Job Description

Application Architect

Why join us?

We are looking for a highly motivated Application Architect to join our Pension Products & Technology team in Toronto. You will be part of growing a product development team to deliver new and existing products and services for OMERS Pensions. The Products & Technology team is an exciting new team focused on leveraging the newest technologies and approaches to deliver solutions & systems for the modern-day end user. Our primary focus and commitments are to provide real value and we encourage innovation and empower open thinking for all our team members. We\xe2\x80\x99re excited about the opportunity to have highly driven and impactful talent join our team!

In this role, you will create and maintain technical designs and architectural artifacts for the organization\xe2\x80\x99s business solutions that adhere to corporate and industry technical and security best practices. Included in these architectural artifacts are data flows, application information models, deployment models, etc. The Application Architect must have knowledge of the organization\xe2\x80\x99s business capabilities and processes and an understanding of the overall business and technology strategies.

You\xe2\x80\x99ll be engaging with business, engineering, DevOps, infrastructure, and security leaders during all phases during the build and deployment phases to ensure the solution adheres to the agreed upon technical design and architectural standards. You will be a key member of an engaged, high-reaching team\xe2\x80\x94part of a world-class, winning culture that prioritizes people development and focuses on long-term growth. We take great pride in leading the industry by earning respect through every interaction, every day. We go above and beyond to protect and grow relationships by anticipating needs, being honest and considerate, and valuing customers as genuine partners.

As a member of this team, you will be responsible for:

• SME of Application Architecture (Java & Backend Engineering) for all Pensions systems, develop, and implement best practices/methodologies from application architecture
• Developing and coordinating application design, architecture, automation, and security to operate at scale
• Collaborate with other Architects in the solution architecture team to come up with solutions, flows, and documents as well as work on technical evaluations with vendors
• Responsible for developing, publishing, and maintaining architecture diagrams/artifacts and presenting them to other teams/SMEs like Business stakeholders, Security, Enterprise Architecture, Products, Development, and maintaining complete end-to-end solutions
• Improving code structure and architecture in service of testability and maintainability, bringing more to code reviews than reviews, actively raising the bar for code quality, scalability, and confidence
• Leading coding activities (in Java using spring /spring boot framework) of solutions and being a guide and mentor to the engineering team.
• Working with public cloud environment (GCP & Azure)
• Working on modernization of legacy Monolith product based on Client Server Technology, by converting it into a Product with Microservices Style Architecture using Event Driven System based on cloud-native design.
• Work closely with the Product Owners and Business Leads to fully understand solution requirements, identify risks, and determine architectural patterns
• Leading and developing technical design sessions for facilitation with other members of the team and external vendors
• Ensuring technical designs are aligned with technical-long term strategies and properly integrated with the organization\xe2\x80\x99s business
• Keeping current with industry best practices and recommending new patterns, frameworks, and technologies when appropriate. Identify opportunities, risks, and constraints to enhance the business solution.

To succeed in this role, you have:

• 7+ years of the overall experience, and at least 2 years of Application design and architect responsibilities
• Ability to own architecture and influence strategic direction and vision for the future of the product
• Experience addressing operational and non-functional concerns (e.g., horizontal & vertical scalability, performance, maintainability, load distribution, resilience, recovery, security, and privacy).
• Strong experience with writing clean, modular code with an understanding of test-driven development.
• Strong experience with SOLID principles, Design, Enterprise Integration & Microservices Patterns.
• Strong experience with coding in Java and understanding Java release cadence and features being added with each release.
• Strong experience with coding in Spring framework and its various modules and how it incorporates various open-source technology and provides frameworks to be used within Java Stack/Eco-System
• Strong Experience with building Distributed Systems with fault-tolerant, resilient, 12-factor apps on a cloud-native stack.
• Strong experience with Event Driven Architecture & design and use of Apache Kafka or other messaging brokers (RabbitMQ, Azure Event Hub/Grid)
• Excellent knowledge of Cloud IAM, SSO, OAuth, OpenID Connect, token-based authentication, JWT, and API security
• Hands-on experience with building APIs & knowledge of API design ecosystems: Swagger, Open API, RAML, YAML, Smart Doc, REST, gRPC, GraphQL, Istio Mesh, Envoy, etc.
• Experience and deep understanding of containerization (e.g.: docker), container orchestration (e.g.: Kubernetes) , and knowledge of extended CNCF (Cloud Native Computing Foundation) landscape of tools and services
• Experience working with CI/CD methodology, following application best practices, and deploying software onto Kubernetes and other cloud workloads
• Hands-on experience with either of the major Cloud provider\xe2\x80\x99s infrastructure and services (AWS, GCP, Azure) and in hybrid cloud implementation and integration
• Experience with SQL and/or NoSQL databases (Oracle, Postgres, MongoDB)

Our story:

Founded in 1962, OMERS is one of Canada\xe2\x80\x99s largest defined benefit pension plans, with $124 billion in net assets as at December 31, 2022. OMERS is a jointly-sponsored pension plan, with more than 1,000 participating employers ranging from large cities to local agencies, and over half a million active, deferred and retired members. OMERS members include union and non-union employees of municipalities, school boards, local boards, transit systems, electrical utilities, emergency services and children\xe2\x80\x99s aid societies across Ontario. Contributions to the Plan are funded equally by members and employers. OMERS teams work in Toronto, London, New York, Amsterdam, Luxembourg, Singapore, Sydney and other major cities across North America and Europe \xe2\x80\x93 serving members and employers and originating and managing a diversified portfolio of high-quality investments in public markets, private equity, infrastructure and real estate.

OMERS is committed to having a workforce that reflects the communities in which we live and work. We are an equal opportunity employer committed to a barrier-free recruitment and selection process. At OMERS inclusion and diversity means belonging. How we create a sense of belonging is through our employees and our vast network of Employee Resource Groups. Whether you are passionate about gender, pride, or visible minorities, we have groups that are focused on making a difference in all of our lives.

Omers