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Principal System Architect
Category: Software Development/ Engineering
Main location: United States, Alabama, Huntsville
Position ID:J0926-1037
Employment Type: Full Time
Position Description:
CGI Federal is seeking a Principal System Architect to provide overarching technical leadership, architecture direction, and modernization strategy for a major federal transformation program. This senior-level role drives system-wide technical design, integration decisions, cloud alignment, modernization patterns, and enterprise architectural governance. The Principal System Architect partners across engineering, cloud, migration, DevSecOps, security, and product teams to architect resilient, scalable, and secure mission-critical systems.
Your future duties and responsibilities:
Enterprise Architecture Leadership
• Develop and lead the technical architecture vision, strategy, and roadmap for large-scale modernization
• Define system-wide patterns, standards, integration approaches, and modernization frameworks
• Ensure architectures align with cloud-native, microservice, and security-forward design principles
System Design & Modernization Strategy
• Architect end-to-end solutions across application, data, security, and cloud layers
• Guide refactoring efforts, legacy system decomposition, and modernization of mission workloads
• Lead development of API architectures, interface definitions, platform integration points, and service boundaries
Technical Governance & Oversight
• Establish architecture standards, guardrails, and decision frameworks for engineering teams
• Conduct design reviews, validate technical approaches, and ensure alignment across workstreams
• Provide authoritative direction for engineering decisions impacting scalability, performance, security, and reliability
Cross-Workstream Collaboration
• Partner with Full Stack Engineers, Cloud Engineers, Data Engineers, DevSecOps teams, QA Automation, and Product Leads
• Support integration with CI/CD pipelines, cloud deployments, and platform operations
• Provide technical leadership during sprint planning, backlog refinement, PI planning, and release readiness
Performance, Security & Compliance
• Ensure all system designs meet federal security standards, operational constraints, and compliance requirements
• Lead architectural risk identification and mitigation strategies
• Drive performance optimization efforts across system components and cloud infrastructures
Documentation & Technical Artifacts
• Produce architecture diagrams, system models, technical specifications, integration matrices, and decision records
• Maintain architecture documentation supporting audits, engineering continuity, and future enhancements
• Present architectural guidance to leadership and mission stakeholders
Required qualifications to be successful in this role:
• Must have an Active Top Secret Security Clearance
• U.S. Citizenship
• Bachelor's degree and 12+ years of experience in enterprise architecture, software engineering, or system design
• Extensive experience architecting large-scale, complex, cloud-enabled systems
• Expertise across application, integration, data, cloud, and security architecture domains
• Hands-on experience with modern frameworks, microservices, distributed systems, and API design
• Strong understanding of DevSecOps, CI/CD, and cloud platform engineering (AWS preferred)
• Exceptional communication and leadership skills for guiding multi-team technical direction
Preferred Qualifications
• Experience supporting federal modernization or national-security programs
• Deep knowledge of cloud-native architectures, containerization (Docker), orchestration (Kubernetes), or serverless
• Familiarity with large-scale data pipelines, ETL frameworks, and legacy modernization patterns
• Experience producing technical approaches for program deliverables (Transition-In, RTM, CVM, design artifacts)
Due to the nature of this government contract, US Citizenship is required.
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