Technical Architect

Role: Technical Architect [FTE]

Location: Hyderabad, India

Amphora Software Pvt. Ltd. is the premier software solution provider for energy trading, logistics and risk management in the global crude oil, refined products and energy derivatives marketplace. Our team includes some of the most experienced software designers, developers and business analysts in the commodities industry today. Since our inception, our main goal has been to provide the trading community with the most robust, user-friendly, enterprise-wide software package available. We continue to launch new products that address customers' needs and adjust to dynamic market demands.

Reports to: Direct report to the Chief Architect.

Direct reports: There are no direct reports for this role.

Role purpose:  100% FTE allocation to development of a series of designs and overall solution roadmap for refactor and rearchitecting a series of legacy apps. There is a behemoth solution developed for a client-server platform .Net (core), Java, OC and VB6 which must be ported to web native based on ReactJS (Symphony). There is a second legacy web native/Java solution to be integrated with the first product such that a multi-commodity configuration can be achieved including all variations that exist with trading different commodities (Alchemy). There is a third product being acquired from outside which must align (Symphony Credit) and there will be ongoing co-development of more products alongside our own engineering. Overall, the current set of solutions must be refactored and rearchitected to create around 10 stand alone products with separate UI, dbase and so on plus service integration so they can be engineered, supported and sold as separate but related products with a common UX. In addition, the designs (per product and overall) must achieve a service (not product) orientation, an event driven design, removal of technical debt and modernised. In the engineering cycle the outcome must contribute to the achievement of a CI/CD with frequent (daily), automated develop – build - test and deploy steps in the value chain through Microsoft Azure DevOps in exchange for the current annual, manual delivery.

Technical Roles and Responsibilities: 

[SFIA alignment: ARCH-L4 | DESN-L5 | SWDN-L4 | NTDS-L3 | HWDE-L5 | PORT-L4 | DTAN-L2 | DBDS-L3 | UNAN-L3 | HPCC-L4 | FEAS-L4 | REQM-L3 | SCTY-L3 | EMRG-4 |SUST-4 |COPL-2]

• Design Cloud/On-Prem based software systems with various technologies and ensure compliance to all architecture requirements.
• Contributes to the development of Technical/Physical architectures by contributing to Technology selection and Infrastructure design
• Contribute to the technical/physical architecture, which is scalable, secure and performant
• Adherence to architectural methodology of all deliverables and implement architectural principles and standards for various IT groups.
• Experience in Deployment Architectures, includes DevOps etc.
• Design architecture for various components and validate tools integrations and usage.
• Deliver innovative technical POCs for Product optimisation or enhancements
• Requires deep knowledge in relevant technology stack (not limited to): ReactJS, Java, .NET, Micro Services, Azure etc.
• Experience in organizing reusable components in front end and backend
• Experience in Product split with low impact on existing Product
• Plan upgrades and executes towards the goal of moving all the clients to the latest version of the product.
• Participate in architectural meetings and analyze all technical requirements for applications, tools, platforms.
• Coordinate with architects and analysts and maintain technical knowledge.
• Monitor application architecture and ensure appropriate implementation of all solutions.
• Considers IT operational costs even in early design stages and incorporates it as a factor into the decision-making process.
• Minimize the impact on the business due to IT Changes
• Provide technical feedback to engineering team regarding product changes and enhancements.
• Stays up to date on emerging technologies and trends
• Technical support in impact analysis while Change management process
• Minimize the non-trivial cost of maintaining expertise in and connectivity between multiple processing environments.
• Coordinate with various departments and analyze technical requirements of architectural team, to provide technical high-level guidance of implementation
• Works closely with development teams to ensure that the architecture is implemented correctly
• Work with product and cloud team to design automated pipelines to support SaaS delivery and operations in Azure (AKS) cloud platforms.
• Actively identifies and reduces complexity in deployments and motivates team members to do the same.
• Make sure the deployments are secure and work with security team to harden the environments and fix any security vulnerabilities.
• Work with company personnel to define technical problems and requirements, determine solutions, and implement those solutions.
• Supports monitoring of the external environment and assessment of emerging technologies.
• Contributes to the creation of reports, technology roadmapping and the sharing of knowledge and insights.
• Assesses and reports on how different tactical decisions affect sustainability.
• Evaluates factors and risks that impact on operational processes and strategic direction.
• Evaluates and reports on the implementation of sustainability measures in specific areas.
• Maintains records of all related testing and training and ensures the availability of all documentation.
• Records the actions taken and the consequences following an incident or live testing of a continuity plan for a lessons-learned report.
• Identifies and evaluates alternative architectures and the trade-offs in cost, performance and scalability. Determines and documents architecturally significant decisions.
• Produces specifications of cloud-based or on-premises components, tiers and interfaces, for translation into detailed designs using selected services and products.
• Supports projects or change initiatives through the preparation of technical plans and application of design principles. Aligns solutions with enterprise and solution architecture standards (including security).
• Designs large or complex systems and undertakes impact analysis on major design options and trade-offs.
• Ensures that the system design balances functional and non-functional requirements.
• Reviews systems design and ensures that appropriate methods, tools and techniques are applied effectively. Makes recommendations and assesses and manages associated risks.
• Adopts and adapts system design methods, tools and techniques. Contributes to development of system design policies, standards and selection of architecture components.
• Designs complex software applications, components and modules.
• Uses appropriate modelling techniques following agreed software design standards, guidelines, patterns and methodology. Creates and communicates multiple design views to balance stakeholders' concerns and to satisfy functional and non-functional requirements. Identifies, evaluates and recommends alternative design options and trade-offs.
• Models, simulates or prototypes the behaviour of proposed software to enable approval by stakeholders, and effective construction of the software. Verifies software design by constructing and applying appropriate methods.
• Reviews, verifies and improves own designs against specifications. Leads reviews of others' designs.
• Specifies the technical configurations and components required for a small network or a network segment in a more complex infrastructure.
• Follows organisational architectures and standards.
• Specifies and designs complex hardware components/systems.
• Selects appropriate design standards, methods and tools, consistent with agreed enterprise policies and ensures they are applied effectively.
• Undertakes impact analysis on major design options and assesses and manages associated risks. Ensures that hardware designs balance functional, quality, safety, security, systems management, reliability and sustainability requirements.
• Reviews others' designs to ensure selection of appropriate technology, efficient use of resources, and effective integration of multiple systems and technology. Contributes to policy for selection of components.
• Designs, verifies, documents, amends and refactors complex software configurations for deployment.
• Contributes to the selection of the software configuration methods, tools and techniques.
• Applies agreed standards and tools, to achieve well-engineered outcomes.
• Participates in reviews of own work and leads reviews of colleagues' work.
• Establishes, modifies or maintains simple data structures and associated components.
• Uses specific data modelling and design techniques under guidance.
• Interprets installation standards to meet project needs and produces database or data warehouse component specifications.
• Develops appropriate physical database or data warehouse design elements, within set policies, to meet data requirements.
• Applies standard techniques and tools for developing user stories and eliciting user experience requirements.
• Organises and structures user experience analysis.
• Works with stakeholders to prioritise requirements and resolve conflicts.
• Develops moderately complex solutions that use high-performance computing environments to address real-world problems.
• Applies a range of high-performance computing techniques with sensitivity to the limitations of the techniques. Uses input and feedback from experts as appropriate.
• Analyses the complexity, scalability and performance of algorithms, including massively parallel implementations, and makes or recommends improvements.
• Selects relevant feasibility assessment approaches and techniques.
• Identifies the range of possible options. Undertakes short-listing of options and feasibility assessment.
• Engages with internal and external stakeholders to get the information required for feasibility assessment.
• Supports preparation of business cases including cost/benefit, impact and risk analysis for each option.
• Defines and manages scoping, requirements definition and prioritisation activities for small-scale changes and assists with more complex change initiatives.
• Follows agreed standards and applies appropriate techniques to elicit and document detailed requirements. Provides constructive challenge to stakeholders as required. Reviews requirements for errors and omissions.
• Prioritises requirements and documents traceability to source.
• Provides input to the requirements base-line. Investigates, manages and applies authorised requests for changes to base-lined requirements, in line with change management policy.
• Applies and maintains specific security controls as required by organisational policy and local risk assessments.
• Communicates security risks and issues to business managers and others. Performs basic risk assessments for small information systems.
• Contributes to the identification of risks that arise from potential technical solution architectures. Suggests alternate solutions or countermeasures to mitigate risks. Defines secure systems configurations in compliance with intended architectures.
• Supports investigation of suspected attacks and security breaches.

