Systems Architect - Nevada

Position 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 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 Nevada Division of Public and Behavioral Health (DPBH), Office of State Epidemiology Informatics team, the Systems Architect will provide expertise and guidance in technology architecture with a focus on technical (including infrastructure and networks) and application architecture strategies, technology road mapping, and methodologies. The Systems Architect will work collaboratively to identify 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.


• The Systems Architect will be hired by the CDC Foundation and assigned to the Nevada Division of Public and Behavioral Health (DPBH), Office of State Epidemiology (OSE), working directly within the Informatics team. 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 (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 each DPBH vendor (EpiTrax, STARLIMS, DPBH Data Lake) to understand the holistic architecture and capabilities of each solution.
• 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.
• Develop and implement secure and stable interoperability solutions, focusing initially on STARLIMS to enable the exchange of Electronic Lab Reports (ELRs) with EpiTrax
• Build and maintain seamless data exchange between systems
• Work directly with EpiTrax project team to monitor systems, identify anomalies, and diagnose faults
• Collaborate with EpiTrax project team and vendors to implement corrective solutions, through test to successful implementation and continued success with data accuracy and completeness
• Monitor the data flow through the DPBH Data Lake to ensure data quality and continuity
• Assist the EpiTrax project team in migrating manual data analytic processes from desktops and internally hosted servers to the Cloud-hosted DPBH Data Lake.
• 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.
• 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.
• Collaborate with partners to develop and participate in a ‘lessons learned’ and shared knowledge cohort
• Prepare documentation and share improvements, success stories, challenges, and opportunities throughout both State and CDC meetings/events
• Attend training and learning opportunities addressing technical skillsets and other related information systems improvement subjects
• Develop and implement cloud strategies aligned with business goals.

Qualifications

• Masters/Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Health Informatics, or related field (or equivalent work experience).
• 7+ years of relevant experience and expertise in system architecture with deep technical knowledge of application design, implementation and deployment, as well as current and emerging architecture practices.
• AWS Solution Architect Certification, preferred.
• 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).
• Competence in big data tools and programming languages such as SAS, AWS Athena, Lambda, Natural Language Programming, Python, R, etc.
• Experience designing and writing automated test scripts for unit, integration, end-to-end, cross-browser, device, and accessibility testing.
• Knowledge and understanding of APIs, webservices, NDJSON, JSON, data stream, HL7, HL7 FHIR, etc.
• Familiarity with healthcare data exchange protocols and security standards (e.g., DICOM, HL7, FHIR, RESTful APIs, HITECH, etc.), preferred.
• Familiarity with Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) Interoperability Standards, preferred.
• Expert level understanding of modern architectural standards for cloud-based solutions.
• Proven experience in designing, developing, and deploying solutions in the AWS Cloud
• Experience leading and prioritizing multiple projects simultaneously.
• Knowledge of AWS Data Lake and AWS Health Lake services
• Hands-on experience with AWS Well-Architected Framework
• General understanding of machine learning algorithms and principles
• General understanding of Large Language Models
• General understanding of AWS Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities to support public health analytics, preferred.
• Hands on experience with data warehousing or data lake solutions and ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) tools.
• 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.
• Experience in documenting business processes and wire-framing system designs using process flow diagram tools, UML, sequence diagrams, etc. as well as making recommendations for future state improved processes and system designs
• 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.
• Experience at State and Federal Government agencies, preferred.
• 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.

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.