The Technical Architect is responsible for managing the execution of technical projects, communicating information to offshore development teams, providing technical guidance to the business, understanding and documenting existing systems, and removing technical impediments for developers. In order to excel, this person will possess the ability to communicate clearly with people of varying technical ability. Candidates must be self-starters who enjoy performing a wide range of technical tasks while working in a fast-paced environment. The Technical Architect will drive solution design for complex business problems in compliance with design standards and best practices.

Duties and Responsibilities

• Provide technical architecture analysis, design, development, and enhancement.
• Provide process, data and object modeling in a variety of application and database environments.
• Provide database design, development, and enhancement, as well as management and coordination of changes to existing applications.
• Maintain senior level expertise and currency in industry leading technologies.
• Provide senior level programming as required.
  

Day to Day responsibilities

• Hands on involvement with initial POC's for complex or first time implementation of features/technologies
• Identify learning areas and facilitate/organize knowledge sharing and "lunch and learn" type series
• Understand, explain, build on top of, debug and improve existing devops pipelines. This includes guiding teams on best practices for source control management, code organization etc
• Conduct code reviews
• Continuous evaluation of code (new and old) in terms of performance/scalability (something that was performant last year might not be this year with 100k more users for example)
• Help enforce best practices with regard to microservice architecture and general SOA principles
• Initiate/Lead/Participate in design sessions for new features and produce relevant documentation coming out of those sessions
• Communicate with offshore teams on a daily basis

Required Skills

• 7+ years hands on design and development experience with the Java platform
• 9+ years hands on experience with object oriented design and development, including strong working knowledge and experience with various architectural and design patterns
• Deep and broad technical knowledge – including recent hands-on programming skills – in the Java platform (JDK 8.0 or higher)
• Significant experience with multiple core technologies in the J2EE platform (v5 of higher, e.g.e.g. – Spring Framework, Hibernate, etc.)
• Strong understanding of web-flows and integrating back-end with front-end components for high load websites
• Strong understanding of Linux infrastructure
• Strong knowledge of SQL and experience with Oracle, MySQL or other equivalent RDBMS
• Good understanding of DevOps pipelines: Jenkins, Ansible, Docker, bash scripting
• Experience developing enterprise-class systems
• Successful completion of multiple projects working in an Agile team environment
• Strong oral and written communication skills
• Demonstrated ability to communicate with customer business and technology stakeholders
• Experience with designing and implementation of large software systems, and working with distributed teams to deliver them in a timely manner without sacrificing quality
• Experience working effectively with offshore developers
• Must be a self-starter who requires minimal supervision
• Experienced in problem solving, and able to follow a methodical implementation process
• Excellent interpersonal and organizational skills, ability to handle diverse situations, multiple projects and rapidly changing priorities
• Willingness and ability to achieve relevant Java certifications (e.g. – OCPJP)
• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, or equivalent work experience

About Productive Edge

Productive Edge is a Chicago-based leader in digital transformation. As digital business consultants, we focus on digital strategy, customer experience, operations improvement, and product & services enablement. How do we do this? Through launching solutions for Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI), Intelligent Automation (IA), Internet of Things (IoT), and Cloud Native Solutions. Sounds fun, right? It gets better...and that’s where you come in! 

Productive Edge offers the dynamic opportunity to use your talents in a progressive, highly-collaborative environment that values innovation and creativity. We are a culture that stays on the cusp of today’s developing and emerging technologies. Our passion, ingenuity, and dedication sets us apart from other consultants (as does our modern work atmosphere with fun outings, foosball, stocked fridge and other activities). Because we work with and develop solutions for some of the world’s most exciting brands, we are actively searching for individuals who are ready to change the way the world operates. 

And if that’s not enough, Productive Edge has been featured as one of Chicago’s 101 Best and Brightest Companies to Work For, included in Crain’s Fast 50, and is a regular on Inc. 5000.