Architect II

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan•Lansing, MI

About The Position

The Architect II assists in the creation of best practices and is responsible for designing and effectively implementing strategies and solutions in alignment with IT strategy and guidelines. This position assists in the development of actionable blueprints, principles, models, designs, standards, and guidelines for assigned projects/initiatives to ensure information technology architecture is consistent, usable, secure, and adds value to the business. The position helps facilitate the design and implementation of flexible, scalable, and cost-effective solutions and provides technical guidance to subordinate groups. Accountable for adhering to corporate architecture standards, ensuring technology standards and best practices are maintained across the organization, and contributing to corporate architecture strategy-setting. Participates in formulating solution estimates and work planning, including determining appropriate task sequencing and identification of technical skill sets required. Builds consensus around principles of infrastructure architecture and interprets and clarifies these principles. Participates in the evaluation, selection, and implementation of technology solutions, including providing detailed analysis of pros and cons and build vs. buy options. Maintains operational, architectural, and design documentation, including procedures, task lists, and blueprints. Evaluates strengths and flaws in infrastructure design, including performance, quality, availability, simplicity of design, security, and total cost of ownership. Assists in the facilitation of project handoffs, including preparing documentation, educating, and supporting to ensure smooth transitions. Establishes and maintains relationships with IT and business area partners and provides consultation to the business teams. Troubleshoots, recommends, and executes action plans for issue resolution. Selects and designs tools that allow reuse of design components and patterns between projects. Continually works to enhance breadth and depth of knowledge and experience. Benchmarks technology strategies and architectures. Monitors and anticipates trends and investigates organizational objectives and needs. Prepares benchmarking reports and presentations. Promotes implementation of new technology, solutions, and methods to improve business processes, efficiency, effectiveness, and value delivered to customers. Develops actual working solutions or prototypes based on their own designs and resolves any issues that arise. Stays updated on current technology trends and industry best practices. Provides technical leadership and works effectively with different teams, including Product Managers, Project Managers, and Engineers. Fosters a healthy, collaborative, and productive scrum team culture. Works with other leads in a project setting to define and execute a software architecture that is sustainable, flexible, and scalable. Leads key initiative design, highly capable to complete tasks both independently with minimal guidance and leading a team technically. Exchanges information clearly and precisely, in verbal or written form, by sharing ideas, reporting facts and other information, responding to questions, and employing active listening techniques. Works with networks and understands internet security protocols. Analyzes existing systems to ensure adequate security and business continuity. Works with web servers, application server administration, and web applications deployment. Routing and switching technologies including TCP, UDP, IP, BGP, OSPF, Spanning Tree, 802.x, WLAN, ISO models. Creates designs to support appropriate technology choices. Creates strategy for server & network technologies. Promotes and conducts software development best practices such as dependency injection and test-driven development to create high-quality, flexible, scalable applications that can be easily configured for different client needs. Assists in the structuring of data, including methods of storing and retrieving data. Facilitates and creates reporting tools and automating the delivery of reports to dashboards. Creates data interfaces and facilitates API extraction of data. Designs and architects Identity and Access Management (IAM) solutions. Provides technical leadership experience with IAM Tools like ForgeRock IAM and CyberArk. Acts as a technical authority for IAM technologies while providing technology guidance to other IT teams. Defines solutions and best practices for a suite of ForgeRock IAM products and services used within the firm to secure identity and access to resources, sensitive data, applications, and services. Supports IAM becoming a product differentiator by providing best-in-class support and functionality. Guides project teams with implementations consistent with company policies and practices. Aligns projects with business and IT strategy to help projects sustain alignment with company policies and standards. Writes policy and standards as needed to sustain company compliance with regulatory changes. Works with development and QA teams to ensure the use of secure coding practices and verification methods. Develops product roadmaps and aligns efforts to meet security goals.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in computer science or related area required
Continuous learning, as defined by the Company’s learning philosophy, is required
Prior development and scrum/agile experience
Experience with RDBMS (Oracle 10g/11g, MS SQL 2005/2008), including database design, developing stored procedures and functions, and performance tuning
5 years’ experience in the implementation and maintenance of enterprise level systems
Experience in a large complex enterprise environment, preferably in Healthcare, Insurance, or similarly government-regulated environment
Strong communication and written skills
Ability to work out differences of opinions and publish scalable and quality system design based on specification
Strong knowledge of OOAD and multi-tier architectures, including MVC/MVP/MVVM design patterns
Strong knowledge with enterprise software development techniques such as SOA / EDA based design, Microservices using Web API, Queue based processing using any messaging technologies such as RabbitMQ, MSMQ etc
Ability to develop and maintain large scale, high performing, high transactional systems
Ability to diagram and document designs and requirements
Knowledge of Security protocols and the design, integration, and maintenance of these protocols
Ability to manage, assess and negotiate with vendors
Ability to mentor and lend guidance to team as needed
Expert knowledge of architectural design
Demonstrated ability to work in teams and capture ideas into strategy and standards
Ability to execute governance of cloud standards and strategy
Ability to set strategic architectural direction
Ability to identify architecture components for reuse
A clear understanding of the architecture standards
Ability to communicate effectively with Leadership, Business Partners, and IT Infrastructure team
Knowledge of IT and IT’s priorities, strategies, and current capabilities
Knowledge of technology and the current technical environment
Ability to breakdown the requirements into projects and determine timelines and dependencies with the other domains/ projects
Understanding of ongoing and planned projects and their inter-dependencies/ timelines
Strong analytical, problem solving and planning skills
Excellent interpersonal and communication skills
Ability to multi-task in a fast-paced environment
Flexibility to adapt readily to changing business needs
Enthusiastic, can-do attitude with the drive to learn and improve
Ability to understand networks and internet security protocols
Analyze existing systems to ensure adequate security and business continuity
Knowledge of web server and application server administration and web applications deployment
Knowledge of server sizing and performance
Knowledge of network design and performance
Knowledge of Firewalls and ACLs
Knowledge of VMWare ESX and Microsoft Hypervisor
Knowledge of patching and assessment technologies
Knowledge and understanding of structuring data and the methods of storing and retrieving data
Knowledge of data masking and encryption, reporting tools, and automating the delivery of reports to dashboards and customers
Ability to create data interfaces and API extraction of data
Knowledge of relational databases such as Amazon RDS, Greenplum, Hadoop, MS SQL, Postgress, MySQL, & Oracle SQL
DBA skills such as DBA backup and performance tuning
Strong statistical skills
Ability to develop IAM strategies and roadmaps that support business goals
Ability to design and architect Identity and Access Management solutions
Knowledge of IAM tools such as ForgeRock, SailPoint, Oracle Access Manager
Knowledge of privileged access management experience with tools like CyberArk
Strong knowledge of modern Identity Management protocols and standards, frameworks, federation technologies and solutions (for example ADFS, SAML, MFA, LDAP, Service Principals)

