Lead Application Architect (GSP)

TEKsystems•Atlanta, GA

11d•$160,000 - $225,000•Remote

About The Position

The Lead Architect is a hands-on technical leader responsible for defining and delivering end-to-end solution architecture for complex client and internal initiatives. The role sets technical direction across teams, ensures solutions are scalable, secure, and maintainable, and guides delivery teams in building high-quality solutions aligned with enterprise modernization goals. The architect remains close to code and runtime by validating key architectural decisions, contributing to critical paths, establishing engineering guardrails, and leading design reviews. Success is measured by architectural quality and production outcomes, with the role primarily focused on hands-on solution engineering and minimal delivery support. Occasional travel may be required, such as for engagement kickoffs. The position advises client executive leadership on technical strategy, cloud economics, and modernization roadmaps; assesses legacy application portfolios and defines migration and re-architecture strategies for GCP; and owns end-to-end GCP architectures, including integrations, APIs, data flows, and non-functional requirements. It also provides technical governance, establishes engineering standards and production-operability practices, supports modernization proposals and estimates, and mentors engineers, architects, and client technical teams. The role requires extensive software engineering and Java experience, production GCP architecture experience, and experience in consultative, client-facing architecture leadership. The technical profile spans distributed systems, software engineering, DevOps and tooling, cloud platforms, AI tool usage, security, and executive communication. The position is permanent, based out of Atlanta, Georgia, and fully remote.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent work experience.
15 or more years of software development experience.
12 or more years of hands-on Java experience.
5 or more years of hands-on experience designing, migrating, and operating production workloads on Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
5 or more years of experience in a consultative, client-facing Lead Architect or Practice Architect role, with a track record of influencing executive stakeholders.
Expert-level software engineering and experience designing and governing distributed-system architectures, including boundaries, contracts, versioning, and data ownership.
Strong hands-on experience with Java frameworks such as Spring or Spring Boot, RESTful APIs, and microservices architectures, or their Python equivalent.
Experience designing and delivering distributed, highly available systems.
Experience with relational and NoSQL databases, messaging, and integration patterns.
Deep expertise in Java or Python, including mature-codebase refactoring, performance tuning, and pragmatic framework evaluation.
Ability to define and enforce quality strategies across teams, including test automation, testability standards, and measurable quality outcomes.
Hands-on contribution through prototyping, reference implementations, deep code reviews, and critical-path development.
Experience with CI/CD pipelines using Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, or similar tools.
Advanced DevOps practices, including CI/CD strategy, Infrastructure as Code, release safety, environment strategy, and scalable automation.
Experience with Docker and Kubernetes.
Strong understanding of security, identity, compliance, and secure-by-default practices.
Full-stack solution design capability across frontend, backend, integration, and data layers, with depth in at least one area.
Ability to establish architectural patterns that improve maintainability, reduce coupling, and enable independent team delivery.
Deep expertise in cloud-native design patterns, GCP security and identity (including IAM and VPC Service Controls), hybrid/multi-cloud networking, and cost optimization (FinOps).
Hands-on knowledge of GCP services including GKE, Cloud Run, Compute Engine, Cloud Functions, Pub/Sub, and Cloud Storage.
Experience with GCP managed databases, including Cloud SQL, Cloud Spanner, and BigQuery, and with legacy-to-cloud data migration strategies.
Ability to navigate ambiguous environments, drive technical clarity, and build consensus among client business and IT stakeholders.
Strong strategic communication skills, including explaining complex architectures in clear terms to non-technical executives.
Accountability for production outcomes, security, reliability, and cost-efficiency.
Ability to mentor technical teams and accelerate delivery through reusable architectures, code patterns, and shared tooling.
Strong understanding of Agile methodologies and iterative delivery.

Nice To Haves

Relevant cloud, architecture, or development technical certifications.
Familiarity with Google Cloud VMware Engine (GCVE) or Anthos / Google Distributed Cloud for hybrid modernization use cases.
GCP Professional Cloud Architect certification.
GCP Professional Applications Developer certification.

Responsibilities

Advise client executive leaders on technical strategy, cloud economics, and modernization roadmaps aligned with business goals.
Assess legacy application portfolios and define practical migration and re-architecting strategies for GCP, including refactor, replatform, and rearchitect approaches.
Define and govern scalable, secure, highly available distributed-system architectures, including integrations, API strategies, data flows, and non-functional requirements.
Conduct architecture and design reviews and document decisions, trade-offs, technical debt mitigation strategies, and engineering guardrails.
Write code for prototypes, proofs of concept, and reference implementations to mitigate delivery risk; evaluate and adopt new technologies and patterns.
Define and enforce engineering practices for API design, automated testing, CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, and secure-by-default blueprints.
Ensure cloud workloads are production-ready, with observability, resilience, automated recovery, and incident-response readiness.
Partner with pre-sales and account teams to shape modernization proposals, define solution boundaries, and provide effort estimates.
Mentor senior engineers, emerging architects, and client technical teams.
Set expectations for responsible AI tool usage, including validation, security, and IP and privacy considerations.
Evaluate and enable generative AI developer tools to accelerate modernization, code translation, and documentation safely.
Establish patterns for integrating enterprise data with cloud AI/ML services while maintaining data privacy, governance, and security boundaries.
Translate complex technical architectures into clear, value-driven language for non-technical executives.
Take ownership of production outcomes, ensuring systems are secure, reliable, and cost-efficient over the long term.
Promote Agile and iterative delivery, breaking modernization programs into manageable, value-generating increments.