I&T Systems Architect

City of Charlotte•Charlotte, NC

About The Position

The I&T Systems Architect defines, maintains, and governs the City’s enterprise technology architecture. The position develops strategic technology plans, standards, roadmaps, and solution designs to guide how systems are selected, implemented, integrated, and supported. It ensures technology decisions are aligned with business needs, long-term strategies, regulatory requirements, and cybersecurity requirements, and helps keep the City’s technology environment secure, scalable, reliable, and cost-effective. The role serves as a central liaison among customer department stakeholders, technology teams, vendors, project managers, and leadership. It translates business goals, functional needs, and operational constraints into architectural direction, requirements, and solution approaches. The position also shapes technology investments through standards development, proposal creation, procurement support, and architectural review, and provides guidance throughout the solution lifecycle—from discovery and alternatives assessment through design, implementation, and governance. The architect develops enterprise standards and reference architectures; creates executive-ready proposals, business cases, and architecture diagrams; supports solicitations and reviews vendor proposals and designs; and develops end-to-end solution architectures. The work spans applications, infrastructure, cloud, data, integration, identity, security, and operations across on-premises, cloud, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments. The role includes architecting AWS solutions using cloud best practices and the AWS Well-Architected Framework, supporting landing zones, modernization, infrastructure-as-code approaches, migrations, and cloud governance.

Requirements

High school graduate or equivalent and nine years of related work experience; or a two-year college degree in a directly related field and seven years of related work experience; or a bachelor’s degree in a directly related field and five years of relevant work experience; or a master’s degree in a directly related field and three years of related work experience; or an equivalent combination of education and relevant experience.
Related degree fields include Computer Information Systems, Computer Science, Information Technology, Business Administration, Public Administration, or a directly related field.
Broad understanding of enterprise-level technology domains and how they support business strategy.
Strong collaboration, facilitation, communication, and stakeholder-engagement skills.
Ability to understand business functions, processes, and organizational context quickly.
Ability to apply architectural best practices, frameworks, and standards to guide decision-making.
Proven ability to lead discussions with senior leadership and communicate complex ideas clearly.
Strong analytical, writing, research, presentation, and influencing skills.
Ability to assess market trends, vendor capabilities, and technology options.
Ability to evaluate complex problems and develop practical, sustainable solutions.
Ability to develop cost estimates, business cases, roadmaps, risk assessments, and implementation plans.
Ability to interpret and produce clear architectural documentation and models.
Strong change-management, relationship-building, and conflict-resolution capabilities.
Knowledge of IT governance areas such as cybersecurity, privacy, continuity planning, and risk management.
Familiarity with project lifecycles, IT service management, and technology governance processes.
Ability to manage competing priorities and deliver high-quality work on time.

Nice To Haves

Familiarity with modern cloud practices and architecture principles, specifically the AWS Well-Architected Framework.
Experience supporting cloud migration or modernization efforts.
Experience with enterprise architecture frameworks, modeling, and technology roadmapping.
Understanding of cybersecurity concepts and regulatory or compliance considerations.
Experience with IT service management, configuration or asset management, or portfolio governance.
Experience working in public-sector or municipal environments.
Experience contributing to procurement activities, vendor evaluations, and contract development.
Master’s degree in Computer Information Systems, Computer Science, Business Administration, Public Administration, Information Technology, or a directly related field, with three years of relevant experience.
Ten or more years of direct technology industry experience, including systems architecture, solution architecture, enterprise architecture, cloud architecture, or a related discipline.
Professional certification in cloud architecture, enterprise architecture, cybersecurity, project management, IT service management, or related disciplines.

Responsibilities

Develop and maintain enterprise technology standards, architectural principles, reference architectures, and design patterns across applications, infrastructure, cloud, data, integration, security, and operations.
Establish architectural guidelines for scalability, availability, performance, interoperability, security, privacy, accessibility, and cost effectiveness.
Collaborate with technology and business partners to apply industry best practices and assess the organizational, financial, operational, and security impacts of proposed standards.
Maintain architecture repositories, capability models, documentation, and technology inventories; support architecture governance and review technologies for compliance with enterprise direction.
Develop executive-ready technology proposals and business cases that address cost and total cost of ownership, staffing impacts, timelines, risks, mitigation strategies, and cost-benefit evaluations.
Address security, privacy, compliance, accessibility, integration, data, infrastructure, and business continuity considerations in proposed solutions.
Evaluate vendor offerings, contractual requirements, technical alternatives, and solution risks; document dependencies, assumptions, constraints, and decision rationale.
Produce conceptual, logical, and physical architecture diagrams and communicate recommendations, tradeoffs, and risks to technical and nontechnical audiences.
Recommend secure, scalable, maintainable, cost-effective solutions aligned with enterprise architecture standards and business priorities.
Contribute to solicitation language, requirements, and procurement documentation, including RFIs and RFPs.
Define or refine technical, functional, and nonfunctional requirements, architecture diagrams, integration needs, security and privacy standards, data and accessibility requirements, SLAs, and implementation and support expectations.
Review vendor proposals, statements of work, architectures, and technical designs for alignment with enterprise architecture, cybersecurity, infrastructure, data, procurement, and operational standards.
Evaluate vendor solutions, implementation approaches, licensing models, support structures, technical risks, and potential vendor lock-in; participate in demos, technical evaluations, negotiations, and proof-of-concepts.
Identify gaps, unsupported assumptions, hidden costs, dependencies, and implementation risks; contribute to contract language, SOWs, acceptance criteria, and architecture deliverables.
Translate business requirements, constraints, and desired outcomes into secure, scalable, reliable, and cost-effective end-to-end solution architectures.
Lead discovery, requirements workshops, and architecture and design reviews to assess current and future functional, technical, security, data, integration, and infrastructure needs.
Produce architectural artifacts, including context, system, integration, and data-flow diagrams; deployment models; interface specifications; and descriptions of system components, dependencies, environments, and nonfunctional requirements.
Design and evaluate application, infrastructure, cloud, integration, data, identity, and security architectures across on-premises, cloud, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments.
Architect secure and scalable AWS solutions using cloud best practices and the AWS Well-Architected Framework, supporting landing zones, modernization, infrastructure-as-code approaches, migration strategies, and City cloud governance.
Research technologies and vendor offerings, assess alternatives and risks, and communicate solution options, tradeoffs, and recommendations to technical and nontechnical stakeholders.
Provide architectural guidance throughout planning, design, development, testing, deployment, and operations; review deliverables for compliance with approved architectures and identify technical debt, risks, and improvement opportunities.