Nice To Haves

Master’s preferred
Azure or AWS Solution Architect certification or progress toward certification is highly preferred and encouraged
Working experiences with No-SQL databases such as MongoDB, Azure CosmosDB, AWS DynamoDB are preferred
Familiarity of routing and switching technologies such as TCP, UDP, IP, BGP, OSPF, Spanning Tree, 802.x, WLAN, and ISO models
Familiarity of Cloud Infrastructure including infrastructure as code (prefer Azure and AWS)
Familiarity of data tools such as Data Bricks, PowerBI, ElasticSearch, and SAS

Responsibilities

Assists in creation of best practices
Responsible for designing and effectively implementing strategies and solutions in alignment with IT strategy and guidelines
Assists in the development of actionable blueprints, principles, models, designs, standards, and guidelines for assigned projects/initiatives
Provides technical guidance to subordinate groups
Participates in formulating solution estimates and work planning
Builds consensus around principles of infrastructure architecture and interprets and clarifies these principles
Participates in the evaluation, selection and implementation of technology solutions
Maintains operational, architectural and design documentation
Evaluates strengths and flaws in infrastructure design
Assists in the facilitation of project handoffs
Establishes and maintains relationships with IT and business area partners and provides consultation to the business teams
Troubleshoots, recommends, and executes action plans for issue resolution
Selects and designs tools that allow reuse of design components and patterns between projects
Continually works to enhance breadth and depth of knowledge and experience
Benchmarks technology strategies and architectures
Monitors and anticipates trends and investigates organizational objectives and needs
Prepares benchmarking reports and presentations
Promotes implementation of new technology, solutions, and methods to improve business processes, efficiency, effectiveness, and value delivered to customers
Develops actual working solutions or prototypes based on their own designs and resolves any issues that arise
Stays updated on current technology trends and industry best practices
Provides technical leadership and works effectively with different teams
Fosters a healthy, collaborative, and productive scrum team culture
Works with other leads in a project setting to define and execute a software architecture that is sustainable, flexible, and scalable
Leads key initiative design
Exchanges information clearly and precisely, in verbal or written form
Works with networks and understands internet security protocols
Analyze existing systems to ensure adequate security and business continuity
Works with web servers, application server administration and web applications deployment
Create designs to support appropriate technology choices
Create strategy for server & network technologies
Promotes and conducts software development best practices
Assisting in the structuring of data including methods of storing and retrieving data
Facilitates and creates reporting tools and automating the delivery of reports to dashboards
Creates data interfaces and facilitates API extraction of data
Design and architect Identity and Access Management (IAM) solutions
Provide technical leadership experience with IAM Tools like ForgeRock IAM and CyberArk
Acting as a technical authority for IAM technologies while providing technology guidance to other IT teams
Define solutions and best practices for a suite of ForgeRock IAM products and services
Support IAM becoming a product differentiator by providing best in class support and functionality
Guide project teams with the implementations consistent with company policies and practices
Align projects with business and IT strategy to help projects sustain alignment with company policy’s and standards
Write policy and standards as needed to sustain company compliance with regulatory changes
Work with development and QA teams to ensure the use of secure coding practices and verification methods
Development of product roadmaps and align efforts to meet security goals