Senior Staff Software Architect

Summary:

Wabtecs KinetiX team is responsible for the design, delivery, and support the KinetiX inspection technologies products to railroads worldwide. The Kinetix Inspection Technologies is a suite of product solutions that facilitates the automated proactive monitoring of rolling stock condition from component level to full train inspection. The KinetiX team is seeking Senior Software Architect with experience in .NET Framework and .NET core/6+ applications, Web Development, and RESTful APIs and Microservices architectures. The senior software architect collaborates with cross-functional teams, stakeholders, and developers to establish a clear architectural vision and drive the implementation of the frontend and backend components.

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Drive the technical vision, collaborate with stakeholders, and ensure the effective implementation of the architecture.
• Capture the current architecture and design the high-level architecture of a unified application platform that accommodates data from different application types and a unified user interface.
• Create an architectural blueprint that outlines the integration strategy, identifies key components, and defines interfaces and data flows.
• Deliver software architecture for an enterprise scale application that utilizes microservices and cloud-native software development principles.
• Identify opportunities for integration, define integration patterns, and develop strategies to migrate or modernize the legacy systems as required. This involves ensuring data consistency, interoperability, and seamless communication between the different components.
• Evaluate various technologies, frameworks, and tools that can be leveraged to achieve the integration and harmonization goals. Make informed decisions about the selection of appropriate technologies that align with the organization's objectives, considering factors such as scalability, performance, security, and maintainability.
• Collaborate closely with development teams, product managers, project managers, business stakeholders, and other architects to align the technical vision with the business requirements.
• Provide guidance, mentorship, and technical leadership to the development teams, ensuring adherence to architectural guidelines and best practices throughout the development lifecycle.
• Identify and manage risks associated with the integration and harmonization process, anticipate potential challenges, such as data inconsistencies, security vulnerabilities, or performance bottlenecks, and develop mitigation strategies to address these risks effectively.
• Understand security and compliance requirements; establish seamless integration with Cyber Security and Compliance teams. Support Cyber Security procedures for the product portfolio.
• Drive delivery of configurable product architecture to solve common problems driving towards product architecture vision. Deliver framework components and design guidelines for services and library components.
• Demonstrate expert level skill in problem decomposition and ability to navigate through ambiguity
• Provide accurate and timely status of content plan and current execution status to Wabtec engineering leadership
• Demonstrate superior persuasion and influencing skills that ensure alignment between customer, product manager and engineering team
• Demonstrate excellent business acumen by keeping up to date on the latest industry trends and being looked to as a Subject Matter Expert (SME)

Minimum Qualifications: (To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily.)

• Bachelors degree in computer science or in "STEM" Majors (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math)
• 12+ Years of experience in architecture, software design and cloud technologies
• In-depth understanding of software, software architecture and system level design patterns using Java and related software ecosystems
• Willingness to travel up to 15%

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:

.NET

• Deep understanding and hands-on-experience with .NET Framework, .NET Core/6+, .NET MVC, .NET Core and the latest .NET versions.
• Experience in upgrading legacy .NET applications to .NET Core/6+
• Advanced proficiency in C# for building scalable and maintainable applications

Web Development

• Expertise in building web applications using ASP.NET MVC and Core
• Knowledge of front-end technologies like Angular, React, or Kendo UI

RESTful APIs & Microservices

• Experience designing and implementing RESTful APIs and microservices architecture
• Experience with gRPC is a plus
• Deep understanding and hands-on experience with cloud native technologies, deployment, and customer engagement.

Cloud Computing (Azure) & On-Premise Hosting

• Expertise in designing and deploying applications that run seamlessly on Azure and on-premise environments
• Experience with IIS (Internet Information Services) for hosting .NET applications on-premise.
• Knowledge of Windows Server.
• Proficiency in setting up CI/CD pipelines for hybrid deployments using Azure DevOps, GitHub

Data Ingestion, ETL, and Event-Driven Architecture (EDA)

• Designing and implementing ETL pipelines for data transformation and integration in hybrid environments.
• Experience with distributed SQL systems, messages systems such as AMQP, RabbitMQ, Kafka and cache systems such as Redis.
• Knowledge of real-time data ingestion using Apache Kafka, or on-premises message brokers
• Knowledge of CQRS (Command Query Responsibility Segregation) and Event Sourcing

Database and Data Management

• Expertise in database design, partitioning, indexing, and SQL tuning for MS SQL Server.
• Experience with both star schema and normalized database models.
• Strong understanding of relational and non-relational data modelling techniques.
• Performance Optimization, Scalability, & Observability
• Designing scalable and resilient applications using load balancing, auto-scaling, and caching (e.g., Redis) for hybrid environments.
• Identifying and resolving performance bottlenecks in applications and databases across cloud and on-premises setups.
• Understanding of Kubernetes, software design patterns for HA and observable microservices.

Software Development Lifecyle

• Superior knowledge of the Software Development Life Cycle and strong collaboration history with Quality Engineering and Dev Ops teams.
• Ability to understand the technology stack and its impact on the final product. Capable of efficiently conducting customer and stakeholder interviews and elaborate on personas.
• Advanced problem-solving abilities and capable of articulating specific technical topics or assignments to others. Ability to break down complex problems and estimate level of effort.
• Proactively identifies and removes project obstacles or barriers on behalf of the team. Able to navigate difficult situations and accountability within a matrixed organization.
• Strategic and creative thinking to analyse issues that may arise and create solutions.
• Ability to respond positively to feedback and implement change in process and procedures as needed.