Application Architect

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: 

Enterprise Application Architecture

• Develop and maintain the enterprise application architecture roadmap aligned with Aureon's business strategy and technology vision.
• Define and document current-state, transition-state, and future-state application architectures.
• Establish application architecture principles, standards, patterns, decision records, and governance processes.
• Create and maintain enterprise application capability maps, system context diagrams, and platform interaction models.
• Evaluate existing platforms and recommend opportunities for consolidation, modernization, optimization, or replacement.
• Conduct architecture reviews and provide recommendations on application design, platform selection, solution fit, and technical debt.
• Ensure the application portfolio supports strategic business objectives while minimizing unnecessary complexity, duplication, and operational risk.

Integration Architecture and API Strategy

• Design and govern enterprise integration architecture across business applications, customer platforms, operational systems, analytics environments, and third-party solutions.
• Establish standards and reusable patterns for APIs, middleware, event-driven architecture, enterprise messaging, data services, workflow automation, file exchange, and SaaS integrations.
• Define appropriate real-time, near-real-time, event-driven, and batch integration approaches based on business and technical requirements.
• Ensure integrations are secure, resilient, scalable, observable, supportable, and maintainable throughout their lifecycle.
• Create integration reference architectures, interface inventories, sequence diagrams, canonical models, and system interaction documentation.
• Partner with development teams, administrators, vendors, and implementation partners to translate architecture into working integration solutions.
• Ensure integration designs preserve data integrity, consistency, auditability, traceability, privacy, and appropriate error handling across platforms.
• Design synchronization and orchestration patterns for master and transactional data across enterprise applications.

Information and Data Architecture

• Define and maintain enterprise information architecture principles and standards that support operational, analytical, reporting, automation, and approved AI use cases.
• Identify and document systems of record, authoritative data sources, data ownership, stewardship responsibilities, and data lifecycle expectations across business applications.
• Establish architecture standards for customer, product, service, billing, contract, operational, and financial data domains.
• Develop and review conceptual, logical, and high-level physical data models that support business processes, system integrations, analytics, and application modernization.
• Design and document enterprise data flows between applications, integration services, reporting platforms, analytics environments, and automation solutions.
• Partner with business and technology teams to improve data consistency, quality, usability, and trust while reducing duplicate or conflicting data.
• Collaborate with data engineering and analytics teams to ensure operational applications support reporting, business intelligence, Microsoft Fabric, Power BI, and approved AI requirements.
• Support data governance activities including data quality, metadata management, lineage, classification, retention, ownership, access, and master data management.
• Ensure application and integration architectures align with long-term operational and analytical data strategies.

Business Process Architecture

• Collaborate with business teams to understand end-to-end business processes, customer journeys, business rules, handoffs, and information needs.
• Design application ecosystems and cross-platform workflows that support efficient, scalable, and measurable business operations.
• Identify opportunities to eliminate manual processes, redundant data entry, disconnected workflows, and unnecessary platform complexity.
• Create future-state business process, application interaction, and information flow models.
• Design workflow orchestration across multiple systems and support process standardization and automation initiatives.
• Partner with business leaders, process owners, and product owners to align technology investments with customer and operational outcomes.

Platform Modernization and Transformation

• Lead application and integration architecture activities associated with enterprise platform modernization initiatives.
• Develop target-state architectures, transition roadmaps, migration approaches, integration transition plans, and application retirement strategies.
• Evaluate emerging technologies, enterprise SaaS platforms, integration services, and application capabilities.
• Support software selection, requests for proposal, proofs of concept, vendor assessments, technical due diligence, and business case development.
• Provide architecture leadership through discovery, design, implementation, testing, cutover, stabilization, and operational transition.

Security, Compliance, and Governance

• Ensure application, integration, and data architecture designs incorporate security, privacy, compliance, resiliency, and governance requirements.
• Collaborate with Information Security and GRC teams throughout the solution lifecycle.
• Define secure integration patterns, API governance requirements, authentication and authorization expectations, and appropriate data protection controls.
• Ensure designs align with Aureon policies, contractual requirements, data handling standards, and applicable control frameworks.
• Participate in architecture risk assessments, control reviews, exception evaluations, and remediation planning.

