Technical Architect – Cloud & Software Engineering

Job Description

A hands-on technical architect / engineering lead embedded with feature teams across IBM Technology. The role codes, builds solutions from scratch, and enforces software engineering best practices (DDD, TDD, SOLID, Hexagonal Architecture, Twelve-Factor App) while delivering reusable building blocks. The Technical Architect also animates a developer community of practice to elevate engineering maturity across all squads.

Key Responsibilities

Hands-On Engineering

• Code alongside squads: DDD (Bounded Contexts, Aggregates, Domain Events), Hexagonal Architecture, SOLID, TDD
• Ensure Twelve-Factor App compliance for all cloud-native services

Software Factory & CI/CD

• Define and enforce CI/CD pipelines, code review standards, trunk-based branching, static analysis (SonarQube), and API standards
• Establish observability patterns: structured logging, distributed tracing, correlation IDs

Cloud Adoption

• Drive cloud-native design patterns across squads: microservices, serverless, event-driven, container orchestration on AWS (primary) and Azure
• Enforce infrastructure-as-code (Terraform), cloud security best practices (IAM, secrets management, network segmentation), and cost-aware architecture

Reusable Building Blocks

• Design and code shared libraries, starter kits, and project archetypes embedding all best practices

Feature Team Enablement

• Pair-program, conduct code reviews, run workshops on DDD / TDD / SOLID / Hexagonal / Twelve-Factor
• Mentor developers to elevate overall engineering maturity

Developer Community

• Animate Community of Practice: tech talks, coding dojos, hackathons
• Maintain an engineering playbook with patterns, anti-patterns, and reference implementations

Expected Deliverables

• Engineering Playbook (DDD, TDD, SOLID, Hexagonal, Twelve-Factor, CI/CD, API standards)
• Reusable building blocks, starter kits, and project archetypes
• CI/CD pipeline templates for all service types
• Architecture Decision Records (ADRs)
• Monthly code quality and CoP activity reports
• Technical debt register

Skillset and experience

Technical — Must-Have

• 10+ years hands-on software development, building solutions from scratch
• Expert in Java (Spring Boot), C# (.NET Core), Python, or Kotlin
• Deep DDD, TDD/BDD, SOLID, Hexagonal / Clean Architecture, Twelve-Factor App
• CI/CD tooling (Git, GitLab CI/CD); Docker, Kubernetes; Terraform / IaC
• Cloud: AWS (EKS, MSK, Lambda, S3, RDS, IAM, CloudFormation, API Gateway, SQS/SNS); Azure (AKS, DevOps, Service Bus, Key Vault).
• Event-driven architectures (Kafka, SQS/Service Bus/IBM MQ); API design (REST, gRPC, OpenAPI)
• Security-by-design, observability, and code quality tooling (SonarQube, SAST/DAST)

Domain — Strongly Preferred

• Capital Markets / Investment Banking: trade lifecycle, pricing, risk, market data
• Corporate finance and securities services

Soft Skills

• Influences through craft, not authority; proven mentor and community builder
• Pragmatic: balances engineering excellence with delivery pressure
• Strong technical writing: ADRs, playbooks, engineering guides

Education

Bachelor’s degree in computer science or related field. Certifications are a plus but not a substitute for hands-on craft.