Architect Lead (Onsite)

Job Title: Architect Lead (Onsite)

Location: Linthicum, MD, 21090

Duration: Upto 7 Years

Position Description:

The Architect Lead will serve as the technical authority and delivery driver for a state government agency's cloud modernization and data platform program on AWS. This role operates at the intersection of systems architecture and technical delivery - the Architect Lead is both the designer of target-state solutions and the hands-on technical lead who ensures those designs are executed correctly by the development and engineering teams. The role is classified under the Architect, Systems (Senior) labor category and requires deep AWS expertise, strong enterprise architecture skills, and the credibility to lead cross-functional technical teams through complex government IT programs.

This position combines two complementary capability areas:

1. Systems Architecture: Define the technical vision, design scalable and secure cloud and data platform architectures on AWS, establish standards, and govern technical decisions across all workstreams.

• Define and own the enterprise technical architecture for cloud-native and data platform solutions on AWS, including infrastructure, application, data, and security architecture layers.
• Develop Architecture Definition Documents (ADDs), solution design specifications, reference architectures, and Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) to government documentation standards.
• Design scalable, highly available, and cost-optimized AWS architectures leveraging services such as VPC, EC2, ECS/EKS, Lambda, API Gateway, S3, RDS/Aurora, Redshift, Glue, Lake Formation, CloudFront, and IAM.
• Lead the transition from legacy on-premises or monolithic systems to cloud-native microservices and lakehouse architectures on AWS.
• Establish and enforce architecture governance: coding standards, API design conventions, data modeling standards, and infrastructure patterns across all delivery teams.
• Conduct architecture reviews, technical risk assessments, and design walkthroughs for major features and system integrations.
• Collaborate with the government Enterprise Architect and CISO to align solution designs with agency EA standards, security frameworks, and IT strategic plans.
• Support Authority to Operate (ATO) processes by producing system security architecture documentation aligned with NIST 800-53 and FedRAMP controls.

2. Technical Delivery Leadership: Drive day-to-day technical execution - removing blockers, reviewing and approving critical code and infrastructure changes, ensuring delivery teams implement architecture as designed, and maintaining engineering quality and velocity across sprints

• Act as the senior technical lead for one or more Agile delivery teams, providing hands-on guidance on implementation approach, technical trade-offs, and code-level decisions.
• Review and approve critical pull requests, infrastructure-as-code changes (Terraform, AWS CDK), and CI/CD pipeline configurations to ensure alignment with architectural standards.
• Partner with the Technical Project Manager to identify technical risks, resolve blockers, and maintain delivery velocity across sprints.
• Lead technical discovery and spike activities; produce proof-of-concept implementations to validate architectural choices before full-scale development.
• Ensure consistent use of DevSecOps practices: automated testing requirements, SAST/DAST scanning integration, secrets management, and security-as-code across all delivery pipelines.
• Drive technical onboarding of new team members; mentor senior developers and engineers on architecture patterns and government IT standards.
• Facilitate technical working groups, architecture forums, and cross-team integration sessions to resolve dependencies and align delivery teams.
• Translate complex technical concepts into clear communications for non-technical agency stakeholders and program leadership.
• Contribute to SOW and IGCE development by estimating technical effort, identifying staffing needs, and defining acceptance criteria for technical deliverables.

Education: This position requires a Bachelor's degree from an accredited college or university in Computer Science, Information Systems or a related field; or three (3) years of equivalent experience in a related field. (Note: A Master's degree in Information Technology is a plus.)

General Experience:

Architecture & Cloud

• 16+ years of IT experience with 5+ years in enterprise or solution architecture roles.
• Deep, hands-on expertise with AWS cloud architecture across computer, networking, storage, security, data, and integration service domains.
• Demonstrated ability to architect large-scale, multi-tier, cloud-native systems from requirements through production deployment.
• Strong knowledge of enterprise architecture frameworks (TOGAF, Zachman, or Federal EA Framework) and architecture documentation practices.
• Experience designing systems compliant with NIST 800-53, FedRAMP, and FISMA in AWS GovCloud or commercial AWS environments.
• Proficiency with infrastructure-as-code: Terraform, AWS CDK, or CloudFormation for defining and enforcing architecture as code.
• Solid understanding of networking (VPC, Transit Gateway, PrivateLink, Direct Connect), identity (IAM, AWS SSO, SAML/OIDC), and security services (GuardDuty, Security Hub, KMS, Macie).

Technical Delivery

• Proven track record leading technical delivery on government IT programs, managing multi-disciplinary engineering teams in Agile/SAFe environments.
• Strong engineering fundamentals: experience reviewing and contributing to production code in at least one major language (Java, Python, Node.js, or Go).
• Experience with DevSecOps toolchains: CI/CD pipelines, container orchestration (ECS/EKS), automated testing frameworks, and SAST/DAST tools.
• Ability to lead technical risk identification, mitigation planning, and escalation in fast-paced government delivery programs.
• Experience interfacing directly with government CIOs, CTOs, Enterprise Architects, and security officers as a technical authority.
• Strong written communication skills; able to produce government-quality architecture documentation and present to senior stakeholders.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with data platform and analytics architecture: AWS data lake (S3/Glue/Athena), Redshift, Lake Formation, and data mesh patterns.
• Familiarity with AI/ML platform architecture on AWS (SageMaker, Bedrock) and MLOps pipeline design.
• Experience with zero-trust network architecture and cloud security posture management in government environments.
• Background in digital services modernization: API-first design, microservices migration, and legacy system decomposition.
• Familiarity with Maryland state government IT standards, enterprise architecture, and procurement processes.
• Experience with multi-cloud or hybrid-cloud architectures (AWS + Azure or on-prem integration via Direct Connect).
• Knowledge of FinOps practices: cloud cost governance, tagging strategies, reserved instance optimization, and showback/chargeback models.
• Experience contributing to contract deliverables: CDRLs, CDRs, STDs, and system authorization packages.