drive coherent application and data strategies. Candidate will be involved in the development and implementation of enterprise Application Architecture function. In addition, this role, working alongside of other application architects, will work with senior leaders to develop and architect strategic initiatives that align with the organization's overall solution objectives.  Candidate should have strong leadership and communication skills, attention to detail, as well as a deep understanding of application related technology trends, application architecture & design patterns and best practices.

Responsibilities:

1. Maintain enterprise architectures: document current state and target state architectures for applications, data, and infrastructure across on-prem and multi-cloud environments.
2. Lead hands on application architecture and development work: design, build, optimize, and troubleshoot complex enterprise applications deployed on-prem; advise engineering teams on code, deployment patterns, integration, and best practices.
3. Inventory, dependency mapping & impact analysis: own an authoritative inventory of in-house and commercial applications (owners, interfaces, workflows, lifecycle) and produce/maintain dependency graphs to support change, migration, and incident impact analysis.
4. Middleware, platform & on-prem stack expertise: work closely with application teams on middleware, application servers, databases, message brokers, workflow engines, caching, and related platform components to ensure robustness, scalability, and maintainability.
5. Integration strategy & interoperability: develop and implement enterprise integration strategies (ESB/SOA, API gateways, microservices, event-driven architecture, file transfers, workflow orchestration); standardize APIs, contracts, versioning, and interface governance.
6. Application lifecycle management & operationalization: drive improvements in deployment automation, patching, upgrades, CI/CD for on-prem and hybrid deployments; define runbooks, SLOs/SLAs, monitoring/observability, and provisioning patterns for repeatable operations.
7. Performance tuning & diagnostics: lead root cause analysis and performance optimization for critical applications, including profiling, capacity planning, query tuning, JVM/.NET tuning, and resource optimization.
8. Technology guidance & modernization tradeoffs: provide architecture patterns and technology recommendations for legacy and modernized applications; advise on refactor vs. replatform decisions and interoperability with cloud services.
9. Hybrid cloud enablement: define and maintain repeatable reference patterns for hybrid connectivity, landing zones, multiaccount/subscription design, and secure connectivity (Direct Connect/ExpressRoute, transit); guide when to liftandshift, re-platform, or integrate with cloudnative services to complement onprem systems.
10. Security architecture & compliance: define and enforce security patterns (zero trust, IAM, network segmentation, encryption, key/secret management) and embed security controls into solution designs and the SDLC to meet regulatory/contractual requirements (HIPAA, FedRAMP, GDPR, client constraints).
11. Data strategy, governance & lineage: define data domains, canonical models and storage/processing patterns; establish or scale data governance, metadata/catalog processes, and end to end lineage for critical datasets aligned to research and analytics needs.
12. Secure research spaces & partner collaboration: design secure, isolated research environments (tenant separation, controlled egress, ephemeral compute, time bounded access) to enable collaboration with external partners and clients.
13. Governance, standards & review: author architecture principles, standards, patterns, and review processes; chair or participate in the Architecture Review Board and approve solution architectures for major projects.
14. Cost, performance & risk optimization: advise on cost allocation/chargeback, cost optimization (cloud/on-prem as applicable), performance tradeoffs, technical debt mitigation, and prioritization of modernization efforts.
15. Stakeholder engagement, enablement & hands on leadership: collaborate with security, infrastructure, data engineering, product owners, researchers, and external partners; produce architecture blueprints, PoCs, runbooks, and provide hands on coaching and training to development teams.
16. Continuous improvement & innovation: evaluate emerging technologies relevant to secure research, analytics, and ML; lead PoCs and recommend adoption where they advance secure, scalable solutions.
17. Partake in the development of an organization's application architecture, including the Target State Application Architecture that enables the Enterprise Architecture and the Architecture Vision, in a way that addresses the Statement of Architecture Work and stakeholder concerns.
18. Ensuring that application architectures are aligned with the organization's overall solution goals and objectives.
19. Developing and maintaining reference architecture, architecture building block (ABB), standards, and guidelines to ensure that the organization's technology is secure and compliant with industry standards.
20. Overseeing the selection and implementation of technology solutions that meet the organization's needs.
21. Identifying areas for solution, capability improvement and implementing strategies, roadmap to address them.
22. Collaborating with stakeholders across the organization to identify and participate in prioritize initiatives.
23. Staying up to date with emerging technology trends and developments and evaluating their potential impact on the organization.
24. Communicating technology target state, roadmap and development progress to senior leadership and other stakeholders.

Qualifications:

1. Bachelor’s degree in computer science, information systems, or related field, or equivalent experience.
2. 7+ years’ combined experience in application development and enterprise architecture (10+ years preferred), including hands on development experience and proven experience designing enterprise scale applications, integration, and data architectures across hybrid on-prem and cloud environments.
3. Hands on application stack experience: Demonstrated deep, practical experience with enterprise application technologies (Java EE/Spring, .NET, application servers, middleware, message brokers, relational and NoSQL databases, caching, workflow engines).
4. Integration & middleware expertise: Proven experience designing and operating ESB/SOA, API gateway, message-oriented middleware, and complex ETL/integration topologies in on-prem or hybrid environments.
5. Application lifecycle & DevOps: Experience with release engineering, CI/CD (on-prem and cloud-hosted), deployment automation, monitoring/observability for multi-tier applications.
6. Practical cloud experience: Demonstrated experience with AWS and/or Azure architectures, including hybrid connectivity, landing zone and multi account/subscription design, and secure cloud controls.
7. Cloud operational skills: Hands on familiarity with cloud IaC and CI/CD tooling and operational patterns (Terraform/ARM/Bicep, GitOps, cloud monitoring), and experience advising on cloud cost optimization and data replication/DR strategies.
8. Troubleshooting & performance: Strong track record leading RCA, performance tuning, profiling, and capacity planning for enterprise systems.
9. Data & governance alignment: Familiarity with data modelling, lineage, and metadata practices to ensure integrations and applications support research and analytics needs Enterprise Architect.docx.
10. Security & compliance: Knowledge of embedding security patterns (IAM, encryption, network segmentation) into application and integration designs to satisfy regulatory and contractual obligations Enterprise Architect.docx.
11. Preferred certifications: Application platform certifications and/or architecture credentials (TOGAF, cloud certs optional, CISSP/CISM/CCSP desirable)
12. Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills; ability to translate technical architecture into actionable guidance for engineering, research, security, and leadership audiences.
13. Experience working with research or data science teams and designing secure, collaborative research environments is highly desirable.
14. Bachelor's degree in computer science, information systems, data science, or related field.
15. 8+ years of experience in Enterprise Application Architecture function, preferred in a global capacity.
16. Strong knowledge of architecture governance concepts, application design patterns, and best practices.
17. Experience developing and implementing architecture governance, guidelines, procedures, and standards.
18. Experience with one or more platforms such as Microsoft M365, SharePoint, Azure, Salesforce.com (Sales, Marketing Cloud), MuleSoft, ServiceNow.
19. Proven change management skills.
20. Experience leading a team of architects, technology owners, and technology subject matter experts.

Preferred Skills:

• MBA degree
• Strong presentation skills
• Vendor management
• Work experience at a large professional service organization
• TOGAF certification
• Azure Cloud Service Provider certification