IT Software Architect - .NET​/Web

Nelnet is a diversified and innovative company committed to enriching lives through the power of service as a student loan servicer, professional services company, consumer loan originator and servicer, payments processor, renewable energy solutions, and K-12 and higher education expert.  For over 40 years, Nelnet has been serving its customers, associates, and communities.

The perks of working at Nelnet go beyond our benefits package. When you join the Nelnet team, you're part of a community invested in the success of each individual. That support comes through in our work, as we are united by our mission of creating opportunities for people where they live, learn, and work.

We are looking for IT Software Architects who can work collaboratively within IT Delivery and across Business Operational areas to help design and deliver pragmatic solutions based on business value and NDS IT technology direction.  This role provides technical leadership to agile teams and is also expected to pull work from the product backlog periodically.
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* JOB RESPONSIBILITIES:

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* • Provides overarching architectural leadership across a portfolio of related applications, partnering with application architects, site reliability engineers, and delivery teams to maintain technical alignment and departmental consistency.

• Establishes and sustains the overall architecture practice, design standards, reference patterns, and a shared design language, and captures decisions as Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) maintained in source control.

• Serves as a consulting architect to delivery teams: reviews designs, facilitates architectural decisions, and guides teams toward pragmatic solutions rather than owning delivery for them.

• Owns and continuously improves the developer experience, identifying and removing technology and process impediments at the team level so engineers can do their best work.

• Builds bridges across organizational boundaries, aligning groups that plan, prioritize, and deliver work differently toward shared technical outcomes.

• Develops durable partnerships with infrastructure and platform teams, understanding their priorities and constraints and aligning delivery and platform roadmaps so teams are unblocked rather than escalated around.

• Leads adoption of AI-assisted engineering practices across development roles, serving as a power user, setting expectations for responsible use, and coaching teams on where AI adds leverage.

• Drives cost optimization for both application and platform spend, making architectural trade-offs with total cost of ownership in view.

• Identifies, quantifies, and sequences technical debt remediation and post-implementation cleanup as an explicit part of the delivery plan.

• Provides architectural leadership during incident management and post-incident review, ensuring systemic causes are addressed at the design level.

• Understands the business domain of products supported and the business drivers behind the work, so teams understand the “why” behind technical direction.

• Ensures technology solution architecture and design principles are aligned with NDS IT Delivery technology direction.

• Knowledgeable of all existing services, components and technologies to ensure maximum technology reuse.

• Understands and exhibits skills to protect data, systems and networks and maintains secure, reliable, redundant, and accessible systems.

• Independently identifies and pursues opportunities to improve solution architecture across the enterprise.

• Engages with Agile teams to deliver high quality, working software solutions in alignment with team commitments.

• Explores and pursues technical skills outside of current job family; actively seeks to remain technically current and increase…