Technical Architect & Engineering Lead - Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Project Description

• Hands-on Technical Architect / Engineering Lead embedded with IBM Technology feature teams
• Build solutions from scratch while actively contributing to coding
• Drive engineering excellence through best practices such as DDD, TDD, SOLID, Hexagonal Architecture, and Twelve-Factor App
• Develop reusable frameworks, starter kits, and engineering standards
• Mentor development teams and lead engineering community initiatives

Key Responsibilities

Hands-on Engineering

• Develop and deliver scalable applications alongside feature teams
• Implement Domain-Driven Design (DDD), TDD, SOLID principles, and Hexagonal Architecture
• Ensure Twelve-Factor App compliance for cloud-native applications

Software Factory & CI/CD

• Design and enforce CI/CD pipelines using Git and GitLab CI/CD
• Establish code review standards and trunk-based development
• Implement static code analysis using SonarQube
• Define API standards and best practices
• Implement observability with structured logging, distributed tracing, and correlation IDs

Cloud & Platform Engineering

• Design cloud-native architectures using AWS and Azure
• Develop microservices, serverless, and event-driven applications
• Implement Infrastructure as Code (Terraform)
• Apply cloud security best practices (IAM, Secrets Management, Network Segmentation)
• Optimize cloud infrastructure for performance and cost efficiency

Reusable Engineering Assets

• Develop shared libraries, frameworks, starter kits, and project templates
• Standardize engineering practices across development teams

Team Enablement

• Conduct pair programming and code reviews
• Mentor developers on DDD, TDD, SOLID, Hexagonal Architecture, and cloud-native development
• Organize technical workshops and knowledge-sharing sessions

Developer Community

• Lead Communities of Practice (CoP)
• Conduct technical talks, coding dojos, and hackathons
• Create and maintain engineering playbooks, standards, and reference architectures

Expected Deliverables

• Engineering Playbook covering DDD, TDD, SOLID, Hexagonal Architecture, Twelve-Factor App, CI/CD, and API Standards
• Reusable libraries, starter kits, and project archetypes
• Standardized CI/CD pipeline templates
• Architecture Decision Records (ADRs)
• Monthly code quality and engineering maturity reports
• Technical debt register and improvement roadmap

Mandatory Skills

• 10+ years of hands-on software development experience
• Strong expertise in one or more of the following:
• Java (Spring Boot)
• C# (.NET Core)
• Python
• Kotlin
• Expert knowledge of:
• Domain-Driven Design (DDD)
• Test-Driven Development (TDD) / Behavior-Driven Development (BDD)
• SOLID Principles
• Hexagonal / Clean Architecture
• Twelve-Factor App methodology
• Experience with:
• Git, GitLab CI/CD
• Docker & Kubernetes
• Terraform / Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
• Strong cloud experience:
• AWS: EKS, MSK, Lambda, S3, RDS, IAM, CloudFormation, API Gateway, SQS/SNS
• Azure: AKS, Azure DevOps, Service Bus, Key Vault
• Experience with event-driven architectures using Kafka, IBM MQ, SQS, or Azure Service Bus
• API design experience (REST, gRPC, OpenAPI)
• Knowledge of Security-by-Design principles
• Experience with observability, monitoring, and code quality tools (SonarQube, SAST, DAST)

Domain Knowledge

• Capital Markets / Investment Banking
• Trade Lifecycle
• Pricing & Valuation
• Risk Management
• Market Data

Soft Skills

• Strong technical leadership and mentoring skills
• Experience building engineering communities and Communities of Practice (CoP)
• Excellent problem-solving and decision-making skills
• Strong technical documentation skills (ADRs, playbooks, engineering standards)
• Ability to balance engineering excellence with project delivery

Nice-to-Have Skills

• Experience in Corporate Finance
• Knowledge of Securities Services
• Experience designing enterprise-scale cloud-native platforms
• Exposure to financial services and investment banking technology ecosystems