Solution Architect - Retail Applications & Digital Solutions
Job Description
Job Title: Solution Architect – Retail Applications & Digital Solutions
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Location: Niles, IL (Hybrid - 3 days a week)
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Job Type: Contract
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Job Description:
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Role Overview
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- We are seeking an experienced Solution Architect to define and guide the architecture of retail applications and digital solutions.
- The role will work closely with customer stakeholders, in-house technology teams, and offshore delivery teams to design scalable, secure, reliable, and maintainable solutions aligned with business requirements.
- The candidate will provide technical leadership across application development, system integrations, cloud platforms, data architecture, and application modernization, ensuring consistency in solution design and adherence to enterprise technology standards.
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Key Responsibilities
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Solution Architecture & Design
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- Define end-to-end solution architecture based on business requirements, existing systems, and enterprise standards.
- Translate functional and non-functional requirements into technical architecture, design specifications, and implementation guidelines.
- Evaluate solution options, assess feasibility, and recommend appropriate technologies and architectural patterns.
- Define application components, integration patterns, data flows, security mechanisms, and deployment architecture.
- Ensure solutions are scalable, resilient, secure, maintainable, and cost-effective.
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Application & Integration Architecture
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- Design solutions involving web applications, APIs, cloud services, databases, workflow automation, and enterprise systems.
- Define integration approaches across applications, data platforms, and third-party systems.
- Establish standards for API design, authentication, error handling, logging, monitoring, and exception management.
- Guide application modernization, re-platforming, and migration initiatives.
- Ensure effective integration with existing retail and distribution systems.
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Technology Leadership & Governance
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- Provide technical guidance to development teams and review solution designs, code quality, and implementation approaches.
- Establish reusable architectural patterns, technical standards, and best practices.
- Conduct architecture and design reviews at key stages of implementation.
- Identify technical risks, scalability constraints, performance bottlenecks, and architectural gaps.
- Ensure adherence to security, compliance, availability, performance, and disaster recovery requirements.
- Guide technology selection and evaluate trade-offs involving cost, complexity, maintainability, and business value.
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Performance, Reliability & Operational Excellence
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- Define non-functional requirements and measurable acceptance criteria for application performance, availability, scalability, and security.
- Review performance test results and recommend architectural improvements where required.
- Define monitoring, logging, alerting, backup, and recovery approaches.
- Support root-cause analysis of complex production issues and recommend long-term architectural solutions.
- Promote design practices that improve application stability, reduce recurring incidents, and simplify maintenance.
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Stakeholder & Delivery Collaboration
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- Work with business analysts, PM, product owners, and customer technology teams to validate solution requirements.
- Collaborate with onsite stakeholders and offshore development teams to ensure consistent understanding of architecture and design decisions.
- Provide technical estimates, identify dependencies, and support delivery planning.
- Review implementation progress and resolve architecture-related blockers.
- Communicate technical options, risks, and trade-offs clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
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Required Skills & Experience
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- 12+ years of experience in software engineering, application architecture, or technology solution delivery, with demonstrated experience in solution architecture.
- Strong experience designing enterprise applications, APIs, integrations, and cloud-based solutions.
- Experience with Microsoft Azure services and cloud architecture.
- Experience with Angular, .NET/C#, SQL Server, REST APIs, and enterprise integration patterns.
- Experience with Microsoft Power Platform, including Power Apps, Power Automate, and Dataverse, is desirable.
- Understanding of identity management, single sign-on, role-based access control, application security, and data protection.
- Experience with performance engineering, scalability, availability, monitoring, and production support.
- Familiarity with CI/CD, source control, automated testing, and DevOps practices.
- Strong analytical, problem-solving, technical documentation, and stakeholder communication skills.
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Preferred Domain Experience
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- Retail, consumer goods, beverage distribution, or supply chain applications.
- Point-of-sale (POS), demand forecasting, inventory management, order management, sales operations, and distribution systems.
- Enterprise application integrations and cloud-based digital transformation.
- Application modernization and migration from legacy or low-code platforms to web-based solutions.
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Key Deliverables
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Deliverable Expected Output
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- Solution Architecture Document End-to-end architecture, components, technology choices, and design rationale
- High-Level & Low-Level Designs Component designs, data flows, APIs, integration patterns, and implementation details
- Architecture Diagrams Application landscape, deployment topology, integrations, and data-flow diagrams
- Non-Functional Requirements Defined performance, scalability, availability, security, and recovery requirements with measurable acceptance criteria
- Integration Specifications API contracts, authentication, error handling, retry mechanisms, and interface dependencies
- Technical Standards & Guidelines Reusable patterns, coding guidelines, security standards, and architecture principles
- Technical Risk & Dependency Register Architecture risks, constraints, dependencies, mitigation actions, and ownership
- Architecture Review Outcomes Design review findings, decisions, action items, and resolution tracking
- Performance & Reliability
- Recommendations Assessment findings and actionable improvements for identified bottlenecks or operational issues
- Modernization Roadmaps Recommended architecture improvements, migration approach, sequencing, and indicative effort where applicable
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Success Measures
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- Solutions meet agreed functional and non-functional requirements.
- Architecture decisions and technical dependencies are identified early, reducing rework and delivery delays.
- Applications demonstrate improved performance, scalability, reliability, and maintainability against agreed baselines.
- Reusable components and integration patterns reduce duplication and implementation effort.
- Architecture reviews and technical standards improve consistency across applications.
- Production issues attributable to architectural weaknesses are reduced over time.
- Solutions align with business priorities, enterprise standards, and agreed cost and delivery constraints.
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