Technical Leadership and Collaboration

• Serve as a trusted advisor to technology and business leadership on application, integration, and information architecture decisions.
• Facilitate architecture reviews, design workshops, solution evaluations, and cross-functional decision-making sessions.
• Communicate complex technical concepts, options, risks, dependencies, and trade-offs to technical and nontechnical audiences.
• Build consensus among stakeholders and influence decisions without direct authority.
• Manage multiple priorities, communicate status and risks, and escalate decisions requiring leadership direction.
• Maintain professional knowledge through continuing education and industry best practices.
• Other duties and responsibilities as assigned and required.

EDUCATION, TRAINING, AND EXPERIENCE:

• Bachelor's degree from a four-year university in computer science, information systems, software engineering, business information systems, data management, or a related field. Equivalent education and relevant experience may be considered.
• Eight or more years of progressive technology experience, including five or more years designing enterprise application, integration, solution, or information architectures.
• Experience designing integrations across complex enterprise application environments and leading application modernization initiatives.
• Experience with SaaS, cloud, hybrid application, API, middleware, workflow automation, and data integration architectures.
• Experience supporting enterprise data architecture, data governance, analytics, reporting, or master data initiatives.
• Experience leading cross-functional architecture decisions and influencing teams without direct authority.

REQUIRED SKILLS:

• Strong understanding of enterprise application architecture, integration architecture, information architecture, and solution design principles.
• Deep knowledge of API design, middleware, event-driven architecture, enterprise messaging, service-oriented concepts, integration patterns, and interface lifecycle management.
• Experience designing integrations among CRM, customer service, billing, ERP, ITSM, analytics, identity, finance, and operational platforms.
• Strong understanding of business process design, workflow orchestration, business rules, system boundaries, and application capability mapping.
• Working knowledge of data modeling, data governance, data quality, master data management, metadata, lineage, classification, retention, and information lifecycle principles.
• Understanding of transactional, operational, analytical, and reporting data architectures and how application decisions affect downstream data use.
• Ability to create application architecture diagrams, integration maps, sequence diagrams, data flow diagrams, conceptual and logical data models, interface specifications, and solution designs.
• Ability to translate business objectives into scalable application, integration, workflow, and information architecture solutions.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, facilitation, documentation, and organizational skills.
• Effective written, verbal, presentation, and stakeholder communication skills for technical and nontechnical audiences.
• Ability to evaluate options, articulate trade-offs, manage competing priorities, and navigate organizational and technology change.
• Strong judgment, attention to detail, customer focus, and commitment to confidentiality, security, and responsible handling of company and customer information.

TOOLS, EQUIPMENT, AND SOFTWARE:

• Experience with enterprise platforms such as Salesforce, customer service platforms, billing systems, ERP solutions, ITSM platforms, data and analytics platforms, and enterprise SaaS applications.
• Experience with REST APIs, GraphQL, web services, middleware, event streaming, ETL/ELT, enterprise messaging, integration platforms as a service, and workflow automation technologies.
• Working knowledge of Microsoft Azure Integration Services, Power Platform, Microsoft Fabric, Power BI, Azure Data Factory, Microsoft Purview, or comparable integration, data, governance, and analytics platforms is desired.
• Familiarity with modern data architecture concepts including data warehouses, lakehouses, data lakes, semantic models, master data management, and data virtualization.
• Proficient with Microsoft 365 applications, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, and Visio.
• Experience with architecture modeling, diagramming, documentation, source control, backlog management, and collaboration tools.
• Familiarity with AI-enabled business applications, enterprise automation, and the data and integration requirements needed to support approved AI solutions is desired.

WORKING CONDITIONS AND PHYSICAL REQUIREMENTS:

• Primarily indoor work in an office or hybrid environment requiring extended periods of sitting.
• Frequent use of a computer, keyboard, mouse, visual display, video conferencing, and collaboration tools.
• Occasional travel between Aureon locations, vendor sites, customer locations, or business meetings may be required.
• Participation in strategy sessions, architecture reviews, workshops, implementations, and transformation initiatives may require flexible scheduling.
• No unusual physical requirements.