Principal Technical Architect

About Niyam

Niyam was founded in 2007 by a group of consultants who shared a unique vision: a technology company steeped in orderly process yet driven by passion and innovation. For nearly two decades, we have served the U.S. Federal government delivering mission-critical IT solutions across Emergency Preparedness and Response, Civilian Agency Services, and Law Enforcement and Public Safety. Niyam is CMMI DEV Level 3 accredited and ISO certified (ISO 9001:2015, ISO/IEC 20000-1, ISO/IEC 27001), and holds an active CMMC Level 2 certification. We are proud to be recognized as a Best Places to Work by The Washington Post (2025) and USA Today (2026).

Roles and Responsibilities

• Own and lead end-to-end solution architecture, ensuring technical solutions align with business, product, user, and mission objectives.
• Establish, evolve, and enforce architectural principles, technical standards, design patterns, and engineering guardrails.
• Lead technology evaluation and selection, system design, application architecture, and integration strategies across web, mobile, cloud, and AI-enabled solutions.
• Provide hands-on technical leadership throughout the software development lifecycle, including designing, developing, and reviewing critical application components, APIs, integrations, and shared services.
• Lead the integration of AI and machine learning capabilities into applications, including virtual assistants, chatbots, AI-powered search and recommendations, accessibility features, and AI-assisted development and testing tools.
• Translate complex technical requirements into scalable, incremental, and shippable solutions while supporting the development of technical backlogs, user stories, and solution increments.
• Collaborate closely with Product Owners, Scrum Masters, developers, architects, security, platform, and operations teams to ensure effective Agile delivery.
• Provide technical direction during sprint planning, execution, reviews, and demonstrations, helping teams resolve technical challenges and make informed design decisions.
• Guide architectural decision-making and maintain appropriate technical documentation, including architecture diagrams, technical specifications, and Architecture Decision Records (ADRs).
• Conduct code and design reviews to ensure adherence to coding standards, architectural principles, security requirements, and software engineering best practices.
• Ensure solutions meet non-functional requirements for security, performance, scalability, reliability, maintainability, accessibility, and operational readiness.
• Promote clean code, automated testing, CI/CD, DevSecOps, infrastructure automation, and other modern software development and delivery practices.
• Identify, assess, and proactively reduce technical debt, architectural risk, and technical dependencies that could impact delivery or long-term maintainability.
• Mentor and coach developers on architecture, design patterns, coding practices, emerging technologies, and effective use of AI-assisted development tools.
• Communicate technical direction, architectural decisions, risks, dependencies, and trade-offs clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Support production readiness, deployment activities, incident resolution, troubleshooting, and ongoing operational stability of delivered solutions.
• Drive continuous improvement across architecture, code quality, development practices, automation, and delivery processes.
• Support technical demonstrations, proof-of-concepts, and evaluations of proposed solutions and technologies for internal and client stakeholders.

Required Qualifications

• Must be a U.S. citizen and able to obtain and maintain a Top Secret (TS) security clearance.
• Bachelor's degree in GIS, Geography, Computer Science, Geospatial Engineering, or a related field (equivalent experience considered in lieu of degree).
• Must be available to work onsite in Ashburn, VA.
• 10+ years of professional full stack software development experience, including recent, hands-on work across frontend, backend, and API layers.
• Demonstrated experience with two or more of the following: Flutter, Angular (2+), Spring Boot, Java, Python (Django), JavaScript/TypeScript, Dart, native iOS (Swift), or native Android.
• Experience integrating AI/ML capabilities into production applications (for example, chatbots or virtual assistants, recommendation or search features, computer vision or NLP-based accessibility tooling, or AI-assisted development pipelines).
• Working knowledge of relational databases such as PostgreSQL or Oracle SQL, and RESTful and/or SOAP API integration in a multi-system environment.
• Experience with Agile/Scrum software delivery, CI/CD pipelines, containerized deployment (Kubernetes), and automated testing frameworks (for example, Selenium).
• Familiarity with federal software delivery standards, including Section 508 accessibility, DevSecOps practices, and IT security fundamentals (encryption, PII handling, vulnerability remediation).

Preferred Skills

• One or more current AI/ML certifications, such as AWS Certified Machine Learning, Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Engineer Associate, Google Cloud Professional Machine Learning Engineer, or a recognized generative AI/LLM engineering certification.
• Prior experience supporting DHS, CBP, or another federal agency.
• Experience with chatbot or conversational AI frameworks (Python backend, React frontend, Angular-based training dashboard).
• SAFe Practitioner, Certified Scrum Developer, or equivalent Agile certification.
• Experience with Firebase, Gradle, or mobile app store deployment pipelines (Apple Enterprise/Developer, Google Play).