Senior Solution Architect - Platform Reliability & SRE

Zurich Insurance Company Ltd.; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 143,000 - 214,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work model

Job summary

Zurich is seeking a Senior Solution Architect to design reliability into all critical systems from day one. You will lead architecture across applications, data, integrations and AWS infrastructure, establishing standards for observability, resiliency, and automation.

This engineering-led role reports to the Chief Architect/Program Architecture Lead and emphasizes design over production support. You will work in a hybrid environment in New York, collaborating with multiple partners and internal

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in software, infrastructure or integration engineering with senior architecture focus.
• Proven design of distributed, highly available, fault-tolerant systems.
• Strong SRE discipline including SLOs, error budgets and incident reviews.
• Experience with observability tooling and end-to-end monitoring.
• Hands-on AWS, IaC tooling and container orchestration.
• Knowledge of microservices, REST APIs and MuleSoft or similar integration platforms.
• Experience in large transformation programs with multiple partners.
• Ability to influence decisions and drive standards across teams.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end solution architecture across applications, integration, data and AWS infrastructure.
• Define non-functional requirements and architecture decision records.
• Set patterns for APIs and event-driven processing.
• Define SLIs, SLOs, error budgets and recovery objectives.
• Design resilience features including failover and disaster recovery.
• Build unified observability across apps, middleware and cloud.
• Define alerting and dashboards for platform health and dependencies.
• Oversee CI/CD, IaC and progressive delivery practices.
• Ensure integrations with third parties are resilient and reliable.
• Establish reliability testing and operational readiness processes.
• Review designs against standards before implementation.

Skills

10+ yrs experience

Distributed systems design

SRE practice

Observability depth

AWS + Terraform + Docker

Microservices & APIs

Transformation programs

Challenging decisions

Tools

New Relic

Datadog

Dynatrace

Splunk

OpenTelemetry

Terraform

CloudFormation

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

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Senior Solution Architect - Platform Reliability & SRE

New York, NY, US

138081

Where will your career take you next? Let’s find out together.

At Zurich Cover-More, we’re proud to be one of the world’s leading travel insurance and assistance providers. Each year, we protect more than 20 million travelers worldwide, making sure we’re there every step of their journey with proactive care, personalized cover and specialist support. Zurich Cover-More partners with many of the world’s best-known brands – think major airlines, travel giants, top banks, credit card providers, and large retailers – to deliver more care, more cover, for all.

Launched in December 2024, Zurich Cover-More is the global travel brand of Zurich Insurance Group, one of the world’s leading multi-line insurers. Our family of customer-facing brands includes trusted names like Travel Guard, Cover-More Travel Insurance, Travelex Insurance, Universal Assistance, World Travel Protection, Freely, and Blue Insurance. Together, we’re redefining what it means to travel safely and with confidence. Whether it’s a long-awaited holiday, a last-minute business trip, or an unexpected detour, we deliver in the moments that matter.

About the opportunity:

We're looking for a Senior Solution Architect who designs reliability in from day one, so every critical system is observable, recoverable, performant and built to scale. You'll combine solution architecture with modern Site Reliability Engineering, setting the architecture and reliability standards the whole program builds on.

This is an engineering-led architecture role, not production support or infrastructure operations. You'll report to the Chief Architect / Program Architecture Lead.

What you’ll be doing:

• Lead end-to-end solution architecture for Sirius workstreams across applications, integration, data and AWS infrastructure
• Produce component diagrams, integration and deployment designs, non-functional requirements and architecture decision records
• Define patterns for APIs, synchronous and asynchronous integration, event-driven processing and workflow orchestration
• Set SLIs, SLOs and error budgets for critical services, with RTOs and RPOs matched to business criticality
• Design resilience in: circuit breakers, retries, timeouts, bulkheads, graceful degradation, automated failover and disaster recovery
• Build unified observability across applications, APIs, middleware and cloud, with correlation IDs and distributed tracing across quote, purchase, policy servicing and claims
• Define actionable alerting and dashboards for platform health, latency, transaction success and dependency failures
• Set CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code and progressive delivery standards: blue-green, canary and automated rollback
• Make MuleSoft and API integrations resilient with error handling, dead-letter processing, replay and reconciliation, including payment providers, assistance partners and other third parties
• Establish reliability testing: load, stress, fault injection and controlled chaos engineering
• Own operational readiness: runbooks, production readiness reviews and smooth handover to long-term service owners
• Review designs from internal teams and implementation partners against agreed standards

What skills and experience you’ll bring on this journey:

• 10+ years in software, infrastructure or integration engineering, including 5+ years of hands-on solution architecture on complex enterprise systems
• Proven design of distributed, highly available, fault-tolerant systems
• Strong SRE practice: SLOs, error budgets, incident response, post-incident reviews and root-cause analysis
• Observability depth: APM, centralized logging, metrics, OpenTelemetry, and tools such as New Relic, Datadog, Dynatrace or Splunk
• AWS architecture, Terraform or CloudFormation, Docker and Kubernetes, and scripting in Python or Bash
• Microservices, REST APIs, event-driven architecture, and MuleSoft or a comparable integration platform
• Experience in large transformation programs with multiple implementation partners
• The confidence to challenge technical decisions and bring partners and engineering teams to a shared standard

Nice to have

• Insurance, financial services, or travel and assistance experience, ideally policy administration or claims
• Core platform modernization experience
• AWS Solutions Architect, AWS DevOps Engineer or Kubernetes certification
• AWS Well-Architected (Reliability, Operational Excellence), ITIL, SAFe or Agile Release Trains
• A track record of building SRE practice in teams moving from traditional operations

Why you’ll love working with us!

We value optimism, caring, togetherness, reliability, results-orientation, and forward-thinking.

We have more than 3000 employees worldwide. We are a global group of digital specialists, actuaries, marketers, doctors, nurses, case managers, claims specialists, finance experts, customer service and corporate services professionals. We share a global purpose to look after travelers, at every step of their journey.

Job flexibility

We understand the importance of making sure that work fits into your life, not the other way around.Our hybrid approach ensures you can maintain work-life balance with the flexibility of 3 days in the office and 2 days working from home.

Career growth

This is an extremely exciting time for us at Zurich Cover-More, as we rapidly expand our business across the globe. We’re committed to helping our people thrive through a comprehensive onboarding experience, continuous professional development, and a supportive work environment that empowers growth at every stage of your career.

Take the time you need, for you and your community

We encourage you to take the time you need when you need it. We offer regular annual and personal leave benefits along with volunteer leave and a comprehensive paid parental leave scheme.

Investing in your health and your future.

We offer a competitive high-deductible health plan, EAP programs and access to health and well-being activities along with 401(k) program with employer matching to help you plan for your future.

Diversity and inclusion

We respect who you are and thoroughly embrace diversity. Wherever life has taken you, we welcome you to bring your whole self to work. Just be you – because that’s exactly who we’re looking for.

#LI-Hybrid

At Zurich Cover-More, compensation for roles is influenced by a variety of factors, including but not limited to the specific office location, role, skill set, and level of experience. In compliance with local laws, Zurich commits to providing a fair and reasonable compensation range for each role. For more information about our Total Rewards, please click here . Additional rewards may encompass short-term incentive bonuses and merit increases. We encourage candidates with salary expectations beyond the provided range to apply as they will be considered based on their experience, skills, and education.

The compensation indicated represents a nationwide market range and has not been adjusted for geographic differentials pertaining to the location where the position may be filled. The proposed salary range for this position is $ 142,640.00 - $213,960.00 with Short Term Incentive eligibility set at 20%.