About The Institutes

A not-for-profit organization located in beautiful Malvern, PA, The Institutes have been the leading provider of risk management and property-casualty insurance education for more than 100 years. By living our values—Put the Customer First, Do What You Say, Work Together, Be Innovative and Do the Right Thing— our talented team delivers innovative solutions that best empower risk and insurance professionals to help those in need. In 2022, The Institutes was named a Top Workplace by Philly.com for the seventh time. We understand the importance of work-life balance and provide excellent benefits and a friendly and team-focused work environment to drive employee engagement.

Application Architect

As part of our Architecture and Solutions team, the Application Architect will develop a high-level understanding of the complex systems governing and facilitating our business applications, making recommendations, and implementing changes to increase efficiency, and architectural fit, and to further business and technical future state objectives. In addition, the Application Architect will assist Service Desk and Infrastructure Team engineers in diagnosing system issues, and support and mentor Institutes’ Web and API software development teams in the design and planning of new software development.

What You’ll Be Doing:

• Lead architecture discussions with key IT and business stakeholders solutioning new systems. Perform analysis to understand the impact on our systems and determine feasibility and level of effort of proposed solutions. Consider Institutes strategic goals and make recommendations to support long-term goals and improvements.
• Provide leadership, coordination, and hold others responsible in handling architecture and technical knowledge transfer requests from Institutes teams and developers.
• Integrate new innovations in application development and implementation technology into Institutes customer facing projects.
• Oversee and mentor front end and API development teams to ensure seamless integration of new technologies and adherence to SDLC best practices and principles
• Ensure that all Institutes projects teams adhere to Institutes secure SDLC standards and policies.
• Act as technical lead on projects or direct system analysts as required to support planning and estimating related to scope and level of effort, and to provide technical input on requirements and feature design. Work with Business Analysts, Project Managers and Product Owners on story breakdown, timeline and roadmap development.
• Ensure that systems are accurately documented when created or changed, in our standard Confluence environment.
• Create proof-of-concept and foundational software components that teams can build upon when developing application features.
• Perform data analysis as needed and make business recommendations on improvising existing processes, troubleshooting issues, and ironing out technicalities on new business requirements.
• Advise and offer direction to the development teams on a daily basis by communicating and clarifying technical requirements. Ensure delivery of the requested features and enforce architecture guidelines by participating in code reviews and assisting with testing.
• Research and recommend software products and services and ensure their successful integration into The Institutes architecture.
• Act as a Subject Matter Expert, leveraging in-depth understanding of Institutes systems to assist system users, mentor and train junior staff, and inform troubleshooting, impact analysis and strategic recommendations.
• Work with IT Leadership to define and enforce department standards.
• Identify areas where technology or process revision could improve or enhance existing functionality and create project plans to implement approved recommendations.
• Perform other duties as assigned

Education and Experience

• 5 years of software development and/or application architecture experience.
• Knowledge of full SDLC and three plus years leading and architecting software implementations.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent experience.
• Management experience or experience managing technical project resources.
• Agile/Scrum experience required, including experience writing user stories.
• Preferred programming skills including but not limited to a working knowledge of modern front end and API development technologies, including Javascript React, ExpressJS HTML5, JSON, XML, NodeJS, TypeScript, Drupal, PHP, and Restful Web Services, as well as relational databases (Oracle, Postgres, MySQL, MSSQL), NoSQL and Data Lake environments like Snowflake, RedShift, or Dynamo DB.
• Knowledge of release management/continuous integration techniques, as well as tools and technologies such as Git, GitHub, Bitbucket, Python, and Terraform a plus.

The Best Part? The Benefits!

To enforce the importance of work-life balance, employees enjoy excellent benefits, including:

• 401(k) plan with company contribution up to 16%
• Generous time off package that includes paid vacation, personal, sick and holidays
• Paid maternity and parental leave
• Tuition reimbursement
• Medical, dental, vision and prescription coverage