Solutions Architect

We are Skyward.

That is, a love for people, for improvement, for human advancement through information technology. We are a people-centered business with a desire to serve others. We are diverse and unified; creative and collaborative; a collection of complementary, not competing talents. And though on the surface we remain relaxed, beneath, a torrent of energy links us to our civic tech mission.

We stand by our values, and we won’t compromise on any of them.

We’re conscientious, intentional, and empathetic. Our words and actions align. That’s our character. Please don’t ask us to play another part, we’re poor actors.

If we may borrow a quote from Theodore Roosevelt: “No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” Because our team is thoughtful and supportive, caring deeply for each other, our clients, and our work, this comes naturally.

We remain students by failing openly and turning lessons into solutions.

For us, life isn’t what happens outside of work. Work happens inside of life and our culture erases the line often dividing the two.

Made possible only because we embody the values listed above. We’re relaxed and fun yet intensely curious and driven. Team members are placed with thought, care, and precision to ensure that Trust, Truth, and Transparency continue to represent our brand.

Because of that, we continue Onward, Upward, and Skyward.

Do you see the whole board - the systems, the data, the dependencies, and the business goals behind them - and know exactly where the next move should go? Are you the kind of engineer‑leader who can sketch a modern architecture on a whiteboard in the morning, defend the trade‑offs to stakeholders by noon, and roll up your sleeves with the dev team by afternoon?

If you love turning sprawling, complex environments into clean, scalable, modern systems, and bringing a team along with you, then please apply.

Come join us if you're motivated to learn from others, to learn from mistakes, to be part of a future‑looking and growth‑oriented team.

Let's go Skyward together.

• Lead the technical vision for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) as it merges and modernizes its enterprise knowledge and data systems into a single, AI‑driven platform, reducing manual effort, improving data accuracy, and enhancing transparency for stakeholders.
• Own the architecture. Design a robust, modern enterprise architecture built on AWS, guided by the AWS Well‑Architected Framework, the USDS playbook, and Twelve‑Factor App principles, while minimizing on‑premises footprint and maintaining strong disaster recovery.
• Steer a seamless, low‑risk transition and ongoing operations, meeting infrastructure and application availability SLAs without disrupting CMS’s core business.
• Merge two systems without breaking either. Apply patterns such as strangler‑fig and cyclomatic‑complexity analysis to identify, prioritize, and sequence refactor, integration, and modernization opportunities.
• Design for change. Build modular systems using containerization, infrastructure as code, and CI/CD so the platform can flex with CMS’s evolving strategies and new initiatives.
• Partner with the AI Lead to identify and architect automation opportunities, including LLM‑driven and automated data‑collection strategies.
• Establish observability and insight. Work with the team to stand up continuous monitoring (Cloud Watch, New Relic, Splunk) and turn performance, health, and cost data into decisions.
• Be the bridge between technology and business. Translate stakeholder needs into technical direction and explain technical trade‑offs to non‑technical audiences with clarity.
• Provide technical…