Software Architect

About the role

GC2IT is seeking a Software Architect to lead the architecture, technical evolution, and operational design of a large-scale, globally distributed mission platform deployed across multiple countries and managed remotely from the United States. The role serves as the overall software architecture authority for a modern Linux-based microservices platform supporting real-time processing, distributed data, external integrations, device orchestration, observability, and administration.

Responsibilities

• Own the overall software architecture for a distributed microservices platform operating across global environments.
• Maintain and evolve an ecosystem of approximately 25 core Java-based microservices plus supporting and integration services.
• Define and govern architecture across service boundaries/contracts, data flows/event patterns, control-plane/backplane behavior, node roles/deployment topologies, observability, fault tolerance, and service recovery.
• Lead architecture for a platform using RHEL/Rocky Linux, Java (JDK 21+), Vue.js 3, MongoDB, Elasticsearch/Logstash, RabbitMQ, Consul, Nomad, and Vault.
• Architect deployment patterns for server, data, arbiter, and workstation/user-facing nodes.
• Guide technical design of transactional processing, rules/screening/correlation, authorization/access control, reference/master data, internationalization, health/status, and biometric/matching services.
• Oversee architecture for peripheral/device services and external standards-based or partner-system interfaces.
• Ensure the platform remains remotely observable, supportable, and maintainable across all deployments.
• Partner with cloud, network, security, data, field engineering, and operations teams to align architecture with deployment realities.
• Review and guide software design decisions, technical-debt reduction, modernization priorities, roadmap sequencing, design/readiness reviews, problem resolution, and major incident analysis.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Data Engineering, Information Systems, or a related technical field; four additional years of experience may substitute for a degree.
• Twelve or more years of software engineering experience, including significant software architecture experience with distributed or mission-critical systems.
• Five or more years architecting microservices-based platforms in production.
• Demonstrated ability to serve as technical authority over a multi-service software ecosystem.
• Experience guiding multiple development teams and reviewing architecture across service boundaries.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including development of design artifacts and presentation of architecture decisions.
• Experience balancing long-term architecture quality with delivery constraints and operational realities.
• Deep hands-on expertise with modern Java, Linux-based production environments, and distributed service design/operations.
• Strong experience with MongoDB, Elasticsearch/Logstash, RabbitMQ or equivalent messaging, and service discovery/orchestration/secrets technologies such as Consul, Nomad, Vault, Kubernetes, or similar.
• Experience designing systems that operate across constrained edge environments, centralized/cloud-heavy environments, and globally distributed deployments with intermittent or variable connectivity.
• Proven ability to architect for resilience/graceful degradation, observability/diagnosability, secure service-to-service communication, multi-role user administration/authorization, and remote support/lifecycle management.