Enterprise Software and Solutions Architect

Overview

Black Canyon Consulting (BCC) is searching for a Enterprise Software and Solution Architect to support our work at the National Institutes of Health. This opportunity is full time and onsite at the NIH in Bethesda, MD and/or remote work.

Job Summary

Experienced Enterprise Software and Solution Architect to provide cross-functional technical leadership in aligning IT strategy with the research, development, and operational goals of the program with the focus on agile delivery of enabling and holistic IT solutions, digital transformation, and platform modernization in support of the mission. The Enterprise Software and Solution Architect will work across the NLM/NCBI divisions and branches to bring together the relevant stakeholders to define, develop, and promote enterprise architecture (EA), solution standards, and governance. The incumbent will ensure that solution architectures and designs are aligned with the infrastructure and operational requirements, conform to the architecture standards and cybersecurity compliance, and become flexible and scalable. We are looking for a subject matter expert with proven experience in digital transformation, enterprise architecture, and design of complex systems, and who is also practical and hands‑on in providing thought leadership and support in the efforts to deliver MVPs and solution prototypes.

Duties

Enterprise Software and Solution Architect will:

• Lead, promote, and inspire crosscutting adoption of Enterprise Architecture (EA) practices and principles.
• Capture and document the current state of the software solutions, technology stacks, and system processes into a comprehensive catalog of existing resources.

• Identify gaps in the current EA and develop a roadmap and implementation plan based upon a current vs. future state in a cohesive architecture viewpoint.
• Work collaboratively with the key stakeholders and engage cross-functional groups to develop consensus and credibility around the EA process.
• Own the EA process, from input capture to implementation, allowing for organic growth and dynamic expansion while focusing on the high‑priority projects and strategic initiatives.
• Be a creative and flexible consensus‑builder, provide deep subject matter expertise, advice, and coaching.
• Learn new technologies and keep up with both traditional and emerging best practices.
• Be practical and hands‑on: lead development of prototypes, contribute and participate in the MVP efforts, optimise for speed of product delivery rather than perfection of the solution.
• Ensure that solution architectures and designs are appropriately robust and address business, application, information and infrastructure architectural requirements.
• Partner with CTO, other architects, Technical Program Managers (TPMs), product owners and managers, tech leads (TLs), DevOps, and software engineers to build solutions that are aligned with the EA standards and principles, leverage common solutions and services, and conform to the cybersecurity requirements.
• Learn, understand, and champion organisational priorities.
• Within the solution development lifecycle, be accountable for architecting the solution design, starting with solution options evaluation and selection, buy vs. build decisions, and early‑phase project estimates.

• Establish the EA community of practice as an inclusive environment of collaboration with a diverse team to get the best outcomes, craft forward‑thinking applications and solutions, evaluate emerging technologies, and propose adoption path.

As a Team Lead:

• Lead a team of Enterprise Software and Solution Architects.
• Define success metrics and KPIs for the overall team and the individual contributors, measure outcomes, and continuously assess effectiveness.
• Ensure team members understand their duties and responsibilities.
• Provide coaching and mentoring for the team, lead by example, and empower individual team members to meet and exceed expectations.
• Select candidates and interview for staffing open positions.
• Administrative supervisory duties: attendance, feedback for performance reviews.

Requirements

• Management/Leadership/Coaching skills.
• Customer‑focused, team‑oriented disposition.
• Excellent communication and presentation skills, both oral and written.
• Excellent soft skills and demonstrated abilities dealing with customers, peers, and management.
• Good sound judgement, sense of integrity and responsibility.
• Experience as an Enterprise, Software, and/or Solution Architect.
• Generalist, technical skills across the stack. Expert in at least one programming language. Solid Linux skills.
• Experience with cloud technologies.
• Deep understanding of architectural building blocks such as web application firewalls, load balancers, gateways, proxies, caching, queuing, messaging, data streaming systems, SQL and no‑SQL data stores, file systems.

Preferred Experience

• Familiarity with Cloud Native technologies such as Kubernetes, containers, service mesh and related observability tooling.
• Familiarity with API best practices, identity access management (IAM) and security concepts, frameworks and systems.
• Familiarity with workflow products and frameworks.
• Understanding of Agile process.

Education

• B.Sc. in a STEM field (Engineering, Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics).
• OR equivalent industry experience in Software Development.