Application Architect / Lead Developer

Application Architect / Lead Developer — Hands-On Coding (Ref: 5777) Location: Remote work on Pacific Time Zone M-F 8am-5pm Rate: DOE Position Summary: Estrada Consulting, Inc. is seeking a hands-on Application Architect / Lead Developer to provide technical architecture, solution design, and senior-level application development for the modernization and replacement of a complex state-government legacy application. This position will serve as the technical lead while remaining actively involved in application design, coding, integration development, code review, troubleshooting, and proof-of-concept development. The Architect will lead the design and implementation of a secure, scalable, highly available cloud-based solution supporting complex business workflows, document generation, reporting, integrations, role-based access, auditability, and high-volume transactional processing. The solution is expected to operate reliably during critical peak periods, integrate with internal and external government systems, support long-term maintainability, and meet applicable security and accessibility requirements. Key Responsibilities: - Serve as the hands-on technical architect and lead developer for a custom cloud-based enterprise application. - Design the overall application, integration, security, data, and deployment architecture. - Perform hands-on development using C#/.NET and related modern web application technologies. - Design cloud-native application components and deployment patterns, preferably within AWS. - Evaluate and incorporate Microsoft Power Platform/low-code capabilities where appropriate to support workflows, automation, integration, reporting, or business functionality. - Develop prototypes and proof-of-concept functionality demonstrating the proposed architecture and solution. - Establish application development standards, architectural patterns, coding standards, reusable components, and technical governance. - Design scalable workflows supporting assignment, review, approval, collaboration, notifications, deadlines, and workload management. - Architect secure integration services and APIs connecting the application to external and internal systems. - Design automated data ingestion and processing capabilities, including structured data and XML-based exchanges. - Architect document-generation capabilities supporting XML, Microsoft Word, and PDF outputs. - Design role-based security, permissions, audit logging, data protection, and sensitivity-based access controls. - Ensure the solution supports high availability, scalability, concurrency, autosave, fault tolerance, and session-critical operations. - Lead database and data-model design supporting transactional processing, historical information, reporting, auditability, and system integrations. - Design reporting and dashboard capabilities supporting operational, management, workload, and executive decision-making. - Conduct code reviews and provide technical direction and mentoring to Senior Developers and Developers. - Troubleshoot complex application, performance, integration, and production issues. - Ensure architecture and development comply with WCAG 2.2 Level AA accessibility requirements. - Produce architecture diagrams, technical specifications, deployment documentation, interface specifications, and operational documentation. - Support knowledge transfer to state technical personnel to enable long-term maintenance and operational independence. - Client-specific requirements: secure and resilient solution with 99.9% minimum uptime, strict RBAC, data ownership/portability, WCAG 2.2 AA, documentation, knowledge transfer, and a sustainable support/transition approach. Desired Qualifications: - 12-15+ years of professional software/application development experience. - 5-7+ years serving as a technical lead, lead developer, solution architect, or application architect on enterprise application-development projects. - Strong hands-on development experience with C#, .NET/.NET Core, ASP.NET and modern web application architecture. - Demonstrated experience architecting and developing cloud-based enterprise applications. - Strong experience with AWS services and cloud application architecture. - Experience with Microsoft Power Platform, including Power Apps, Power Automate and/or related Microsoft low-code technologies. - Strong REST API, web services, systems integration, JSON and XML experience. - Experience designing workflow-driven or case management/business-process applications. - Experience with relational databases, data modeling, SQL and enterprise data architecture. - Experience implementing identity management, authentication, authorization and role-based security. - Experience architecting highly available, scalable applications supporting concurrent users and critical business operations. - Experience with CI/CD, automated testing, source control, DevSecOps and modern software-development practices. - Experience designing accessible web applications compliant with WCAG/Section 508 standards. - Experience modernizing or replacing legacy enterprise applications. - State/local government application-development experience strongly preferred. - Experience with legislative, regulatory, fiscal, policy-analysis, document-management, case-management, or similarly complex government business processes is preferred.