100% Remote | Software Architect (Drupal Lead + Architecture + Infrastructure + Kafka + DevSecOps)

Pioneer Corporate Services IncUnited States🇺🇸United StatesPosted Sep 30, 2026

Quick Overview

Seniority

Mid Senior

Work mode

Remote

Location

United States

Posted

20 hours ago

SAFeAWSEncryptionAgileApacheCDNGitLab CIKafkaKubernetesRESTVaultWAF

Job Description

Role: Software Architect (Drupal Lead + Architecture + Infrastructure + Kafka + DevSecOps)

Location: Remote

Duration: 6+ months

Role Summary

Principal technical authority for the public-facing portal platform and the intake solution. Defines the end-to-end target architecture — containerized Drupal on Kubernetes, event-driven integration via Kafka, API-first services, cloud data and secrets management, and an automated DevSecOps pipeline — and is accountable for the platform meeting performance, scalability, security and accessibility obligations.

Key Responsibilities

Own the solution architecture across application, integration, data, infrastructure and security views, with documented decision records.
Design event-driven integration using Apache Kafka — topic design, event schemas, reusable producer and consumer libraries, idempotency, replay and error handling — in place of point-to-point coupling.
Define the API-first strategy: REST standards for versioning, authentication, logging, monitoring, retry and error handling.
Architect the containerized runtime on Kubernetes with managed relational data, shared file storage, object storage, centralized image registry, CDN and WAF, and secrets management via a managed vault with pod identity.
Establish centralized configuration management — no hardcoded endpoints, credentials, bucket names, feature flags or AI configuration.
Define and drive the DevSecOps pipeline: containerized builds, GitFlow release process, automated functional and performance testing, container vulnerability scanning, and controlled promotion to staging and production.
Design enterprise observability: centralized logging, distributed tracing, API and message-stream metrics, AI usage metrics, performance and business transaction dashboards.
Architect reusable modules, a configurable form framework and component libraries intended for reuse across future initiatives.
Define the architecture for AI-enabled capabilities — document OCR and classification, intelligent summarization, assisted case preparation, and integration with the client-built conversational module — with final decisions retained by authorized personnel.
Design for scale against a workload exceeding 100,000 annual submissions with multilingual support and PII handling.
Lead technical governance: design reviews, architecture compliance, technical debt strategy, and mentorship of leads and senior developers.
Ensure the architecture satisfies federal security requirements — STIG remediation, boundary definition, ports/protocols/services documentation, encryption at rest and in transit, role-based access control — and Section 508 obligations.

Required Skills & Experience

10+ years software engineering with 5+ years as lead architect on enterprise web platforms.
5+ years hands-on Drupal with full stack depth — architecture, module strategy, theming, performance and security.
Proven Apache Kafka architecture experience: event modeling, schema governance, producer/consumer patterns and operational concerns.
Deep AWS architecture experience: EKS/Kubernetes, Aurora, S3, EFS, Secrets Manager, ECR, CloudFront/WAF, IAM.
DevSecOps ownership: GitLab CI/CD, containerization, infrastructure as code, automated security scanning, release management.
Integration experience with enterprise BPM / case management platforms (Appian or comparable) and federated identity providers.
Database architecture across relational platforms; able to reason about DB2 and cloud-native targets during migration.
Demonstrated platform-level accountability for Section 508 / WCAG 2.1 AA.
Agile/SAFe architectural leadership.
Substantial hands-on experience with AI-assisted engineering tooling and sound judgment about where AI belongs in a federal platform.

Preferred Qualifications

AWS Solutions Architect Professional; Certified Kubernetes Administrator; Acquia/Drupal certification; SAFe Architect.
Experience designing reusable platform frameworks intended for reuse across agency programs.
Experience integrating AI services under enterprise security controls, including Model Context Protocol or equivalent connector patterns.
Agentic development framework experience — reusable AI agents for integration, test generation, documentation and code review.

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or Engineering with 10+ years of relevant experience; Master's preferred.