Solution Architect - Senior / Intermediate

University Of Michigan; Ann Arbor (MI); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

The University of Michigan is seeking a Solution Architect at senior/intermediate level to empower DevOps teams and accelerate secure cloud adoption. The role emphasizes migrations to GCP, IaC with Terraform, and building scalable developer platforms.

We value the ability to mentor staff, drive architecture decisions, and deliver reliable services while balancing security, observability, and speed. This position offers hybrid work with on-site collaboration as needed.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of IT-related experience.
• 5+ years in SRE, DevOps, or Software Development.
• Deep experience architecting and managing production workloads in a major public cloud (GCP, AWS, or Azure).
• Technical leadership: mentor staff, lead code reviews, design high-level architecture.
• 3+ years in a technical role focused on cloud-native environments and automation.
• Proficiency in Python or Go for automation and internal tooling.

Responsibilities

• Migrate and evolve applications within the public cloud (primarily GCP), focusing on GKE, VPC design, and IAM.
• Build self-service infrastructure tools that allow developers to provision environments and deploy code with minimal friction.
• Architect and maintain reproducible environments using Terraform and GitOps workflows.
• Provide stable hosting for critical vendor-provided systems and ensure uptime.

Skills

IT experience

SRE/DevOps/Software development

Public cloud architecture

Technical leadership

Cloud-native automation

Python/Go scripting

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Tools

Terraform

GKE

Docker

Kubernetes

Helm

Job description

Solution Architect - Senior / Intermediate

A cover letter is required for consideration for this position and should be attached as the first page of your resume. The cover letter should address your specific interest in the position and outline skills and experience that directly relate to this position.

Department Overview

Health Information Technology & Services (HITS) plays an integral role in the success of Michigan Medicine (MM) by providing clinicians, educators, researchers, students, and staff with exceptional technology-related information, products, services, and support. HITS also provides institutional expertise related to IT strategy, security, infrastructure, and resource management.

Division Overview

The HITS Academic IT division (Acad IT) serves the education and research communities at the University of Michigan Medical School. We engage faculty, students, and staff to provide a holistic portfolio of software, applications, infrastructure, device support, and custom projects to enable innovation and excellence.

Job Summary

On the DevOps team our goal is to empower developers to move fast - from initial cloud infrastructure provisioning to the rapid, safe deployment and execution of code. This team exists to make that speed available safely.

For our high-velocity engineering partners, this means providing the security tooling and observability they need while enabling them to deliver at full velocity. For teams earlier in their cloud journey, it means working side-by-side to establish best practices like automated deployment pipelines and self-healing security patching. We don't just manage servers; we build the paved roads.

Our Platform Values

We cannot be all things to all people. To provide the best experience for our customers, we focus our excellence on these five pillars:

• Deployment Speed: Reducing the time between "code complete" and "production ready.".
• Observability: Ensuring every service has deep, actionable telemetry by default.
• Security: Making the secure path the easiest path for every developer.
• Simplicity: Favoring clean, maintainable architecture over clever but fragile complexity.
• Usability: Providing things developers can quickly pick up and put into practice with ease.

Core Competencies of The DevOps Team

Aligning with these behaviors is essential for success within our team culture and how we show up for each other:

• Total Ownership - "A Narwhal Takes Care of Its Stuff!" - The DevOps Narwhals are reliable and accountable, committing to deliver the highest value, following up with customers and commitments. We are accountable and meet our commitments, handling every task with integrity.
• Collaboration to the Core - "A Narwhal Plays Well with Others" - Within the team, the DevOps Narwhals are focused on facts and outcomes. We seek the deepest collaborative and transparent options to do excellent work. Narwhals engage in documentation as a first-class communication and support mechanism and work tirelessly to share and build knowledge in the team.
• System Conscious - "A Narwhal Navigates the Treacherous Sea" - We know our context in the wider world, introducing features and change with thoughtful, future-proofed designs. We work within a diverse ecosystem of cultural and architectural norms, respecting what's there when considering something new. Using systems thinking and analysis, we reason through complexity, anticipating future needs and standardizing when possible. We focus on clarity, readability, maintainability, and simplifying integrations.
• Constant Customer Value - "A Narwhal Knows Its Blessing" - A Narwhal proactively builds empathetic relationships with our customers. Everything we build introduces and maintains value for our customers without speculation. We keep our customers and their experiences at the forefront with clear communication channels and feedback to ensure we're delivering quality systems that add value to their workflows.

