System Engineer & SME

Job Description

Job Description

Company Description
Lumen Solutions Group Inc. is a technology consulting Services company based in Florida. We provide a wide array of experienced business and IT professionals supporting clients from solution design to implementation and support. We specialize in professional IT consulting services, IT Staffing, Business/IT Strategy, Business Process Blueprints, Enterprise Architecture, and Enterprise Transformation.  

Role: System Engineer & SME
Location: Washington – DC(Remote)
Job Type: Contract  

This is Remote role, candidate need to come onsite once in a quarter for PI meeting to Washington, DC (on own expenses).

The Senior IT Applications System Engineer provides portfolio-wide leadership across the Scalable Service Delivery portfolio, which supports multiple Transportation Operations applications, platforms, and modernization initiatives. This role translates business strategy and operational needs into secure, scalable, resilient, and supportable technology solutions while aligning portfolio investments with enterprise technology standards and strategic direction.
This role will define and govern target-state system designs, guide modernization of roadmaps, and drive technology decisions across legacy, mainframe, distributed, cloud-ready, integration, data, and event-driven environments. The role requires a hands-on leader who can operate across business and technology domains, influence senior stakeholders, and convert complex constraints into practical, sequenced delivery direction.
Serving as the primary system design point of contact for the portfolio, this individual will partner with architecture, product, engineering, security, infrastructure, data, integration, and operations teams to accelerate delivery, reduce technical risk and duplication, improve interoperability, and increase reuse across the portfolio.
Key Responsibilities

• Own and evolve the current-state, transition-state, and target-state system designs for the portfolio, including application, integration, data, infrastructure, security, and operational viewpoints.
• Create and maintain system modernization roadmaps that sequence modernization outcomes, dependencies, architectural runway, technical enablers, and legacy retirement activities.
• Lead solution design working sessions for complex, cross-domain initiatives spanning multiple applications, operational workflows, vendors, and technology platforms.
• Define system and solution design requirements, technical decision records, reference patterns, standards, guardrails, and reusable capabilities that enable consistent delivery across teams.
• Guide modernization of legacy and mainframe capabilities, including IBM mainframe and TPF environments, toward modular, service-oriented, API-led, microservices, and event-driven designs where appropriate.
• Provide leadership for Java and Spring-based services, APIs, middleware, messaging, event streaming, data exchange, and system integration patterns.
• Ensure designs address availability, resiliency, performance, scalability, observability, maintainability, security, privacy, disaster recovery, and supportability requirements.
• Partner with enterprise architecture, cybersecurity, infrastructure, data, and engineering teams to ensure alignment with enterprise standards and approved technology direction.
• Facilitate solution design reviews and workshops; clearly document decisions, alternatives, assumptions, constraints, dependencies, risks, and tradeoffs.
• Evaluate technology options and vendor solutions using objective criteria, proof-of-concept findings, total cost of ownership, implementation risk, and strategic fit.
• Provide technical direction and mentorship to solution architects, engineering leads, developers, and delivery teams without becoming a delivery bottleneck.
• Communicate the technical strategy and recommendations to both technical and executive audiences using clear narratives, models, roadmaps, and decision-ready materials.
• Contribute to portfolio planning, backlog refinement, PI Planning, and delivery governance by identifying architectural enablers, dependencies, and sequencing needs.
• Monitor implementation for alignment with approved solution designs, technology standards, and design decisions, and work with teams to resolve deviations, technical debt, and emerging risks.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, information systems, engineering, or a related discipline, or equivalent combination of education, specialized training, and relevant experience.
• 15+ years of progressive IT experience, including 10+ years in solution, application, systems, or enterprise architecture roles supporting complex, business-critical environments.
• Demonstrated experience defining and delivering architecture for large-scale modernization programs involving multiple systems, integration points, data flows, and delivery teams.
• Broad technical depth across legacy and modern platforms, including mainframe environments, distributed systems, Java/Spring, APIs, microservices, messaging, and event-driven architecture.
• Proven ability to develop architecture roadmaps, reference architectures, solution designs, architecture decision records, standards, and governance artifacts.
• Experience leading architecture across the full solution lifecycle, from strategy and discovery through design, delivery, production readiness, and modernization of operational systems.
• Strong understanding of nonfunctional requirements, including security, resilience, availability, performance, scalability, observability, maintainability, and disaster recovery.
• Demonstrated success influencing stakeholders and resolving complex technical decisions across business, product, engineering, operations, security, data, and infrastructure teams.
• Excellent written, verbal, presentation, facilitation, and executive communication skills.
• Practical experience working in a SAFe environment and supporting PI Planning, architectural runway, enablers, and cross-team dependency management.

Preferred Qualifications

• Architecture experience in passenger rail, freight rail, transportation, logistics, transit, aviation, utilities, or another safety- and operations-critical industry.
• Direct experience with rail transportation systems, operational technology landscapes, dispatching, crew, equipment, schedule, status, or day-of-operations capabilities.
• Working knowledge of TOGAF, SAFe for Architects, Business Architecture Guild (BIZBOK), and DAMA-DMBOK practices; relevant architecture certification is a plus.
• Experience with cloud architecture, containers, Kubernetes, DevSecOps, CI/CD, infrastructure as code, API management, Kafka or similar event-streaming platforms, and modern observability practices.
• Experience with architecture modeling using ArchiMate, UML, C4, BPMN, or comparable methods and tools.
• Experience evaluating commercial products, system integrators, and vendor-proposed architectures in a multi-vendor delivery environment.

Top 3 Must-Have Qualifications

• Portfolio-Scale Architecture Leadership: Proven ownership of target-state architecture and modernization roadmaps across multiple interdependent, business-critical systems, rather than a single application.
• Legacy-to-Modern Systems Expertise: Deep experience bridging mainframe or other legacy platforms with modern APIs, Java/Spring services, microservices, data platforms, and event-driven integration patterns.

Operational Delivery and Stakeholder Influence: Demonstrated ability to turn complex business and technical needs into actionable architecture, guide multiple delivery teams, and communicate tradeoffs and decisions to senior technical and business leaders.

Lumen Solutions Group Inc is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will be considered for employment without regard to any legally protected status.