System Architect

Symphony has attracted the world’s top financial institutions with a $66 million investment to develop a scalable, cloud-based and highly secure collaboration and communication platform that will address the enterprise and compliance requirements for the financial services industry.

Symphony is seeking an experienced System Architect to take Symphony’s cloud-based messaging service’s reliability, scalability and performance to the next level. The System Architect will architect and implement large scale, high throughput, highly resilient systems using open-source and in-house developed service components. The System Architect will be responsible for testing and validating the resiliency of the current system and for driving proposed improvements. The System Architect will be deeply involved in defining, testing, and validating deployment topologies for these components, with particular focus on achieving and maintaining 99.999% uptime for the Symphony messaging and collaboration platform and related subsystems. The System Architect is expected to provide ‘hands-on’ experience and leadership in defining and implementing tactical and strategic solutions; about 20 to 25% of your time will be spent in hands-on coding.

* Design and implement long-term strategic goals and short-term tactical plans for managing and maintaining Symphony systems and software * Where applicable, design, develop, and oversee implementation of end-to-end integrated systems, including full ownership of the Symphony enterprise product HA and resilience project * Document Symphony’s existing systems architecture and technology portfolio; make recommendations for improvements and/or alternatives * Review new and existing systems design projects and procurement or outsourcing plans for compliance with standards and architectural plans * Ensure that in particular software development groups include, from the start, monitoring, HA and operability requirements * Confer with end-users and department heads to define requirements for complex systems and infrastructure development * Manage a team of 2-3 system engineers, including recruitment, supervision, scheduling, development, evaluation, and disciplinary actions

* College diploma or University degree in the field of computer science/engineering or information systems, and 10 years related work experience * Deep knowledge of several of the following domains is expected: Coding (Java, Python, Go, C++), Service Discovery (Zookeeper, etc.), App Containers (Tomcat, Jetty), Messaging (Kafka, MQseries), Caching (Hazelcast, Coherence, memcache), Persistence (Mongo, Hbase, Cassandra, mysql) * Hands-on experience designing and implementing, or experience helping with the re-design, implementation and scaling up of a high-availability Internet service that had significant traffic * Exceptional analytical, conceptual, and problem-solving abilities, and superior written / verbal communication skills * Excellent architecture and technical support documentation skills, strong interpersonal and consultative skills * Ability to conduct research into emerging technologies and trends, standards, and products as required, and ability to present ideas to all audiences * Able to prioritize and execute tasks in a high-pressure environment * Experience working in a team-oriented, collaborative environment