Architect of Software Engineering

Metlife Legal Plans•Cleveland, OH

10h•Remote

About The Position

MetLife Legal Plans is the country's largest provider of legal voluntary benefits. We have more than 40 years of experience in employee legal services and are committed to providing excellent care to our plan members, sponsors and 18,000+ attorneys. We are trusted by nearly 7 million families and more than 200 Fortune 500 companies who offer our service as an employee benefit. It’s an exciting time to join our team. We are growing quickly and have a bold vision for our future as we evolve our company to dream bigger, move faster, and use creativity and technology to build products people love. MLP's Core 4: Put customers first Be the Best Make things easier Succeed together This position is fully remote position. The ideal candidate can be located anywhere in the continental United States. A day in the life of our Architect of Software Engineering at MetLife Legal Plans: Our Enterprise Application Architect is responsible for designing and governing enterprise-grade applications that align with organizational strategy and technology standards. This role ensures solutions are scalable, secure, fault-tolerant, and maintainable, while leveraging modern frameworks and best practices. A critical responsibility is leading the transition from monolithic architectures to microservices-based systems, enabling agility, resilience, and faster delivery cycles. The architect must also understand the organization’s product and service offerings to design efficient, data-driven business rules and automation that enhance operational efficiency and customer experience. The architect will work closely with engineering teams, product managers, and business stakeholders to define architecture patterns, integration strategies, and governance models for applications built on Material UI, ReactJS, Django, and PostgreSQL. This role requires strong analytical, problem-solving, and communication skills, along with a solid understanding of software engineering principles. This position is instrumental in planning the basic function of our software applications and requires strong technical and design skills. MLP’s Architect of Software Engineering serves as a leadership role for defining application design patterns, coding standards, standard IDE usage, secure SDLC practices, integration standards, system security, error handling, data privacy, scalability and system performance.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in CS, MIS, or equivalent required.
10+ years’ experience building web applications, ideally with experience in both small and large companies.
Prior experience in Microservices Architecture
Ability to break up larger application repositories into microservices
Prior significant exposure to MaterialUI / ReactJS, Django ORM / Framework, PostgreSQL / Redshift
Prior experience in software development and systems architecture.
Experience leading enterprise system architecture and interfacing with product and design functions.
Ability to effectively cross-collaborate with internal and external stakeholders
Familiarity with modern web development tools and frameworks, including AWS and Azure.

Nice To Haves

Strong leadership skills and an aptitude for developing a high-performing culture.
5+ years prior experience in systems and software architecture
12+ years prior experience in software development
Master’s degree in CS, MIS, or equivalent
Familiarity or experience with legal, financial, and/or insurance technology products and applications
Agile or Scrum certifications

Responsibilities

Architecture Design & Modernization
Create 3-year roadmaps aligning Line of Business strategic and tactical needs with modern enterprise architecture.
Define and maintain application architecture standards and patterns consistent with MetLife best practices. Own reporting for Enterprise Application Inventory.
Contribute to broader MetLife Enterprise Architecture community in developing standards and supporting architectural governance.
Lead migration strategy from monolithic applications to a microservice architecture, ensuring modularity, scalability, faster/parallel development cycles, easier roll-back and patching, and reduced deployment risk.
Embed automated remediation in application architecture: actions such as container restarts, failover, or scaling executed via orchestration tools (e.g., Kubernetes) must be factored into future state designs.
Create application resilience by design: future state architectures must have built-in redundancy, be fault-tolerant, and support “self-healing” by leveraging continuous monitoring, anomaly detection, and rule-driven automated responses.
Design solutions using ReactJS for front-end, Django for back-end, and PostgreSQL for persistence.
Define API-driven architecture and REST/GraphQL integration.
Design secure, performant communication between client and server.
Embed authentication flows (JWT, OAuth) and session management.
Establish UI/UX guidelines leveraging Material UI for consistency and accessibility.
Create component-based designs and UI/UX best practices.
Design scalable, reusable UI components aligned with enterprise branding.
Embed state management (Redux, Context API) and performance optimization for large-scale apps.
Define application data architectures that support downstream business intelligence and analytics.
Apply advanced SQL, indexing, and query optimization.
Support data modeling for relational systems and handling of large datasets.
Implement ACID compliance (Atomic, Consistent, Isolated Durable) transaction architecture, and scalability strategies.
Ensure data models and workflows enable transaction auditability and compliance reporting.
Embed data governance principles into application design to maintain integrity and traceability across services.
Business Understanding & Automation
Collaborate with business stakeholders to understand product and service offerings.
Translate business processes into data-driven rules and automated workflows.
Ensure architecture supports business intelligence, analytics, and decision automation.
Integration & Interoperability
Ensure seamless integration with enterprise systems, APIs, and third-party services.
Define API-first design principles and implement secure, reusable services.
Performance & Security
Implement best practices for application security, including OWASP standards.
Optimize application performance across front-end and back-end layers.
Collaboration & Leadership
Partner with product and engineering teams to translate business requirements into technical solutions.
Mentor developers on architectural principles, microservices design, and coding standards.
Governance & Compliance
Enforce coding standards, CI/CD pipelines, and automated testing frameworks.
Ensure compliance with enterprise security and regulatory requirements.