Location: Baltimore, MD
Must be local to Maryland
Position Description: The Application Architect (Senior) manages major projects that involve providing professional support services and/or the integration, implementation, and transition of large, complex systems. This individual is responsible for performing the following tasks:
● Provide technical design and implementation of e-government solutions, taking responsibility for technical architecture, solution patterns, and implementation oversight.
● Lead architecture decisions across applications, infrastructure, integration, and operational domains, ensuring alignment to agency objectives, technical constraints, and compliance requirements.
● Ensure development efforts are well planned, traceable to requirements, and compliant with established standards and governance.
● Design, develop, and maintain infrastructure and backend applications to meet availability, scalability, performance, and maintainability goals.
● Produce target-state architecture designs with prioritized recommendations for modernization, optimization, and redesign, focusing on risk reduction, sustainability, and improved operational efficiency.
● Develop an implementation roadmap that balances enhancements, integrations, and technical debt, aligning milestones to agency priorities, release constraints, and operational windows.
● Establish architectural standards, reference patterns, and guardrails across web platforms to improve consistency, reduce defects, and strengthen long-term scalability.
● Implement governance mechanisms (architecture reviews, design checkpoints, and technical decision records) to ensure solutions remain aligned to agency standards over time.
● Ensure security requirements are incorporated into solution design, integration approaches, and operational procedures.
● Champion accessibility (WCAG/ADA and applicable government accessibility requirements, e.g., Section 508 where applicable) and usability requirements in design and architecture decisions.
● Incorporate accessible patterns into templates and reusable components, supporting consistent accessible experiences across pages and applications.
● Provide technical investigation and initial troubleshooting for production issues (performance, configuration, permissions, integration failures).
● Escalate issues with clear reproduction steps, log evidence, and impact analysis to accelerate resolution and reduce recurrence.
● Recommend preventive controls (monitoring, alerting, runbooks, and configuration baselines) to improve system resilience.
● Lead stakeholder discovery and functionality sessions to translate business needs into feasible technical solutions, user stories, and acceptance criteria.
● Support iterative delivery through backlog refinement, architectural review, and release planning.
● Research and evaluate new technologies and products for applicability to business processes and agency constraints.
● Compare solution alternatives and recommend best-fit options considering cost, risk, compliance, maintainability, and operational overhead
● Role and Responsibilities:
● Architect and lead enterprise SharePoint/CMS environments supporting secure internal collaboration and scalable public-facing digital services.
● Provided ongoing support and maintenance for the Maryland Department of Health’s public website (health.maryland.gov) and its numerous subsites.
● Establish architecture standards, patterns, and guardrails for web platforms to improve consistency, maintainability, and long-term scalability.
● Produce and maintain current-state and target-state architecture artifacts across infrastructure, codebase, integrations, and content operations; provide prioritized modernization recommendations.
● Partner with MDH OET Web team for Agile/Scrum teams to deliver platform enhancements, resolve production incidents, and support release planning across Dev/QA/Prod.
● Facilitate stakeholder communications including sprint demos, reviews, and technical/non-technical status reporting; manage risks, dependencies, and decision tracking.
● Manage source code, documentation, and deployment artifacts using Git-based version control (GitHub/GitLab/Bitbucket) with CI/CD practices to support controlled releases.
● Participate in code reviews, ensuring code quality, security, and adherence to architecture guidelines.
● Maintain and deploy SharePoint/CMS solutions (including custom components) and execute environment promotions across Dev/QA/Prod with repeatable deployment procedures and rollback planning.
● Provide help desk assistance: Tier 2/3 technical support via remote troubleshooting, root-cause analysis, and coordinated escalations through resolution.
● Perform initial technical investigation for production issues (performance, configuration, permissions, integration failures), documenting evidence, logs, and reproducible steps, and recommending corrective/preventive actions.
● Implement UI/UX and responsive design standards across SharePoint/CMS sites; champion WCAG accessibility by embedding accessible patterns into templates and reusable components.
● Work with the MDH –OET Web Team for: Administer SharePoint/CMS security including user provisioning, role/permission design, privilege assignment, and governance enforcement.
● Work with the MDH OET & DOIT Teams to implement least privilege, access controls, secure configuration, and privacy/compliance alignment across platform components and integrations.
● Build advanced workflows and automation using Power Platform, Azure Apps/Services, Nintex, and custom development beyond out-of-the-box workflows; document support/runbook procedures for operational sustainability.
● Provide support to MDH in SharePoint-to- future CMS migration for public-facing sites, including discovery, content strategy, IA mapping, validation, and cutover planning.
● Maintain and support cross-platform integrations (e.g. Salesforce, SharePoint, Drupal, M365, and third-party tools), ensuring reliable data exchange, secure authentication, and operational monitoring.
● Mentor MDH OET staff on Microsoft 365 capabilities (SharePoint Online, Power Platform, Teams, OneDrive, Viva, Copilot, Azure Apps, future CMS) to accelerate adoption and reduce support burden.
● Design Copilot-ready SharePoint architecture using metadata/content types, permission hygiene, and lifecycle policies to improve discovery and search relevance.
● Work with MDH OET Web Team for: Design, test, and maintain backup/recovery and operational readiness processes (monitoring, restore validation, environment stability).
● Work closely with MDH project managers, developers, and other stakeholders to ensure timely and successful project delivery.
● Create, update, and maintain training portals for end users, including delivering training sessions
and producing how‑to guides, step‑by‑step instructions, and short training videos.
Education: This position requires a Bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university in Engineering, Computer Science, Mathematics, or a related scientific or technical discipline. (Note: A Master’s degree is preferred.)
General Experience: The proposed candidate must have at least ten (10) years of experience planning, designing, building, and implementing IT application systems. This individual must have led or been chief architect in a major IT applications implementation effort. This individual must also have a strong background in software engineering principles and techniques.
Specialized Experience: The proposed candidate must have at least six (6) years of experience in designing medium to large-scale sites, and management of at least five Internet projects
