Job DescriptionPosition OverviewIn this role you will lead the architecture, technical evolution, and operational design of a large-scale, globally distributed mission platform deployed across multiple countries and managed remotely from the United States. This platform supports real-time transaction processing, distributed data management, integration with external government and commercial systems, peripheral/device orchestration, and centralized observability and administration. The successful candidate will be the overall software architecture authority for a modern Linux-based platform composed of approximately 25 core microservices and a broad set of supporting/integration services. The environment is cloud-heavy, distributed, operationally critical, and deployed in both constrained edge settings and larger centralized/cloud environments. This role requires someone who can define and govern architecture while remaining grounded in the realities of runtime operations, resilience, fieldability, and maintainability.
- Own the overall software architecture for a distributed microservices platform running across global environments
- Maintain and evolve an ecosystem of approximately: 25 core Java-based microservices, a comparable set of supporting and integration services
- Define and govern architecture across: service boundaries and contracts, data flows and event patterns, control plane and backplane behavior, node roles and deployment topologies, observability, fault tolerance, and service recovery
- Lead architecture for a platform based on: RHEL / Rocky Linux, Java (JDK 21+), Vue.js 3 frontends, MongoDB for persistent data, Elasticsearch / Logstash and RabbitMQ for ephemeral/search/event data flows, Consul, Nomad, and Vault for service discovery, orchestration, and secrets management
- Architect deployment patterns for multiple node types, including: server nodes, data nodes, arbiter nodes, workstation/user-facing nodes
- Guide the technical design of core operational services responsible for: transactional processing, rules/screening/correlation workflows, authorization and access control, reference/master data management, language/internationalization support, health/status services, biometric or matching-oriented services built on open-source components
- Oversee architecture for peripheral/device services supporting integration with a broad set of external devices and sensors
- Lead integration architecture for external standards-based and partner system interfaces, including: third-party government systems, commercial travel/identity/manifest-style systems, country/customer-specific extensions
- Ensure the platform remains remotely observable, supportable, and maintainable across all deployments
- Partner with cloud, network, security, data, field engineering, and operations teams to align architecture with deployment realities
- Review and guide software design decisions, technical debt reduction, modernization priorities, and roadmap sequencing
- Serve as a senior technical authority in design reviews, readiness reviews, problem resolution, and major incident analysis
Required Skills- Active Top Secret/SCI
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Data Engineering, Information Systems, or related technical field. 4 Additional years of experience can substitute for a degree.
- 12+ years of software engineering experience, including significant time in software architecture roles for distributed or mission-critical systems
- 5+ years architecting microservices-based platforms in production
- Java on modern JDKs, preferably JDK 21+
- Linux-based production environments, preferably RHEL / Rocky Linux
- Strong experience with: MongoDB, Elasticsearch / Logstash, RabbitMQ or equivalent event/messaging platforms service discovery/orchestration/secrets technologies such as Consul, Nomad, Vault, Kubernetes, or similar
- Experience designing systems that operate across: constrained edge environments, centralized or cloud-heavy environments, globally distributed deployments with intermittent or variable connectivity
- Proven ability to architect for: resilience and graceful degradation, observability and diagnosability, secure service-to-service communication, multi-role user administration and authorization, remote support and lifecycle management
Please note that all applicants mustbe U.S. citizens and require additional screening from our clients.
