Application Architect

**Work Location – Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Alberta, Ontario, and British Columbia. This role is eligible for hybrid, onsite or remote work in the provinces where we operate.**

The Application Architect is a specialized technical position responsible for ensuring that the custom-developed solutions as well as SaaS/COTS integrations and customizations function responsibly within the broader ecosystem of software while providing value to SGI and SGI CANADA business operations. The successful candidate will provide vision, leadership, analysis, and design expertise to align technical solutions with corporate, technical, and business strategies in an environment that is highly complex, rapidly changing and expanding.

Key Accountabilities

Note: This section is not intended to be an exhaustive list of duties and responsibilities – other duties and responsibilities may be assigned.

Application Architecture Planning/Strategy

• Provides specialized technical expertise to our procurement and RFP processes:
• Participates in the development of complex RFP’s for the procurement of products and services.
• Creates and updates the technical RFP requirements.
• Participates as a member of the decision-making team in the evaluation of RFP responses and recommendations.
• Researches, adapts, recommends and implements architecture and design best practice and ensures adherence throughout the development teams.
• Understands the impact of transformation and application decisions on roles and assists/supports management plan out what the impact will be.
• Ensures that solutions are architected to meet the business outcomes while strategically aligning to the IT strategy and vision and that the architecture of systems can evolve over time as business demands change.
• Maintains knowledge of emerging software development trends and utilizes this knowledge to educate both IT and the business on opportunities to build better architectural application solutions that support and drive business decisions.
• Identifies areas of risk and tech debt in SGI’s systems and expresses that risk to stakeholders; contributes to evolvement of IT governance processes to create alignment across teams within the IT division.
• Collaborates with data, technology and cyber architects and developers on creating solutions related to the security, scalability, and resiliency of SGI applications.
• Collaborates with Technology Architects to ensure custom applications integrate with SaaS and COTS systems to meet organizational needs and that the customizations of SaaS and COTS products are reliable and scalable.
• Collaborates with the data division to ensure that services and applications are contributing to SGI’s broader data strategy in ways that are secure, scalable, maintainable, and consistent.
• Evolves SGI’s reference and working architectures to keep up with new technology and evolving industry best practices and addresses gaps by identifying them and bringing forth potential solutions to the Architecture Review Board.
• Drives alignment with business strategy through understanding, design and architecture of large holistic interconnections of many individual system components to optimize business value.

Application Architecture Delivery & Support

• Collaborates with the Business Relationship Managers (BRMs) to determine the best technology solution for problems presented by the business. Together with the BRM, provides input into the creation of business cases for divisional or enterprise initiatives.
• Manages inter-system dependencies to ensure our systems remain agile and performant.
• Ensures systems ability to communicate with each other in a way that is stable, effective, and secure.
• Directs integration between individual systems that is robust and resilient to changes and failures of those systems and the network connecting them.
• Provides consultation to the Principal Developer on the state of our systems at a code and application level.
• Provides consultation to the Principal Tester on the state of our tests at the application and overall system levels.
• Evaluates proposed solutions for both custom development as well as SaaS/COTS products for fit within our overarching system and alignment to divisional and organizational goals.
• Evaluates and provides feedback for development teams on their applications’ functionality within the broader ecosystem of services and application.
• Mentors' development teams on understanding and evaluating the tradeoffs of applicable architectural patterns and practices.
• Evaluates and provides feedback on the system design and architecture delivered by development teams.
• Creates effective objective key results and key performance indicators to be used within development teams and within the division to measure the effectiveness and success of our systems.
• Ensures that all areas of system provide necessary logging, monitoring and metrics capabilities to ensure visibility of the current state of the system and ensure reliable and scalable operation.
• Establishes documentation for architectural choices, rationale and impacts of those decisions to provide clarity around SGI’s current state of the art.

Leadership

• Actively contributes to and supports a culture of a high performing workforce.
• Participates in divisional succession plans, ensuring ongoing professional and career development and supports development in others.
• Supports a culture of leadership and accountability to effectively deliver on strategic and corporate strategies.
• Is actively committed to leadership development across the company, supporting team and workforce readiness through mentoring, training and developmental opportunities.

Corporate Management

• Enables the success of programs and policies that are in alignment with corporate, strategic and divisional strategies.
• Manages risk in area of authority.
• Ensures that the Health, Safety and Emergency Management Policy is applied in area of responsibility.

Education and Experience

• Four-year degree from an accredited post-secondary education institution in an Information Technology field of study.
• Six years’ directly related experience in software/microservices architecture.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

• Knowledge of Agile principles and practices for software delivery.
• Knowledge of distributed application architectures.
• Knowledge of cloud-first application design and implementation.
• Knowledge of synchronous and asynchronous messaging patterns.
• Knowledge of cloud SaaS and PaaS solutions.
• Knowledge of scalability, resiliency, and performance patterns in cloud-first distributed applications.
• Knowledge of DevOps and DevSecOps methodologies, tools, and processes.
• Knowledge of security principals such as Zero Trust, The Principal of Least Privilege.
• Knowledge of IT security, compliance and governance practices and procedures.
• Skills at API design and strong understanding of its effect on user experience.
• Ability to handle multiple priorities and effectively provide direction, feedback, and support to many stakeholders.

Behavioural Competencies

Leader Level 4 – Applies (Department/Division)

• Accountability - Enables Performance Across Teams/Business Units
• Business Acumen - Formulates Departmental/Divisional Plans in Relation to Internal and External Environment
• Change Agility - Defines Areas for Change and Follows Through
• Leadership - Leads the Department/Division

Diversity is a cornerstone of SGI. We believe all candidates should be given the opportunity to fully participate during the recruitment process. If you require an accommodation, we invite you to submit your accommodation request to wellness@sgi.sk.ca and we will work through your request with you. All information received will be kept confidential.