100% Remote | Software Architect (Drupal Lead + Architecture + Infrastructure + Kafka + DevSecOps)

Pioneer Corporate Services Inc; United States; Remote; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Pioneer Corporate Services Inc is seeking a Software Architect (Drupal Lead) to own end-to-end target architecture for a remote, multi-cloud portal platform. You will define event-driven integration with Kafka, API-first REST, containerized runtimes on Kubernetes, and a secure DevSecOps pipeline, ensuring performance, security and accessibility across scales.

Lead architecture reviews, governance and mentoring while addressing 508 compliance and multilingual, PII-handling requirements.

Qualifications

• 10 years software engineering with 5 years as lead architect on enterprise web platforms.
• 5 years hands-on Drupal with full stack depth --- architecture, module strategy, theming, performance and security.
• Proven Apache Kafka architecture experience: event modeling, schema governance, producer/consumer patterns and operational concerns.
• Deep AWS architecture experience: EKS/Kubernetes, Aurora, S3, EFS, Secrets Manager, ECR, CloudFront/WAF, IAM.
• DevSecOps ownership: GitLab CI/CD, containerization, infrastructure as code, automated security scanning, release management.

Responsibilities

• Own the solution architecture across application, integration, data, infrastructure and security views, with documented decision records.
• Design event-driven integration using Apache Kafka --- topic design, event schemas, reusable producer and consumer libraries, idempotency, replay and error handling.
• Define the API-first strategy: REST standards for versioning, authentication, logging, monitoring, retry and error handling.
• Architect the containerized runtime on Kubernetes with managed relational data, shared file storage, object storage, centralized image registry, CDN and WAF, and secrets management via a managed vault with pod identity.
• Establish centralized configuration management --- no hardcoded endpoints, credentials, bucket names, feature flags or AI configuration.
• Define and drive the DevSecOps pipeline: containerized builds, GitFlow release process, automated functional and performance testing, container vulnerability scanning, and controlled promotion to staging and production.
• Design enterprise observability: centralized logging, distributed tracing, API and message-stream metrics, AI usage metrics, performance and business transaction dashboards.
• Architect reusable modules, a configurable form framework and component libraries intended for reuse across future initiatives.
• Define the architecture for AI-enabled capabilities --- document OCR and classification, intelligent summarization, assisted case preparation, and integration with the client-built conversational module --- with final decisions retained by authorized personnel.
• Design for scale against a workload exceeding 100,000 annual submissions with multilingual support and PII handling.
• Lead technical governance: design reviews, architecture compliance, technical debt strategy, and mentorship of leads and senior developers.
• Ensure the architecture satisfies federal security requirements --- STIG remediation, boundary definition, ports/protocols/services documentation, encryption at rest and in transit, role-based access control --- and Section 508 obligations.

Skills

Architectural leadership

Agile/SAFe

AI tooling awareness

DevSecOps ownership

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or Engineering

Tools

Drupal

Apache Kafka

AWS

Kubernetes

GitLab CI/CD

Job description

Role: Software Architect (Drupal Lead Architecture Infrastructure Kafka DevSecOps)

Location: Remote

Duration: 6 months

Role Summary

Principal technical authority for the public-facing portal platform and the intake solution. Defines the end-to-end target architecture --- containerized Drupal on Kubernetes, event-driven integration via Kafka, API-first services, cloud data and secrets management, and an automated DevSecOps pipeline --- and is accountable for the platform meeting performance, scalability, security and accessibility obligations.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the solution architecture across application, integration, data, infrastructure and security views, with documented decision records.
• Design event-driven integration using Apache Kafka --- topic design, event schemas, reusable producer and consumer libraries, idempotency, replay and error handling --- in place of point-to-point coupling.
• Define the API-first strategy: REST standards for versioning, authentication, logging, monitoring, retry and error handling.
• Architect the containerized runtime on Kubernetes with managed relational data, shared file storage, object storage, centralized image registry, CDN and WAF, and secrets management via a managed vault with pod identity.
• Establish centralized configuration management --- no hardcoded endpoints, credentials, bucket names, feature flags or AI configuration.
• Define and drive the DevSecOps pipeline: containerized builds, GitFlow release process, automated functional and performance testing, container vulnerability scanning, and controlled promotion to staging and production.
• Design enterprise observability: centralized logging, distributed tracing, API and message-stream metrics, AI usage metrics, performance and business transaction dashboards.
• Architect reusable modules, a configurable form framework and component libraries intended for reuse across future initiatives.
• Define the architecture for AI-enabled capabilities --- document OCR and classification, intelligent summarization, assisted case preparation, and integration with the client-built conversational module --- with final decisions retained by authorized personnel.
• Design for scale against a workload exceeding 100,000 annual submissions with multilingual support and PII handling.
• Lead technical governance: design reviews, architecture compliance, technical debt strategy, and mentorship of leads and senior developers.
• Ensure the architecture satisfies federal security requirements --- STIG remediation, boundary definition, ports/protocols/services documentation, encryption at rest and in transit, role-based access control --- and Section 508 obligations.

Required Skills & Experience

• 10 years software engineering with 5 years as lead architect on enterprise web platforms.
• 5 years hands-on Drupal with full stack depth --- architecture, module strategy, theming, performance and security.
• Proven Apache Kafka architecture experience: event modeling, schema governance, producer/consumer patterns and operational concerns.
• Deep AWS architecture experience: EKS/Kubernetes, Aurora, S3, EFS, Secrets Manager, ECR, CloudFront/WAF, IAM.
• DevSecOps ownership: GitLab CI/CD, containerization, infrastructure as code, automated security scanning, release management.
• Integration experience with enterprise BPM / case management platforms (Appian or comparable) and federated identity providers.
• Database architecture across relational platforms; able to reason about DB2 and cloud-native targets during migration.
• Demonstrated platform-level accountability for Section 508 / WCAG 2.1 AA.
• Agile/SAFe architectural leadership.
• Substantial hands-on experience with AI-assisted engineering tooling and sound judgment about where AI belongs in a federal platform.

Preferred Qualifications

• AWS Solutions Architect Professional; Certified Kubernetes Administrator; Acquia/Drupal certification; SAFe Architect.
• Experience designing reusable platform frameworks intended for reuse across agency programs.
• Experience integrating AI services under enterprise security controls, including Model Context Protocol or equivalent connector patterns.
• Agentic development framework experience --- reusable AI agents for integration, test generation, documentation and code review.

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or Engineering with 10 years of relevant experience; Master's preferred.