Senior Application Architect (Modernization & Delivery Enablement)

Primerica

About The Position

The Senior Application Architect leads the design and modernization of mission-critical enterprise applications, partnering with business and technology stakeholders to define scope, translate requirements into implementable architecture, and guide delivery into production. This role establishes modernization patterns and architectural guardrails, drives dependency-aware solution design, and mentors engineering teams to deliver secure, scalable, and maintainable platforms across legacy, hybrid, and cloud environments.The roles brings strong hands-on architecture experience, modern engineering expertise, and the ability to influence teams across complex environments—balancing modernization goals with operational continuity and business delivery. This position is only open to candidates located in Georgia

Requirements

Master's degree or Bachelor's degree with equivalent experience in Computer Science and Information Systems
10 + years Type of Experience Required
Must have at least 3- 4 years being a Lead Application Architect on multiple large-scale modernization initiatives.
Ability to prioritize and execute tasks in a high-pressure environment and sometimes competing priorities environment.
Experience designing complex concurrent applications requiring broad mix of technologies in the application architecture.
Ability to make sound decisions with minimum information provided.
10+ years of experience in software engineering and application architecture.
Proven experience designing and modernizing enterprise-grade applications at scale.
Deep knowledge of modern architecture patterns including: Microservices and modular monoliths API-first design (REST/GraphQL) Event-driven architecture (messaging, streaming) Distributed system design principles
Strong experience in cloud and hybrid environments (AWS preferred).
Hands-on experience with containers and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes/OpenShift).
Strong understanding of CI/CD pipelines, DevSecOps practices, and automation.
Experience designing for reliability: monitoring, observability, resilience, and performance.
Must be proficient in JavaScript frameworks such as VueJS

Responsibilities

Modernization Architecture & Target-State Design Conduct deep-dive assessments of legacy applications including code quality, architecture patterns, dependencies, SLAs, and operational pain points. Evaluate modernization options (refactor, replatform, rehost, replace, retire) and document decision rationale. Develop end‑to-end target-state architecture blueprints covering application layers, integration flows, data movement, security zones, and operational models. Partner with Enterprise Architecture to ensure alignment with enterprise modernization standards, cloud strategy, and long-term platform evolution. Identify modernization risks, constraints, sequencing challenges, and provide mitigations based on business criticality and technical feasibility. Define transitional architectures for phased modernization to ensure business continuity and controlled cutover.
Solution Design & Delivery Enablement Translate business and technical requirements into solution designs, covering data schemas, integration contracts, workflow sequencing, and API specifications. Create and maintain architecture artifacts such as logical/physical diagrams, sequence diagrams, deployment diagrams, and service interaction maps. Partner closely with engineers and product owners during backlog refinement, sprint planning, and development cycles to ensure alignment with architectural direction. Validate that engineering implementations follow design patterns, security requirements, performance expectations, and reliability objectives. Advise teams during production readiness assessments, ensuring observability, scaling, capacity, and fallback mechanisms are in place. Support troubleshooting during testing cycles (functional, performance, integration) and guide teams through complex technical decision-making.
API & Event-Driven Integration Strategy Define API lifecycle standards including versioning, schema evolution, authentication/authorization models, and developer portal documentation. Architect event-driven solutions including domain event definitions, message payload standards, retention policies, and event replay requirements. Evaluate integration platforms, messaging brokers, and streaming technologies for suitability in modernization efforts. Ensure consistency in API and event design across teams through reusable patterns, governance reviews, and automated quality checks. Establish monitoring and tracing practices (e.g., correlation IDs, event lineage tracking) to improve supportability and operational insight.
Engineering Standards & Governance Champion architecture standards and best practices; lead design reviews, prevent architectural drift, and provide guidance on design patterns, performance, resiliency, and maintainability.
Prototyping, POCs & Vendor Technical Evaluation Rapidly prototype modernization options to validate architecture assumptions, quantify performance, or evaluate feasibility of new patterns. Develop proof‑of-concepts that de‑risk complex integration or modernization challenges before committing to full-scale delivery. Collaborate with partners and vendors to review proposed architectures, ensuring alignment with enterprise standards and long-term maintainability. Drive technical evaluation criteria for vendor tools and platforms, assessing scalability, extensibility, API maturity, and ease of integration. Compare vendor capabilities against business needs, security requirements, and total cost of ownership to inform selection decisions. Ensure vendor-delivered artifacts—designs, code, documentation—meet architectural expectations before acceptance.
Mentorship, Code Quality & Operational Readiness Provide one-on-one and team-level mentorship to engineers and junior architects, strengthening modernization and design skills. Conduct code reviews with focus on architectural consistency, performance tuning, security posture, and maintainability. Publish reference implementations, reusable components, and best‑practice patterns that accelerate team delivery. Partner with QA, DevOps, and SRE teams to ensure services are production-ready — with dashboards, alerts, runbooks, and fallback mechanisms defined. Support post-production issue analysis to identify root causes in architecture, design, or integration patterns. Promote a culture of continuous improvement through architectural retrospectives, tech debt cleanup plans, and cross-team learning sessions.