What are the responsibilities and job description for the Engineering Lead / Architect position at Smartwork IT Services?
Role: Engineering Lead / Architect
Location: New York
Position: Full time
We're looking for an Engineering Lead / Architect who can own the technical direction of a
complex platform modernization while staying hands-on enough to validate that direction
through real delivery. This role sits at the intersection of architecture, engineering leadership,
and execution-setting the runway for how we build, integrate, and evolve our systems.
You'll define integration strategy, establish non-functional requirements, maintain the
architecture decision log (ADRs), and ensure the team builds on patterns that hold up at scale.
You'll also be the technical conscience of the program-helping the team make pragmatic
tradeoffs without accumulating hidden debt.
This role begins as a consulting engagement with a right-to-hire path.
What You'll Do
Own the architecture runway: define integration patterns, NFRs, security posture, and
technical standards that the team builds against.
Drive design reviews and ensure architectural consistency across backend services,
APIs, frontend components, and data flows.
Partner with Product, DevOps, and business stakeholders to translate requirements into
architecture that balances correctness, operability, and delivery speed.
Evaluate build-vs-buy and integration decisions with clear frameworks-especially
around AKS, API gateway patterns, event-driven architecture, and workflow
orchestration.
Establish security and audit patterns: authentication, authorization, API contracts, data
classification, and audit trail design.
Hands-on contribution where it matters most: proof-of-concepts, critical-path
components, and reference implementations that set the quality bar.
Mentor engineers through design conversations, code reviews, and architecture
pairing-raising the team's ability to make good technical decisions independently.
Use AI tools to accelerate architecture work (analysis, documentation, pattern
evaluation), while maintaining strong judgment and validation.
What We're Looking For
10 years of software engineering experience with meaningful time in architecture or
technical leadership roles.
Deep experience with Java platform architecture (Spring Boot, Spring Security, modern
Java) and API design (REST, contract-first, versioning).
Strong understanding of security and audit patterns: OAuth/OIDC, RBAC, API gateway
design, data classification, and compliance-aware architecture.
Experience with cloud-native platforms, preferably AKS/Kubernetes, and familiarity with
infrastructure-as-code and deployment pipelines.
Proven ability to define and enforce integration patterns across distributed teams-you
can set standards without becoming a bottleneck.
Excellent written communication: your ADRs, design documents, and technical
proposals are clear, concise, and decision-ready.
A pragmatic mindset: you prefer proven patterns over novel ones, and you optimize for
clarity and maintainability over cleverness.
Nice to Have
Experience with event-driven architecture and messaging systems (Azure Event Hubs,
Kafka, or similar).
Familiarity with workflow orchestration platforms (Temporal or similar) and their
architectural implications.
Experience modernizing legacy platforms while maintaining business
continuity-especially migrations from monolithic or component-based systems.
Exposure to design reviews and architecture governance in regulated or control-oriented
domains (financial services, operations, accounting).