Senior Solutions Architect

Benchmark Education Company LLC; Town of Florida (NY); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Benchmark Education Company LLC in Town of Florida, NY, is searching for a Software Engineering Solutions Architect to design scalable and secure software solutions for literacy education. The role involves leading a team, defining architectures, and ensuring best practices in software development.

Candidates should have a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or similar, with 8+ years of experience in mission-critical applications. Knowledge of AWS and strong Java/PHP skills are desired.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of related experience or equivalent combination.
• Experience developing high-volume, mission-critical applications.
• Experience ensuring security, scalability, and high availability.

Responsibilities

• Develop a high-performing Solutions Architecture team.
• Manage interactions with business and IT leaders to clarify requirements.
• Serve as a technical advisor on IT projects.

Skills

Leadership

Problem-solving

Interpersonal skills

Communication

Java

PHP

Cloud Technologies

Agile Methodologies

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related discipline

Tools

JavaScript

RESTful Services

HTML

AWS

Azure

Job description

Position Purpose

The Software Engineering Solutions Architect leverages enterprise architecture techniques, software engineering principles, expertise, and team management experience to design scalable, secure, and highly reliable solutions using systems and software developed by Benchmark’s Software Engineering department. Benchmark Education builds software to meet the challenges facing literacy learners and teachers. Our software enables and supports a wide range of next generation learning experiences with the promise of doing even more with the right technology team members. The Software Engineering Solutions Architect defines technical systems and software solutions for customer facing and backend systems implemented by internal BEC teams or development partner teams using a variety of technologies.

Job Responsibilities

• Leadership – Develop a highly performing Solutions Architecture team to design and guide development of Benchmark Education’s software applications and solutions. Establish the processes and practices for Solutions Architecture. Recruit, train, develop, and mentor Solutions Architecture staff. Provide support through practical application of Solution Architecture responsibilities.
• Strategy – Ensure the logical and systematic conversion of business, customer and product requirements into flexible, scalable, and high‑performance technical solutions. Perform functional analysis, timeline analysis, trade‑off, capacity modeling and interface definition studies to formalize customer requirements into solution architecture specifications.
• Architecture – Manage interactions with senior business and IT leaders, end users, application development teams, and operational teams to clarify requirements. Define high‑level solution architectures that prioritize scalability, fault tolerance, and security, and break them down into detailed designs. Define non‑functional requirements (availability, reliability, scalability, interoperability, portability, manageability, maintainability, security, monitoring, SLAs, KPIs, regulatory and legal compliance). Ensure all architectures support high availability, disaster recovery, and performance optimization, particularly for distributed systems. Balance competing design goals. Assist with writing and communicating best practices, standards, and guidelines.
• Evaluation and Best Practices – Evaluate and apply best practices for designing highly scalable distributed solutions, leveraging cloud‑native technologies where applicable. Keep up with industry trends and current technological standards. Assist with assessment of industry standards for information models and their applicability. Drive adoption of identified design patterns, standards, techniques, principles, products, methodologies, and best practices throughout the organization.
• Project Leadership – Serve as a technical advisor on IT projects. Ensure that IT projects adhere to the principles, guidelines and standards established by the company. Guide and model the technical implementation of shared artifacts, deployment models, and applications. Maintain ongoing communication with project teams, verify design implementation, adjust solution architecture as appropriate. Ensure short‑term project goals align with long‑term strategy. Conceptualize and articulate alternatives to problem resolution. Build consensus across stakeholder groups.

Job Requirements / Skills and Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related discipline. 8+ years of related experience or equivalent combination.
• Experience developing high‑volume, mission‑critical applications in heterogeneous environments.
• Experience designing or building highly scalable distributed solutions capable of handling large‑scale workloads.
• Experience ensuring security, scalability, high availability, and network management/monitoring requirements.
• Experience with relational and/or non‑relational databases and designing highly available distributed database applications.
• Experience with Service Oriented Architecture concepts, web/RESTful services, and event‑driven architecture.
• All aspects of software development lifecycle: design, functional and technical requirements, coding, debugging, testing, release, and operational support.
• Knowledge of Agile/Scrum development methodologies.
• Excellent oral, written, presentation and listening communication skills.
• Excellent interpersonal, persuasion and diplomatic skills.
• Excellent reasoning, analytical, and problem‑solving skills.
• Strong skills in a broad set of technologies: Java, PHP, Web Services, RESTful Services, JavaScript, HTML, scripting languages, etc.
• Ability to develop technical specifications, designs, and architecture artifacts.
• Ability to take ownership of an assignment through to completion and work effectively with people across departments, companies, and customer organizations.
• Ability to solve complex problems with multiple variables.
• Ability to communicate technical information to varied audiences from senior management to software developers.
• Leadership courage to push difficult perspectives.
• Ability to explain complex technical issues to non‑technical people.
• Self‑starter who solves complex technology and operational problems with little guidance.
• Ability to seek senior management advice for critical decisions.
• Deep knowledge of multiple applications and processes.
• Conduct trade‑off analysis considering alternative architectural approaches.
• Unbiased toward specific vendor or technology; focuses on results.
• Desired experience designing cloud‑native architectures using AWS.
• Experience in EdTech, including digital learning platforms or student data systems.
• Experience in Solutions engineering techniques such as architecture modeling, alternative analysis, trade‑off analysis, portfolio analysis.
• Experience in business process modeling & reengineering.
• Experience in Application, Data, Security, and Infrastructure architecture disciplines.
• Experience specifying system performance requirements, network utilization targets, and system resource budgets plus creating flexible APIs.
• Broad understanding of network, hardware, and operating systems technologies.
• Advanced knowledge of enterprise application integration patterns.
• Knowledge of Infrastructure‑as‑a‑Service and cloud technologies such as AWS or Azure.
• Knowledge of relevant security, regulatory and compliance matters; experience with FERPA, COPPA, ESAPI/OWASP, SAML and accessibility standards.

EEO Statement

Benchmark Education Publishing (BEC) and its affiliates are proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer.