Technical Lead/Architect

Introduction

Maryland Benefits (MD Benefits) is a dynamic, cloud-based platform. This enterprise-wide digital service allows organizations to build, test, host, operate, and integrate mission-driven applications, data, and emerging technologies. MD Benefits offers cloud-based Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) capabilities, a shared data architecture, and product development services, all developed by the State of Maryland to help multiple agencies deliver and manage health, human, and social service benefits and programs. On July 1, 2025, the operation of the MD Benefits shared platform and statewide applications transitioned from the Department of Human Services (DHS) to the Department of Information Technology (DoIT).

***This is a contractual position, with limited benefits***

***All hires need to be eligible to work in the U.S., either as a U.S. Citizen or those who have a Permanent Resident or green card, as the state of Maryland does not have the ability to sponsor employees***

***Applicants are required to submit an up-to-date and accurate resume.***

Description of Work

As part of the core PLX team, the Tech Lead / Architect partners closely with a Product and a UX to form the leadership trio responsible for delivery. This team builds the enterprise permitting and licensing solution itself — the shared platform other state agency programs migrate onto — and, in parallel, advises and consults on permitting and licensing (P&L) solutions across the state that sit outside the enterprise solution. The role serves as the senior-most engineering and architecture authority across both mandates, accountable for the technical strategy and the hands-on execution of the enterprise solution, and for the technical credibility PLX brings into every agency conversation.

Stakeholder engagement is core to the role. The Tech Lead / Architect represents PLX's technical direction directly to agency partners, vendors, and leadership, and is expected to hold that room as capably as the codebase. Hands-on delivery carries equal weight: the person in this seat writes code, reviews it, and builds alongside the team on the enterprise solution, while also showing up as a trusted technical advisor when other agencies bring their own P&L problems to PLX.

The role is hands-on across the stack, with backend depth as the primary strength: solution architecture, data and integration architecture, and system reliability are where the role spends most of its time, while remaining comfortable working in the front end to unblock delivery, pair with engineers, or prototype a pattern directly. The Tech Lead / Architect builds capability in agency teams across feature scoping, operations planning, software testing and debugging, and test-driven programming — leading by example rather than directing from a distance.

The role owns architectural decisions for PLX as a program built on Platform MD infrastructure — defining integration patterns, data models, and service boundaries that other agency programs can extend. It ensures secure, scalable, and maintainable systems are built in alignment with agency needs and Platform MD's shared services, and it guides agencies from legacy environments toward modern, product-driven digital delivery.

This is a senior individual contributor role requiring deep technical expertise, strong communication and leadership skills, and the ability to influence agency stakeholders, vendors, and internal teams. The Tech Lead / Architect operates with significant autonomy and executive presence.

Tasks and Responsibilities

Applications Software Engineering and Development

• Provides expert technical direction on system design, security, performance, accessibility, reliability, and maintainability, working hands-on in the codebase — backend by default, front end when delivery calls for it.
• Engages with customer agencies to perform needs analyses and define opportunities for new or improved business processes, solutions, and services based on user needs.
• Consults with agency partners to refine functional requirements and translates them into user stories and technical specifications.
• Acts as a recognized and respected authority on a diverse range of highly technical software issues.
• Collaborates closely with the Product and UX to ensure engineering decisions support user and program needs.
• Communicates technical decisions, risks, and trade-offs clearly and persuasively to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Implements modern engineering best practices — DevOps, CI/CD, test-driven and domain-driven development, and observability.

Architecture and Technical Strategy

• Defines, documents, and communicates the architecture patterns, standards, and blueprints that let PLX extend Platform MD's shared services without duplicating them — for application, data, and integration layers.
• Designs secure, scalable integration approaches across systems — API management, authentication and authorization, and service-to-service communication — so agency programs can plug into PLX consistently.
• Leads architecture reviews and technical risk assessments across application and data integration platforms, weighing trade-offs in the open rather than presenting decisions as already made.
• Guides development teams in selecting frameworks, design patterns, and toolchains that support reusable, maintainable, compliant software — favoring what fits the team and the platform over a fixed stack.
• Advises on modernization of legacy applications and refactoring toward cloud-native, service-oriented architectures, grounded in the constraints of the legacy systems PLX is retiring.
• Maintains technical documentation and architecture decision records so architectural reasoning survives staff turnover and vendor transitions.
• Mentors agency developers and junior architects on architectural thinking, scalability, and best practices, building agency-owned capability rather than dependency on the PLX team.

IT Project / Cross-Functional Leadership

• Reviews projects for technical feasibility and alignment with program objectives, and advises leadership before IT projects commence.
• Determines project objectives and sets priorities; anticipates potential threats or opportunities.
• Identifies, triages, and resolves technical blockers, including those tied to legacy systems, policy constraints, and staffing.
• Applies human-centered design techniques to drive IT project decisions and confirm the right product is being built.
• Leads cross-functional teams to develop innovative IT services and plans, develops, and executes complex IT projects.
• Determines the size, skills, and roles a project team needs to deliver, and identifies appropriate team members.
• Engages leadership in the design, development, and deployment of IT solutions using current and emergent technologies and best practices.
• Represents PLX's architecture and technical direction in advisory conversations with other agencies pursuing their own permitting or licensing solutions, balancing PLX delivery commitments against statewide advisory demand.

Relationship Management

• Works closely with customer agencies in a leadership role, navigating conflicting priorities from stakeholders.
• Provides agency partners accurate, expert, and authoritative technical advice.
• Builds cooperative relationships across agency, vendor, and internal teams.

Customer Enablement

• Enables agency ownership of the technical architecture and strategy for their programs, aligned to agency goals and user needs.
• Coaches and mentors agency staff, vendors, and peers in engineering practices, contributing to long-term capability-building.
• Serves as a technical advisor to agencies building or evaluating their own permitting and licensing solutions outside PLX, translating PLX's architecture and lessons learned into guidance those teams can act on.

Qualifications

Experience

• 10+ years of IT experience in application development, system integration, or technical leadership roles.
• 5+ years as a hands-on application or solution architect, with demonstrated backend depth — solution architecture, data modeling, and integration architecture — alongside working comfort in the front end.
• Experience architecting solutions in cloud environments, including native cloud services for compute, storage, and managed data.
• Working knowledge of data integration platforms, ETL pipelines, and data flow design across disparate systems.
• Experience designing systems with security, performance, accessibility, and compliance built in from the start.
• Proficient with version control, CI/CD pipelines, and modern DevOps tooling.
• Exposure to government or benefits-adjacent systems — permitting, licensing, eligibility, or similarly regulated domains — is a strong plus.

Education

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field; or three years of equivalent experience in a related field.

Attributes

• Comfortable owning both the whiteboard and the pull request — this role designs the architecture and builds parts of it.
• Equally at home in a stakeholder meeting and a code review; treats both as core to the job.
• Writes and speaks plainly; can make a technical trade-off legible to a non-technical stakeholder without losing the substance.
• Treats architecture as something the agency will own after the engagement ends, and mentors accordingly.