Senior Solution Architect

Position Summary

Massachusetts Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities (EOHLC) is hiring an Enterprise Senior Solution Architect to help design, guide, and build the technical foundation for a more connected, accessible, extensible, and scalable affordable housing service delivery ecosystem. In this full-time contract role, you will begin by supporting the architecture of a centralized application that streamlines how Massachusetts residents learn about, apply for, and gain access to private affordable housing, while also enabling efficient workflows for property managers, program staff, and partner organizations. This role will be responsible for assessing existing systems, defining integration strategies, advising on technical and vendor decisions, creating and evaluating technical/functional prototypes to inform enterprise architecture and solutioning, and ensuring that new solutions align with the broader modernization goals, security requirements, and long-term enterprise architecture of EOHLC and the Commonwealth.

Description of Duties

Enterprise Architecture & Strategy

• Lead assessment and documentation of current-state systems, integrations, and data flows across the secretariat. Conduct application portfolio assessments to identify technical debt, system overlap, integration dependencies, modernization opportunities, and application rationalization recommendations.
• Define target-state enterprise architecture supporting scalability, interoperability, and long-term modernization.
• Develop technical roadmaps that balance business priorities, cost constraints, and organizational capacity.
• Establish standards for system integration, data exchange, and shared services across platforms.
• Evaluate new build vs. buy vs. configure decisions and provide recommendations.
• Evaluate existing agency platforms and vendor solutions to determine opportunities for consolidation, reuse of shared services, and alignment with enterprise technology standards.

Solution Design & Delivery

• Design and build end-to-end technical solutions aligned with business requirements and user needs.
• Translate complex business problems into scalable and secure technical architectures.
• Lead architecture for large-scale applications and cross-system integrations. Design architecture for constituent-facing digital service platforms that support accessibility requirements, document management, workflow automation, identity management, and integration with multiple backend systems.
• Identify appropriate tools and technologies for specific use cases, ensuring efficient and sustainable solutions.
• Align technical architecture and solutions with user experience, service delivery, and operational support models to enable effective and accessible constituent experiences and outcomes.[CM6] [BA7] 

Data & Integration Architecture

• Ensure adherence to enterprise data strategies, including system-of-record decisions and identifier standards.
• Design data integration and crosswalk strategies to enable consistent reporting and interoperability.
• Provide architectural guidance for data platforms, including data warehouses (e.g., Snowflake) and ETL/ELT pipelines.
• Define canonical data models and enterprise integration patterns (API-first, event-driven, batch)
• Establish API governance and lifecycle management practices. Define enterprise integration strategies across platforms, cloud services, legacy applications, file-based exchanges, APIs, and shared data platforms.

Vendor & Stakeholder Collaboration

• Review and validate vendor proposals, pricing, and technical approaches. Assess vendor architectures, implementation methodologies, licensing models, hosting approaches, and total cost of ownership to provide independent technical recommendations.
• Collaborate with enterprise infrastructure, security, identity, and platform teams to ensure solutions align with Commonwealth technology standards and shared services capabilities.
• Provide technical leadership in cross-functional initiatives and procurement efforts.
• Hold vendors accountable to architectural standards, delivery quality, and long-term maintainability.

Security & Governance

• Define and review authentication, authorization, identity federation, single sign-on (SSO), and role-based access control strategies across applications and partner organizations.
• Contribute to IT governance frameworks, architecture review processes, and standards enforcement.
• Identify risks and mitigation strategies across systems and integrations.

Innovation & Continuous Improvement

• Conduct proof-of-concept and prototyping activities to evaluate emerging technologies.
• Bring a technical perspective to user research and product discovery efforts.
• Recommend improvements to system design, performance, and cost efficiency.

Qualifications

Required Experience

• 8–10 years of experience in enterprise architecture, solution architecture, or senior technical leadership roles.
• Demonstrated experience leading architecture for large-scale, enterprise-grade applications and integrations.
• Experience working across full software development lifecycle, including vendor-delivered solutions.
• Demonstrated experience assessing existing enterprise applications and developing target-state architectures, modernization roadmaps, and implementation strategies.
• Experience designing and governing complex data architectures.

Technical Expertise

• Strong knowledge of modern architecture patterns including cloud-native, microservices, and API-driven design.
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure) and SaaS solutions.
• Deep understanding of:
• REST API frameworks
• Integration patterns and middleware
• Relational databases and data warehouses
• CI/CD pipelines and automated testing frameworks
• Familiarity with platforms such as Salesforce or similar CRM systems.

Architecture & Design Skills

• Ability to design scalable, secure, and maintainable enterprise systems.
• Strong understanding of system interoperability, data modeling, and integration strategies.
• Experience evaluating vendor technologies and conducting feasibility studies.

Leadership & Communication

• Experience advising executive leadership and influencing technical direction.
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.
• Strong collaboration skills across business, technical, and vendor teams.
• Experience in collaborating with cross-functional teams including product management, data science, and experience design and research in an iterative people-centered design process.[CM8] [BA9] 

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with public sector human services, housing, or benefits delivery systems.
• Experience with real estate management systems.
• Familiarity with Snowflake.
• Experience supporting enterprise modernization or digital transformation initiatives.
• Experience designing or supporting constituent-facing digital service platforms, online application systems, eligibility determination workflows, or case management solutions.

This position is a full-time contract opportunity through June 2027 with opportunity to extend at a rate of $130 - 140 per hour. The work schedule for this position is Monday through Friday, 9:00AM to 5:00PM EST, in a flexible hybrid remote arrangement with an average of 1 day(s) per week at 100 Cambridge St. in Boston (near Boston City Hall) to accelerate collaboration. Applicants should be located within reasonable commuting distance from the primary work location. 

Research suggests that qualified candidates may self-select out of opportunities if they don't meet 100% of the job requirements. We encourage individuals who believe they have the skills necessary to thrive to apply for this role.