Awarded a Healthiest Employer, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona aims to fulfill its mission to inspire health and make it easy. AZ Blue offers a variety of health insurance products and services to meet the diverse needs of individuals, families, and small and large businesses as well as providing information and tools to help individuals make better health decisions.
At AZ Blue, we have a hybrid workforce strategy, called Workability, that offers flexibility with how and where employees work. Our positions are classified as hybrid, onsite or remote. While the majority of our employees are hybrid, the following classifications drive our current minimum onsite requirements:
Hybrid People Leaders: must reside in AZ, required to be onsite at least twice per week
Hybrid Individual Contributors: must reside in AZ, unless otherwise cited within this posting, required to be onsite at least once per week
Hybrid 2 (Operational Roles such as but not limited to: Customer Service, Claims Processors, and Correspondence positions): must reside in AZ, unless otherwise cited within this posting, required to be onsite at least once per month
Onsite: daily onsite requirement based on the essential functions of the job
Remote: not held to onsite requirements, however, leadership can request presence onsite for business reasons including but not limited to staff meetings, one-on-ones, training, and team building
Please note that onsite requirements may change in the future, based on business need, and job responsibilities. Most employees should expect onsite requirements and at a minimum of once per week.
This position is hybrid within the state of AZ only. This hybrid work opportunity requires residency, and work to be performed, within the State of Arizona.
PURPOSE OF THE JOB
The Solution Architect will be responsible for the detailed design of technology related projects from inception through production support providing industry best practices as a trusted advisor to key business and technology stakeholders. The Solution Architect will provide exceptional technical design and thought leadership and will collaborate closely with various technology teams, vendors, and business partners. The Solution Architect will prepare and deliver highly effective technology solutions; leveraging extensive experience in data engineering (API/Integration/ETL/Micro Services) with full-stack software development. Senior experience across the stack, to effectively identify issues and optimization solutions for efficient data integration across the enterprise landscape (data sources, enterprise data warehouse, API platforms/gateways, consumer endpoints, etc.). The solution architect will work hands on with the engineering teams, with consulting, guidance, support, and mentoring; ensuring the smooth operation of our data-driven initiatives. This includes, but not limited to logical data model design, functional system design, applying best-practice methodologies resulting in solutions that are highly usable, maintainable, scalable, reliable, extensible, secure, and functional.
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS
Required Work Experience
- 3 years of experience in the industry in similar role
- 7 years of experience in at least two IT disciplines in a service-oriented architecture environment (such as architecture, application development, database, security, or infrastructure)
- 4 years of experience in the design, implementation and governance of systems architecture in a complex business applications environment
- Experience and background in software development and Agile methodologies
Required Education
- High School Diploma or GED in general field of study
Required Licenses
Required Certifications
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
Preferred Work Experience
- 5 years of experience architecting applications in .Net and Microsoft Technologies
- 2 years of experience in cloud-based system design
- Demonstrated experience across multiple IT technology domains including software development languages and platforms, infrastructure platforms, data management and database technologies, cloud and networking technologies, and security frameworks.
- Experience in applying Service-Oriented Architecture to solutions.
- Deep knowledge and experience in using and applying API, SOAP, WSDL, JSON, ESB, and XML based solutions.
- Experience and background in project management.
Preferred Education
Preferred Licenses
Preferred Certifications
- Microsoft Technical Certifications
- Cloud Architect Certification
ESSENTIAL JOB FUNCTIONS AND RESPONSIBILITIES
- Design and implement the architecture and deployment of high performance, integrated solutions that span multiple application and technology platforms.
- Develops architecture design documents to facilitate integration of in-house development project and/or vendor based application fitting within the existing enterprise architecture.
- Oversee the technical design and development efforts of complex projects from concept to completion.
- Evaluate technology and market trends, recommending innovative solutions that improve our overall architecture.
- Create and share architecture and design artifacts that clearly convey both intent and rationale.
- Design appropriate security controls in every solution to ensure the network, applications, and data are not compromised.
- Work closely with implementation teams to ensure alignment of plans with what what is being delivered.
- Propose level of effort projections, functional breakdown (phases, features, user stories, etc.) and technical resource plans to support project managers, scrum masters, product owners and others in the planning process.
- Educate and influence others in order to gain buy-in on proposed roadmaps, strategies, standards and solutions.
- Participate in architectural review functions and ensure adherence to technology standards and architecture.
- Review current system designs for improvement opportunities and recommend solutions.
- Facilitate communications between IT teams and business stakeholders for technical issues and/or major changes; acting as the technical domain subject matter expert.
