Software Architect; Drupal Lead + Architecture + Infrastructure + Kafka + DevSecOps

Position: Software Architect (Drupal Lead + Architecture + Infrastructure + Kafka + DevSecOps)
We are a federal IT company on a mission to make customer experience (CX) the center of every government solution. Technology is our Passion. People are our Purpose. We know tech, but we love people. NuAxis is home to thinkers and feelers, engineers and artists. We work hard and support each other along the way. Teamwork is more than just a buzzword for us, it’s a state of mind.

We believe happy employees do amazing work, so join our team NOW! We are currently seeking a talented and motivated Software Architect for a Full-Time position Role Summary Principal technical authority for a public-facing portal platform. 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 Dev Sec Ops  pipeline — and is accountable for the platform meeting performance, scalability, security, and accessibility obligations.

Key Responsibilities
• Own the solution architecture: application, integration, data, infrastructure, and security views, with documented decision records.
• Design event-driven integration using Apache Kafka — topic design, event schemas, producer/consumer libraries, idempotency, replay, and error handling — in place of point-to-point coupling.
• Define the API-first strategy: REST API standards for versioning, authentication, logging, monitoring, retry, and error handling.
• Architect the containerized runtime on Kubernetes (EKS) with managed relational data (Aurora), shared file storage (EFS), object storage (S3), centralized registry, CDN/WAF, and secrets management via a managed vault with pod identity.
• Establish centralized configuration management — no hardcoded environment settings, feature flags, or credentials.
• Define and drive the Dev Sec Ops  pipeline: containerized builds, Git Flow release process, automated functional and performance testing, container/image vulnerability scanning, and controlled promotion to staging and production.
• Design enterprise observability: centralized logging, distributed tracing, API and message-stream metrics, performance and business transaction dashboards.
• Architect reusable modules, a configurable form framework, and component libraries intended for reuse across future initiatives.
• Define the approach for AI-enabled capabilities — OCR, document classification, intelligent summarization, assisted case preparation — with human oversight, and for agentic developer tooling that accelerates engineering.
• Lead technical governance: design reviews, architecture compliance, technical debt strategy, and mentorship of leads and senior developers.
• Ensure architecture satisfies federal security requirements (STIG remediation, boundary definition, PPS documentation, encryption at rest and in transit, role-based access control) and Section 508 obligations.
• Architect Drupal 10+ with MySQL on the DOL PACE platform and ensure portability, maintainability, and alignment with DOL Enterprise Architecture and approved platform decisions.
• Define automated testing strategy across unit, API, Cypress/UI regression, Section 508, security, and performance testing, integrated as CI/CD quality gates.
• Define immutable audit logging, records-retention, encryption, identity, access-control, file-scanning, fault-tolerance, uptime, scalability, and browser/mobile architecture patterns required by the PWS.
• Lead ATO/security authorization support including authorization boundary, PPS, external interfaces, sensitive-data protections, baseline inventories, vulnerability remediation, and architecture evidence. Required Skills & Experience
• 10+ years of software engineering with 5+ years as a 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, Cloud Front/WAF, IAM.
• Dev Sec Ops  ownership:
Git Lab CI/CD,…