Other Roles and Responsibilities: 

• Adherence to the company Engineering Excellence practice by following mandated practices and patterns.
• Accounting for personal daily time and attendance.
• Such tasks as the Company may reasonably request from time to time.

Technical Experience and Expertise: 

A broad range of technology knowledge to appropriate level of competency/qualification including but not limited to:

• Certified Azure Solution Architect
• IDP OAuth Providers
• Microsoft Azure Entra and AAD including best practice framework
• Microsoft Azure VPN/Bastion/CLI
• Microsoft Azure firewall, virtual networking
• Microsoft Azure DevOps (build, test, deploy) pipelines (with self-hosted agency)
• Microsoft Windows Defender EPP, Global Secure Access (GSA)
• Microsoft Windows Server
• Microsoft Exchange, Teams, SharePoint, M365
• Microsoft Intune
• Microsoft Cloud Security services and toolsets (ATP, ASR, DLP)
• Microsoft IAM (PIM, Conditional Access, AAD tokens, RBAC, JIT)
• Terraform IAC
• Microsoft Backup & Recovery (RSV)
• Microsoft Azure IaaS, PaaS and SaaS solution (full-service range)
• Microsoft Visio or Others
• Microsoft SQL Server
• Java, .Net (core), OC and VB6
• ReactJS
• MongoDB (NoSQL DB)
• Azure DevOps or Others
• Atlassian JIRA & Confluence

Skill Set:

• Be self-motivated, proactive with thoroughness and attention to detail in communication, documentation etc. without assumption.
• Strategic and analytical thinking with ability to grasp internal and external customer requirements.
• Ability to conceptualize solutions and present ideas to management and stakeholders
• Great communication and negotiations with the ability to be proactive in adapting to technology needs and requirements.
• Organization, time management and team leadership.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with the ability to prepare and eventually deliver presentations to audiences, demonstrating knowledge of domain and technology.
• Strong moral compass and strength to prevent breach of company policies, standards and procedures (eg: granting unapproved access) in the face of pressure to fulfil business demands.

Experiential Requirements: 

• 8-11 years' experience in modern cloud native solution design ideally within the context of a software engineering company building commodity trading or at least financial services solutions.
• Credible examples of large scale, complex solution design with specific example of migration from client-server behemoth legacy app to refactored and rearchitected modern, web native app engineered through a rapid CI/CD pipeline.
• Demonstrable success in IaaS and PaaS software engineering and SaaS solution hosting in a dynamic and modern environment BUT with a significant list of legacy transition to complete.
• Knowledge of and experience in a range of design and modelling structural components such as (but not limited to) shape libraries, frameworks, ref architecture, MS best practice patterns and so on.