Systems Architect, Senior Advisor with CMS Experience

Peraton•Woodlawn, MD

25d

About The Position

Peraton is seeking a highly experienced Senior Systems / Solutions Architect to provide architectural leadership and technical direction for the Medicare Advantage Prescription Drug System (MARx), a mission-critical CMS system. MARx supports high-volume Medicare Advantage and Part D enrollment processing, premium calculations, plan payments, and information exchanges with CMS systems and external partners. The architect will define and evolve the system architecture to meet requirements for scalability, reliability, performance, security, maintainability, and operational efficiency while supporting changing business needs, federal regulations, and legislative mandates. The role works closely with CMS business owners, the CMS Office of Information Technology, program management, and multidisciplinary technical teams. It combines enterprise architecture expertise and strategic thinking with hands-on technical leadership. The architect will advise stakeholders, mentor technical staff, drive modernization and engineering excellence, identify optimization opportunities, and help shape MARx’s long-term evolution. The position encompasses AWS cloud architecture, PostgreSQL data architecture, Golang application architecture, systems integration, performance and operational reliability, program planning, modernization, and technical mentorship. The successful candidate will guide architecture and implementation while balancing long-term objectives with delivery commitments and operational priorities.

Requirements

Minimum experience: 12 years with a bachelor's degree, 10 years with a master's degree, or 7 years with a Ph.D.
At least 5 years in a senior technical leadership, systems architecture, or solutions architecture role.
Demonstrated experience architecting large-scale, mission-critical, data-intensive enterprise systems.
Strong experience with high-volume transaction processing, complex business rules, and large-scale data integration.
Experience supporting federal government systems, preferably CMS or other federal healthcare programs.
Ability to lead architecture decisions and multidisciplinary technical teams, and to work directly with business stakeholders, program management, and senior technology leadership.
Strong experience designing and implementing applications on AWS, including cloud-native architecture, AWS services, high availability, disaster recovery, and infrastructure optimization.
Strong PostgreSQL knowledge, including database architecture, data modeling, SQL optimization, indexing, transaction management, performance tuning, concurrency, replication, backup, and recovery.
Strong Golang knowledge and experience designing scalable Go applications, APIs, microservices, and background-processing services; understanding of concurrency, database integration, error handling, performance, and testing.
Extensive experience designing RESTful APIs, asynchronous integrations, batch interfaces, and high-volume data exchanges across complex systems.
Knowledge of distributed systems, microservices, service-oriented architecture, and event-driven processing.
Experience with application security, authentication, authorization, encryption, and secure integration patterns.
Understanding of CI/CD, DevSecOps, Infrastructure as Code, containerization, and automated testing.
Experience with performance engineering, capacity planning, observability, production troubleshooting, architecture documentation, design reviews, and technical governance.
Strong understanding of CMS and Medicare programs and operations, including Medicare Advantage and Part D enrollment and payment processing and the implementation of policy changes and legislative mandates.
Experience supporting systems involving sensitive beneficiary information, complex financial transactions, and stringent regulatory requirements.
U.S. citizen with the ability to obtain a Public Trust.

Nice To Haves

Direct MARx experience, including its business processes, architecture, interfaces, and operational environment.
Experience with Medicare Advantage and Part D enrollment, premium calculations, payment processing, and reconciliation.
Familiarity with CMS enterprise architecture standards, technology governance, and modernization initiatives.
Experience supporting high-value financial payment systems with stringent accuracy, reconciliation, and audit requirements.
Advanced AWS architecture, PostgreSQL optimization, and Golang application development experience.
Experience with large-scale batch processing, distributed transaction management, and complex workflow orchestration.
Familiarity with Medicare Advantage Organization and Prescription Drug Plan interfaces and data-exchange requirements.
Experience with AWS services such as ECS/EKS, Lambda, S3, RDS/Aurora PostgreSQL, SQS, SNS, EventBridge, CloudWatch, and Step Functions.
Experience with Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, and modern DevSecOps practices.
Familiarity with federal security and compliance requirements, including FISMA, NIST 800-53, and applicable CMS security policies.
Experience applying AI-assisted engineering, intelligent automation, or emerging technologies to enterprise systems.
AWS Solutions Architect certification or equivalent demonstrated expertise.
Experience leading modernization while maintaining uninterrupted operations of mission-critical legacy systems.
Strategic thinking, technical depth, business acumen, thought leadership, collaborative leadership, execution focus, strong communication, and commitment to mentorship.

Responsibilities

Own and evolve MARx’s solution architecture in alignment with CMS business objectives, technology standards, and modernization strategies.
Define architectural principles, technical standards, design patterns, and implementation guidelines; maintain architecture documentation and technical decision records.
Lead architecture for complex, high-volume transaction processing and data-intensive applications, and conduct design reviews throughout the software development lifecycle.
Evaluate architectural alternatives and identify risks, technical debt, bottlenecks, and opportunities for modernization and optimization.
Develop understanding of MARx enrollment, disenrollment, premium, payment, adjustment, reconciliation, and data-exchange operations; translate business and policy requirements into maintainable technical solutions.
Ensure financial processing controls support transaction integrity, reconciliation, auditability, and prevention of duplicate or erroneous payments.
Lead AWS architecture, including cloud-native design, availability, resilience, disaster recovery, security, observability, infrastructure standardization, performance, and cost optimization.
Provide PostgreSQL architectural oversight, including schema and data-model design, query and index optimization, transaction management, performance, data integrity, backup, recovery, retention, and archival strategies.
Provide architectural direction for Golang applications and services, including design patterns, API development, concurrency, database connectivity, testing, secure coding, and performance practices.
Define and oversee secure, reliable, scalable integrations with CMS systems, federal agencies, Medicare Advantage Organizations, Prescription Drug Plans, and other partners.
Establish interface standards and practices for APIs, asynchronous messaging, batch interfaces, and file-based integrations, including validation, retries, reconciliation, versioning, monitoring, and traceability.
Set performance engineering, capacity planning, scalability, batch-processing, recovery, restartability, idempotency, and transaction-consistency approaches.
Collaborate with testing and operations teams on benchmarks, load testing, reliability objectives, incident analysis, monitoring, and continuous reliability improvements.
Advise CMS business owners, OIT, program leadership, and technical stakeholders; facilitate architecture discussions, workshops, and design reviews, and communicate technical trade-offs to varied audiences.
Provide architectural input to roadmaps, releases, estimates, resource planning, technical feasibility assessments, and risk mitigation; guide implementation against approved designs.
Evaluate emerging technologies and practices, including Generative AI, Agentic AI, and AI-assisted engineering, and develop proof-of-concepts where appropriate.
Mentor architects, technical leads, developers, database engineers, and other staff; conduct knowledge-sharing sessions and promote engineering standards, collaboration, and technical leadership.