Pioneer Corporate Services Inc

Compensation

Full Description

Role: Software Architect (Drupal Lead + Architecture + Infrastructure + Kafka + DevSecOps) Location: Remote Duration: 6+ months Role Summary Principal technical authority for the public-facing portal platform and the intake solution. Defines the end-to-end target architecture — containerized Drupal on Kubernetes, event-driven integration via Kafka, API-first services, cloud data and secrets management, and an automated DevSecOps pipeline — and is accountable for the platform meeting performance, scalability, security and accessibility obligations. Key Responsibilities • Own the solution architecture across application, integration, data, infrastructure and security views, with documented decision records. • Design event-driven integration using Apache Kafka — topic design, event schemas, reusable producer and consumer libraries, idempotency, replay and error handling — in place of point-to-point coupling. • Define the API-first strategy: REST standards for versioning, authentication, logging, monitoring, retry and error handling. • Architect the containerized runtime on Kubernetes with managed relational data, shared file storage, object storage, centralized image registry, CDN and WAF, and secrets management via a managed vault with pod identity. • Establish centralized configuration management — no hardcoded endpoints, credentials, bucket names, feature flags or AI configuration. • Define and drive the DevSecOps pipeline: containerized builds, GitFlow release process, automated functional and performance testing, container vulnerability scanning, and controlled promotion to staging and production. • Design enterprise observability: centralized logging, distributed tracing, API and message-stream metrics, AI usage metrics, performance and business transaction dashboards. • Architect reusable modules, a configurable form framework and component libraries intended for reuse across future initiatives. • Define the architecture for AI-enabled capabilities — document OCR and classification, intelligent summarization, assisted case preparation, and integration with the client-built conversational module — with final decisions retained by authorized personnel. • Design for scale against a workload exceeding 100,000 annual submissions with multilingual support and PII handling. • Lead technical governance: design reviews, architecture compliance, technical debt strategy, and mentorship of leads and senior developers. • Ensure the architecture satisfies federal security requirements — STIG remediation, boundary definition, ports/protocols/services documentation, encryption at rest and in transit, role-based access control — and Section 508 obligations. Required Skills & Experience • 10+ years software engineering with 5+ years as lead architect on enterprise web platforms. • 5+ years hands-on Drupal with full stack depth — architecture, module strategy, theming, performance and security. • Proven Apache Kafka architecture experience: event modeling, schema governance, producer/consumer patterns and operational concerns. • Deep AWS architecture experience: EKS/Kubernetes, Aurora, S3, EFS, Secrets Manager, ECR, CloudFront/WAF, IAM. • DevSecOps ownership: GitLab CI/CD, containerization, infrastructure as code, automated security scanning, release management. • Integration experience with enterprise BPM / case management platforms (Appian or comparable) and federated identity providers. • Database architecture across relational platforms; able to reason about DB2 and cloud-native targets during migration. • Demonstrated platform-level accountability for Section 508 / WCAG 2.1 AA. • Agile/SAFe architectural leadership. • Substantial hands-on experience with AI-assisted engineering tooling and sound judgment about where AI belongs in a federal platform. Preferred Qualifications • AWS Solutions Architect Professional; Certified Kubernetes Administrator; Acquia/Drupal certification; SAFe Architect. • Experience designing reusable platform frameworks intended for reuse across agency programs. • Experience integrating AI services under enterprise security controls, including Model Context Protocol or equivalent connector patterns. • Agentic development framework experience — reusable AI agents for integration, test generation, documentation and code review. Education Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or Engineering with 10+ years of relevant experience; Master's preferred.