Senior Systems Architect - Great Plains

The CDC Foundation helps the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) save and improve lives by unleashing the power of collaboration between CDC, philanthropies, corporations, organizations and individuals to protect the health, safety and security of America and the world. The CDC Foundation is the go-to nonprofit authorized by Congress to mobilize philanthropic partners and private-sector resources to support CDC’s critical health protection mission. Since 1995, the CDC Foundation has raised over $1.9 billion and launched more than 1,300 programs impacting a variety of health threats from chronic disease conditions including cardiovascular disease and cancer, to infectious diseases like rotavirus and HIV, to emergency responses, including COVID-19 and Ebola. The CDC Foundation managed hundreds of programs in the United States and in more than 90 countries last year. Visit www.cdcfoundation.org for more information.  

Job Highlights

• Location: Remote, must be based in the United States
• Salary Range:  $115,000-$165,000, plus benefits
• Position Type: Grant funded, limited-term opportunity
• Position End Date: June 30, 2025 

Overview

• The Senior Systems Architect will play a crucial role in advancing the CDC Foundation's mission by designing and overseeing the implementation of complex technical solutions that support the mission-critical systems in a public health organization. Working within the Informatics Unit of the Great Plains Tribal Epidemiology Center (GPTEC), the public health authority subsidiary of the Great Plains Tribal Leaders Health Board (GPTLHB), the Senior Systems Architect will provide expertise and guidance in technology architecture with a focus on Microsoft Azure and/or other cloud-based services, application architecture strategies, technology road mapping, systems improvements, and methodologies. The Senior Systems Architect will work collaboratively to identify organizational strengths and needs, prioritize gaps and vulnerabilities, and develop and support implementation of a technical approach that enables the public health organization to move forward on its mission. GPTEC aims to create a modernized, comprehensive, user-friendly public health database for its 18 tribal communities. Data obtained from multiple sources – such as tribal programs, state health departments, and the Indian Health Service (IHS), among others – is cleaned, partitioned, analyzed, and distributed to tribal public health departments to be used to inform public health activities. The key goal of the Senior Systems Architect is to design the framework to expand and automate this pipeline. To support tribal public health departments in all their activities, the Senior Systems Architect will also lead an assessment of available Electronic Disease Surveillance Systems (EDSS) with accessory systems/solutions (e.g., data mapping, translation, and transformation applications) and assist in deployment. The deployment requires data migration and mapping, interface development, integration support, data lake deployment with Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) support, and microservice development.  These activities support the goal of GPTEC to fully exercise public health authority broadly among the State, Tribal, Local, and Territorial (STLT) ecosystem, and locally at the direction of its member tribes, for the practice of conducting public health investigations, carrying out interventions, providing surveillance and tracking services, and performing epidemiological analysis, visualizations, and reporting. The Senior Systems Architect will be hired by the CDC Foundation aligned to the Workforce Acceleration Initiative (WAI) and assigned to the Informatics Unit of GPTEC. The Senior Systems Architect will carry out responsibilities under the direction of the GPTEC Senior Informatics Director in the Informatics Unit and work integrally with the following team: WAI Senior Product Manager, WAI Senior Data Engineer, WAI Data Engineer with Visualization, and GPTEC Informatics Specialist. Additionally, the Senior Systems Architect will work with GPTLHB IT Network and Leadership, GPTLHB Microsoft Azure Cloud system service consultants, and the GPTEC Data Coordinating Unit. This position is eligible for a fully remote work arrangement for U.S. based candidates.