- Provide expertise to educate, coach and mentor team members; provide performance feedback to manager(s).
- The position requires a full-time work schedule. Full-time is defined as working at least 40 hours per week, plus any overtime as requested or needed to perform job responsibilities.
- All other duties as assigned.
REQUIRED COMPETENCIES
Required Job Skills
- Strong knowledge of application security and securing the complete solution
- Mastery of coding design patterns and services architecture
- A proven track record of using technology to capitalize on business opportunities and deliver projects on time and on budget consistently.
- Proven experience in documenting business processes and creating system designs using process flow diagram tools, UML, sequence diagrams, etc.
- Understands and resolves highly complex large scale or systems level problems. Able to quickly and efficiently troubleshoot such problems utilizing team resources to coordinate solutions
- Strong leadership, partnership, collaboration and teambuilding skills.
- Strong understanding of infrastructure technologies: WAN, LAN, Networking, Firewalls, Security
- Strong understanding of software development methodologies.
- Ability to apply verbal, written and persuasive communication skills to influence others both individually and groups.
- Proficient in utilization of audio/visual tools to effectively present to groups and capable of presenting technical information to other functions or groups both inside and outside of the organization
- Collaborate closely with business stakeholders and development teams to ensure the architecture and design is usable, maintainable, scalable, reliable, extensible, secure, portable and functional.
- Understand, advocate and augment the standards, best practices and architectural principles that guide solution decisions, development environments, tools, and deployment procedures for the enterprise.
- Strong self-starter, motivated, enthusiastic, risk taker, innovative, and customer service oriented with a record of success.
- Excellent organizational and planning skills.
- Ability to cope with the rapid pace and constant change associated with the industry.
- Ability to successfully manage numerous projects simultaneously.
- Ability to communicate effectively, both oral and written, with internal and external contacts.
- Extensive experience or understanding of services technologies and standards, .NET platform, and Web Service Specifications WS
- Technical expertise knowledge in: XML and Web Services, XML, XSLT, SOAP, WSDL, UDDI and GRID.
- Expert in ASP.NET,VB.NET,XML, CSS, JAVASCRIPT / JQUERY, SQL, Content Management Systems, and GUI Development
- Strong understanding of infrastructure architecture and security architecture concepts.
- Strong command of database design concepts
- Undersanding of NoSQL, MS Dynamics CRM technologies and microservices architecture
- Familiarity with an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) architecture in Microsoft BizTalk or other platform
Required Professional Competencies
- Customer focused with strong verbal and written communications skills and the ability to interact professionally at all levels of the organization and across multiple technological and business functions.
- Able to teach others and explain complex concepts with clarity, educating through knowledge sharing presentations and written documents.
- Ability to be self-aware and emotionally intelligent, able to give and receive constructive feedback and continue self-development.
- Confidence to challenge the status quo and lead change in the organization.
- Demonstrated understanding of modern architecture and design.
- Mix of creative and technical thinking with a high degree of accuracy and attention to detail.
- Strong knowledge of IT systems, practices and functional units.
- Strong knowledge of application development, infrastructure and operations.
- Ability to be approachable and develop healthy working relationships across a diverse team.
- Ability to assess a situation, make critical observations and take appropriate risks, using available information.
- Anticipate downstream technical needs and steer architectural designs to appropriately factor in considerations.
- Strong analytical skills to support independent and effective decisions.
- Be driven for results and work effectively with management, project managers, analysts, developers, engineers, architects, system administrators, and testers to conceive, design, and deliver successful solutions.
- Able to operate at highly varying levels of abstraction including business strategy, technology strategy, technical design and implementation
Required Leadership Experience and Competencies
- Provide leadership, promote teamwork, and act collaboratively to meet objectives.
- Experience leading teams and implementing projects with both business and technical participants.
- Ability to prioritize tasks and work with multiple priorities, sometimes under limited time contstraints.
- Ability to build consensus with a diverse team in an ever-changing environment.
PREFERRED COMPETENCIES
Preferred Job Skills
- Expert knowledge designing highly redundant, scalable, multi-tier enterprise transaction processing systems from front end to back end.
- Experience with cloud architecture.
- Knowledge of HIPAA security and privacy standards.
- In depth knowledge of healthcare and health plan data structures and business processes and workflows.
Preferred Professional Competencies
Preferred Leadership Experience and Competencies
Our Commitment
AZ Blue does not discriminate in hiring or employment on the basis of race, ethnicity, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, protected veteran status or any other protected group.
Thank you for your interest in Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona. For more information on our company, see azblue.com. If interested in this position, please apply.
