Application Architect

IBM; Ottawa; On-site; CAD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

IBM Canada in Ottawa, Ontario is seeking an Application Architect to define, evolve, and safeguard the architecture of large legacy systems in high-assurance environments. You will bridge legacy systems and modern engineering practices while preserving operational guarantees.

You will work with systems engineers, software engineers, and technical leadership to ensure architectures remain understandable, evolvable, and verifiable, mentoring developers across levels.

Qualifications

• Degree in Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, or CS.
• Experience designing and evolving software architectures.
• Experience with legacy systems and modernization.
• Ability to read production code (C++, Ada, Python).

Responsibilities

• Define and maintain application architectures for complex, long-lived systems.
• Analyze and refactor legacy structures to recover design intent and constraints.
• Establish clear boundaries, responsibilities, and interaction patterns between components.
• Guide evolution while preserving correctness, performance, and operational behaviour.
• Review designs for architectural consistency and technical debt.

Skills

Software architecture

Legacy modernization

Technical communication

Production code reading

Education

Degree in Software Engineering / CS

Tools

C++

Ada

Python

Job description

Introduction

A career in IBM Consulting is built on long-term client relationships and close collaboration worldwide. You’ll work with leading companies across industries, helping them shape their hybrid cloud and AI journeys. With support from our strategic partners, robust IBM technology, and Red Hat, you’ll have the tools to drive meaningful change and accelerate client impact. At IBM Consulting, curiosity fuels success. You’ll be encouraged to challenge the norm, explore new ideas, and create innovative solutions that deliver real results. Our culture of growth and empathy focuses on your long-term career development while valuing your unique skills and experiences.

Introduction

A career in IBM Consulting is built on long-term client relationships and close collaboration worldwide. You’ll work with leading companies across industries, helping them shape their hybrid cloud and AI journeys. With support from our strategic partners, robust IBM technology, and Red Hat, you’ll have the tools to drive meaningful change and accelerate client impact. At IBM Consulting, curiosity fuels success. You’ll be encouraged to challenge the norm, explore new ideas, and create innovative solutions that deliver real results. Our culture of growth and empathy focuses on your long-term career development while valuing your unique skills and experiences.

Your Role And Responsibilities

As an Application Architect specializing in Hybrid Cloud Management, you will manage the overall application system, ensuring seamless interactions between components. You will establish technology standards, translate business objectives into technology standards, and select/define/enforce consistent products, vendors, methodologies, and standards.

Your Primary Responsibilities Will Include

• Define Technology Standards: Establish and enforce technology standards, ensuring consistency across the application system, and translating business objectives into actionable technology plans.
• Manage Application Support: Ensure application support, performance, availability, and scalability, while maintaining the functional interface to the application infrastructure.
• Enforce DevOps Methodologies: Apply your knowledge of DevOps methodologies to ensure seamless interactions between components and efficient application delivery.

Preferred Education

Master's Degree

Required technical and professional expertise

Government of Canada Security Clearance is a requirement for this role. You must be eligible to obtain Secret, NATO and Controlled Goods Clearances

• Must be either a Canadian Citizen or Canadian Permanent Resident
• Must have resided in Canada for a minimum of 10 consecutive years, without leaving Canada (for any reason) for more than 30 days at a time OR traveling abroad to any non-NATO countries for any period.
• Must have a clean criminal and credit history

This role involves examination, possession or transfer of controlled goods and technology as defined under the Canadian Controlled Goods Program and ITAR data/technology. To be eligible for employment in this role, you must be a Canadian citizen or Canadian Permanent Resident. Canadian citizens and permanent residents must be security assessed under the Canadian controlled goods program. If you hold dual or third nationality, in addition to being either a Canadian citizen or Canadian Permanent Resident the nationality must be from one of the following countries in order to be eligible for employment in this role: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom, United States of America. All applicants will also be required to undergo an additional security assessment conducted by an IBM designated Controlled Goods Program official as a condition of employment.

This role is onsite in Ottawa, Ontario only.

Role Summary

We are seeking an Application Architect to define, evolve, and safeguard the architecture of large legacy systems operating in constrained, high-assurance environments.

This role focuses on application structure, interaction patterns, and architectural integrity – bridging legacy systems and modern engineering practices without breaking operational guarantees.

You will work closely with systems engineers, software engineers, and technical leadership to ensure applications remain understandable, evolvable, and verifiable, while acting as a mentor and collaborator with developers and team members at various levels.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and maintain application architectures for complex, long-lived systems.
• Analyze and refactor legacy application structures to recover design intent and constraints.
• Establish clear boundaries, responsibilities, and interaction patterns between components.
• Guide application evolution while preserving correctness, performance, and operational behaviour, e.g. performance optimization, capacity planning, and scalability.
• Review designs and implementations for architectural consistency and technical debt.
• Support interface definition, message flows, and integration across platforms.
• Contribute to architectural documentation (views, rationale, trade-offs).
• Support modernization efforts (tooling, automation, CI, DevSecOps) where appropriate.
• Provide leadership to mentor and guide developers and team members across varying experience levels to foster technical growth and architectural understanding.
• Collaborate with clients, providing expert advice and recommendations on architectural strategies and modernization paths.
• Ensure designs meet security standards and comply with regulatory and standards requirements relevant to high‑assurance environments (e.g., NIST guidelines)
• Assess technical investigations, cost-benefit trade-offs, and impact analysis for architectural changes to ensure informed decision-making.

Required Qualifications

• Degree in Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or equivalent experience.
• Strong experience designing and evolving software application architectures.
• Proven ability to reason about large codebases and long-lived systems.
• Experience working legacy systems and incremental modernization.
• Strong understanding of modularity, layering, and architectural trade-offs.
• Ability to read and reason about production code (e.g., C++, Ada, Python).
• Clear technical communication skills.

Preferred Technical And Professional Experience

• Experience in defense, aerospace, safety-critical, or regulated environments.
• Familiarity with message-based architectures and interface-driven design.
• Experience guiding teams through refactoring and architectural recovery.
• Interest in architectural modelling, system behavior, and correctness.