Responsibilities

• Provide expertise and leadership in technology architecture with a focus in technical architecture (including infrastructure and networks) and application architecture, strategy, road mapping, and methodology.
• Contribute to and manage the planning, design, delivery and implementation of user-centric solutions related to large scale, complex products required to meet the critical business requirements.
• Contribute to the definition, evaluation, and development of architecture policies, standards, guidelines and best practices affecting government initiatives.
• Collaborate with partners to understand business requirements and objectives. Design and develop architectural solutions that meet these needs.
• Create system architecture diagrams, documentation, and guidelines to communicate design decisions and best practices.
• Evaluate existing systems and technologies to identify opportunities for improvement and optimization.
• Define technical standards, protocols, and guidelines to ensure consistency and interoperability across systems.
• Recommend and implement new technologies, tools, and frameworks to enhance system performance, scalability, and reliability.
• Conduct feasibility studies and risk assessments for proposed architectural changes or initiatives.
• Provide technical leadership and guidance to development teams during the implementation phase.
• Perform system performance tuning, capacity planning, and scalability assessments.
• Ensure security, compliance, and regulatory requirements are integrated into the system architecture.
• Collaborate with infrastructure, network, and security teams to design and implement robust and resilient systems including policy and process documentation. 
• Knowledgeable about industry trends, emerging technologies, and best practices in system architecture.
• Establish effective working relationships, obtain buy-in for systems development, promote systems to partners and agency leaders.
• Develop and implement cloud strategies aligned with business goals.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree required in Computer Science or a related field with a minimum of 6 years of work experience in relational database design and development of system-wide metadata. Public health or healthcare and technology experience preferred. Master’s or PhD in related field (ex: MPH) preferred, but not required.
• Experience in Interface engines (e.g., Rhapsody, Mirth, and others), ETL, FHIR, and HL7.
• Experience and expertise in system architecture with deep technical knowledge of application design, implementation and deployment, as well as current and emerging architecture practices.
• Hands-on experience designing modern architectural patterns to support delivery of complex and legacy IT solutions that are stable, secure, responsive, and scalable.
• Knowledge of technical security and product management best practices.
• Knowledge of current industry standards and practices particularly to architect, automate and integrate the processes that would enable teams to build, test and release product's features faster (e.g. such as Git, CI/CD, etc.)
• Hands-on knowledge of programming languages (Python, Java, JavaScript); modern JavaScript-based technologies (Node.js, React, Vue, etc.), Mobile development and semantic accessible languages (HTML5, CSS/SCSS).
• Expert level understanding of modern architectural standards for cloud-based solutions.
• Experience designing and writing automated test scripts for unit, integration, end-to-end, cross-browser, device, and accessibility testing.
• Proven experience applying software engineering best practices and architectural practices to product delivery.
• Experience conducting feasibility studies, reviewing new application system architecture or re-engineering legacy systems or enterprise level platforms.
• Ability to develop architectural solutions to meet complex, multi-year plans, spanning multiple internal/external partners and broadly defined business priorities.
• Ability to resolve significant integration and technical issues to address multiple systems/applications linkages, interdependencies and impacts where requirements are not initially clear.
• Demonstrated success fostering an inclusive environment working with and leading professionals from diverse backgrounds and geographies.
• Strong analytical thinking and problem-solving abilities.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, including the ability to convey technical concepts to non-technical partners effectively.
• Flexibility to adapt to evolving project requirements and priorities.
• Outstanding interpersonal and teamwork skills, and the ability to develop productive working relationships with colleagues and partners.
• Experience working in a virtual environment with remote partners and teams.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office; Microsoft Azure experience is preferred.

Special Notes

• This role is involved in a dynamic public health program. As such, roles and responsibilities are subject to change as situations evolve. Roles and responsibilities listed above may be expanded upon or updated to match priorities and needs, once written approval is received by the CDC Foundation in order to best support the public health programming.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment and will not be discriminated against on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, mental or physical disabilities, veteran status, and all other characteristics protected by law.
We comply with all applicable laws including E.O. 11246 and the Vietnam Era Readjustment Assistance Act of 1974 governing employment practices and do not discriminate on the basis of any unlawful criteria in accordance with 41 C.F.R. §§ 60-300.5(a)(12) and 60-741.5(a)(7). As a federal government contractor, we take affirmative action on behalf of protected veterans.
The CDC Foundation is a smoke-free environment.  Relocation expenses are not included. Apply