* You may have noticed the narwhal terminology above. The Narwhal is our team mascot and brings a little extra fun to what we do.

Responsibilities*

• Cloud Enablement: Drive the migration and evolution of applications within the public cloud (primarily GCP), focusing on GKE, VPC design, and IAM.
• Developer Platform Engineering: Build self-service infrastructure tools that allow developers to provision environments and deploy code with minimal friction.
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Architect and maintain reproducible environments using Terraform and GitOps workflows.
• Vendor Application Stewardship: Provide stable, reliable hosting for critical vendor-provided systems. While these systems may not always be cloud-native, we are committed to their stability and uptime. This includes performing necessary maintenance and troubleshooting to ensure the teams relying on them stay unblocked.

Operational Expectations & On-Call

Reliability is a foundational requirement for our department. Teammates are required to be part of a formal on-call rotation to resolve issues within stated SLAs.

• Support Scope: While most applications are supported 9-5, we manage a small subset of critical services and vendor applications that require 24/7 availability. To give a general sense of what this means in real terms, we have had 9 instances of off-hours on-call activity over the entire past year.
• The "Fix It Forever" Mindset: We use operational incidents as data to prioritize automation-if a manual task happens twice, we aim to code it out of existence.

AI Usage

We know this can be a touchy subject. To be clear: Yes, please. This isn't just about using AI chat to help on something. This and other tools that enable speed and new ways of working are welcome. In fact, candidates who have replaced legacy workflows with AI are especially compelling. This isn't about replacing depth and experience. It is about bringing about new possibilities that previously were unattainable.

Required Qualifications*

• Bachelor's Degree or equivalent combination of education and experience.
• 7+ years of IT related experience.
• 5+ years in SRE, DevOps, or Software Development.
• Public Cloud Depth: Deep experience architecting and managing production workloads in a major public cloud (GCP, AWS, or Azure).
• Technical Leadership: Ability to mentor staff, lead code reviews, and design high-level architecture.
• Bachelor's Degree or equivalent combination of education and experience.
• 5+ years of IT related experience.
• 3+ years in a technical role focused on cloud-native environments and automation.
• Cloud Competency: Practical experience deploying and managing services within a public cloud.
• Coding Proficiency: Strong ability in Python, Go, or similar for automation and internal tooling.

Desired Qualifications*

• Preferred Cloud: Hands-on experience withGoogle Cloud Platform (GCP).
• Containers: Docker, Kubernetes (although we're seeking to minimize this), Helm, and Container Security tools.
• Vendor Support: Experience troubleshooting and maintaining third-party enterprise software.

Modes of Work

Positions that are eligible for hybrid or mobile/remote work mode are at the discretion of the hiring department. Work agreements are reviewed annually at a minimum and are subject to change at any time, and for any reason, throughout the course of employment. Learn more about the work modes .

Work Locations

This position is being offered as a Hybrid position. There will be times that it will be appropriate for you to work from home (the team's current in-person day is Wednesday each week). There will be other times that you will be required to work onsite for meetings, and customer interactions. This position will be primarily remote work. May require working during non-business hours and on weekends. On-Call rotation is required for this position.

Underfill Statement

This position may be underfilled at a lower classification depending on the qualifications of the selected candidate.

Additional Information

We offer a benefits package that includes comprehensive training and career development opportunities, generousretirement savings plans, ample paid time off, and a wealth of family care support: https://careers.umich.edu/benefits .

Michigan Medicine conducts background screening and pre-employment drug testing on job candidates upon acceptance of a contingent job offer and may use a third party administrator to conduct background screenings. Background screenings are performed in compliance with the Fair Credit Report Act. Pre-employment drug testing applies to all selected candidates, including new or additional faculty and staff appointments, as well as transfers from other U-M campuses.

Application Deadline

Job openings are posted for a minimum of seven calendar days.The review and selection process maybegin as early as the eighth day after posting.Thisopening may be removed from posting boards and filled any time after the minimum posting period has ended.

U-M EEO Statement

The University of Michigan is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are committed to providing an environment of mutual respect where equal employment opportunities are available to all applicants, including protected veterans and individuals with disabilities.

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