Enterprise Imaging Architect - Full time

MLK Community Healthcare•Los Angeles, CA

26d•Onsite

About The Position

The Senior PACS Administrator / Imaging Informaticist / Enterprise Imaging Architect (the "Senior Architect") owns the design, integrity, and evolution of the health system's enterprise imaging environment. This is a senior individual contributor role that combines hands-on system architecture with clinical workflow expertise. The Senior Architect designs and maintains the radiology (Visage) and cardiology (Fuji Synapse) imaging platforms, engineers’ integrations with the Cerner EHR and the modality fleet, and manages the cross-organization data flow that lets the contracted radiology group read our studies through Medicalis. Near term, the architect is a key contributor to the Visage PACS and VNA migration. This role is the technical authority for imaging systems, and the escalation point above day-to-day PACS administration. The role requires strong collaboration skills to work with internal teams and a contracted radiology group, especially during troubleshooting and incident resolution. Success depends on working smoothly with the contracted radiology group and with our own network, desktop/endpoint, and applications teams to isolate and resolve problems that cross those lines. The architect is expected to lead calm, structured cross-team troubleshooting during incidents, keep clear ownership of the demarcation between our systems and the partner's, and build the working relationships that let a fix happen quickly when no single team owns the whole problem. This collaboration expectation is central to the role and is weighted accordingly in hiring.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in health informatics, computer science, radiologic sciences, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
Eight or more years of PACS administration, imaging informatics, or enterprise imaging experience in a hospital environment, preferably including multi-site or high-volume imaging operations; seven or more years may be considered with strong enterprise architecture, migration, and senior escalation experience.
Deep working knowledge of DICOM, HL7, and IHE profiles, including DICOM storage, query/retrieve, modality worklist, MPPS, structured reports, DICOM routing, and HL7 ADT, ORM, ORU, and SIU messages between PACS/VNA, RIS/worklist tools, modalities, and an enterprise EHR.
Hands-on Cerner (Oracle Health) imaging integration experience, including orders, results, and worklist flow.
Experience leading or substantially contributing to at least one major PACS or VNA migration or enterprise imaging consolidation.
Experience integrating or supporting imaging workflow across an organizational boundary (for example, a contracted or teleradiology reading group), or clear ability to do so.
Demonstrated success leading cross-team troubleshooting across network, desktop/endpoint, and application groups, and comfort coordinating with an external partner's IT staff during incidents.
Working knowledge of infrastructure technologies that support imaging systems, including Windows Server, Linux, VMware or other virtual environments, SAN/NAS storage, Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle databases, Active Directory, DNS, TCP/IP networking, VPN, firewalls, storage tiering, bandwidth planning, and DICOM routing, enough to work effectively with dedicated infrastructure, network, security, and desktop teams.
Demonstrated ability to work directly with physicians and clinical staff and to translate between clinical and technical audiences.
Demonstrated ability to maintain HIPAA-compliant imaging workflows, audit logging, access controls, disaster recovery procedures, business continuity testing, and support for Joint Commission or other regulatory audit activities.

Nice To Haves

Direct experience with Fujifilm Synapse Cardiovascular (CVIS) or another cardiology PACS.
Preferred experience with Visage 7 (PACS, enterprise viewer, or Open Archive VNA), especially a migration to Visage.
Preferred experience with enterprise PACS and imaging platforms such as GE Healthcare, Philips IntelliSpace, Agfa Enterprise Imaging, Fujifilm Synapse, Sectra, Merge Healthcare, or similar systems.
Preferred experience with Orthanc, DCM4CHEE, Mirth Connect or similar interface engines, SQL scripting, PowerShell, Python, ITIL practices, cloud imaging solutions, and enterprise image exchange.
Preferred Experience with Medicalis or another workflow orchestration / worklist and clinical decision support platform.
Experience with cloud-hosted or hybrid imaging architectures and enterprise image exchange.
Experience deploying or monitoring imaging AI in production.
Imaging AI experience is a plus, not a requirement, for this role.

Responsibilities

Administer, maintain, optimize, and support the enterprise imaging architecture across the Visage radiology platform (PACS, enterprise viewer, VNA) and the Fujifilm Synapse cardiovascular platform, including modality configuration, AE titles, routing rules, hanging protocols, worklists, user access, image lifecycle management, system monitoring, image sharing, and disaster recovery for imaging data.
Support enterprise imaging across inpatient and outpatient radiology, cardiology, nuclear medicine, interventional radiology, visible light imaging where applicable, and the cardiac cath lab, including procedural, hemodynamic, archive, image exchange, image sharing, and long-term retention workflows.
Support the migration to Visage 7 PACS and VNA through data migration validation, interface build, software upgrade and patch coordination, testing, system validation, cutover planning, rollback criteria, archive consolidation, and post-go-live stabilization.
Engineer and support integrations between imaging platforms, Cerner Millennium, RIS/worklist tools, modalities, VNA, image exchange platforms, third-party viewers, cloud or hybrid imaging platforms, and AI imaging applications, including DICOM storage SCP/SCU, query/retrieve, modality worklist, MPPS, structured reports, DICOM routing, DICOMweb, IHE profiles, and HL7 ADT, ORM, ORU, and SIU workflows.
Own and troubleshoot the cross-organization workflow with the contracted radiology group: routing studies and priors to their Visage and Medicalis environment, coordinating worklist and prefetch logic across the boundary, and ensuring reports return cleanly into Cerner.
Support or lead cross-team incident resolution across network, desktop/endpoint, and application teams, and across our organization and the partner's, when a change on one side affects imaging on the other.
Maintain a clear map of the demarcation so problems are isolated to the right owner quickly.
Engineer imaging systems for high availability and throughput given heavy emergency department and outpatient volume; treat downtime and slow performance as clinical, not just technical, events.
Support imaging data lifecycle management: retention, purge rules, prefetch and routing logic, compression standards, and archive growth forecasting across both the Visage and Fuji archives.
Partner with the contracted radiologists, cardiologists, IR and cath lab teams, technologists, and department leaders to analyze workflow, resolve friction points, and translate clinical requirements into system design.
Serve as Tier III support and senior escalation for complex imaging system incidents, including image routing failures, missing studies, patient merge/split issues, HL7 interface failures, DICOM communication errors, modality connectivity issues, performance bottlenecks, disaster recovery events, and cross-team incidents; lead root cause analysis and corrective action follow-through.
Maintain business continuity and downtime procedures for imaging and test them on a defined schedule.
Evaluate imaging AI tools (triage, worklist prioritization, quantification) for technical fit, integration path, monitoring requirements, and performance drift, in partnership with the organization's AI governance process.
Enforce imaging system security and compliance in partnership with information security, including HIPAA requirements, access controls, audit logging, network segmentation for modalities, vendor remote access, cybersecurity initiatives, disaster recovery planning, business continuity testing, and support for Joint Commission and other regulatory audits.
Document the imaging environment: architecture diagrams, interface inventories, configuration standards, and runbooks.
Participate in rotating on-call support for 24/7 hospital imaging operations, occasional evening or weekend maintenance windows, and emergency response activities when imaging system availability, routing, reporting, or clinical operations are affected.