Principal Architect

For more than 75 years, we have amplified products and services based rigorous research and our belief in the power of learning. Driven by our mission to advance quality and equity in education, ETS provides learning solutions, pioneering research and trusted assessments that help guide learners around the world on their path to new possibilities.

Our portfolio of trusted measures include TOEFL®, TOEIC®, GRE® and Praxis®. Along with research, development and innovation that explores new frontiers in learning and measurement our educational measurement solutions and research contribute to the development of new methods and tools, inform important dialogue with education policymakers, and shed light on critical issues and potential solutions - all with the aim of creating a world where all learners can improve their lives through education.

With new senior leadership at the helm, ETS aims to continue changing the lives of all learners as we expand our organization's global footprint. Our goal is to remain at the forefront of assessment and measurement efficacy within the education and ed tech space as it continues to grow and evolve.

Position Summary:

The Principal IT Architect is responsible for articulating the architectural vision, conceptualizing and experimenting with alternative architectural approaches, developing and validating the architecture and high level solution design against business requirements, and guiding and mentoring development teams on methodologies, processes and best practices.

Responsibilities:

Articulate and document a solution architecture vision.

Map business capabilities and services to IT solutions, and plan IT solutions for future business opportunities.

Assist in aligning business strategy to IT strategy, in ways that adhere to the IT maxims.

Create solution architectures that are leverage-able for future re-use and actively seek opportunities to leverage existing IT solutions for new business offerings and services.

Align IT solutions with business functions to improve flexibility, facilitate large scale reuse, and improve comprehensibility and visibility of SR&T's value to the business.

Partner with business, Research and other FCE and SR&T teams, where appropriate, in designing IT solutions that match the needs of the business.

Continuously improve processes, technologies, applications to provide best value to business.

Establish standards in best practice design patterns and pitfalls to avoid in ensuring that IT solutions perform to expectations.

Assist development teams in developing and enhancing detailed application designs and interfaces.

Assess and formulate go forward architecture and technology direction for IT solutions

Aggressively identify enterprise IT application solution/technology initiatives that are of value. Collaborate with other architects and teams in execution of the initiatives.

Facilitate cross team and cross component collaboration.

Review and approve project deliverables to ensure that they are architecturally sound and achieve as great a degree of fit with the desired architectures as possible.

Facilitate leverage and reuse of components, solutions and technologies across teams and projects.

Additional responsibilities include influencing business strategy by explaining the capabilities of the architecture to management and the business, and maintaining a broad understanding of the business including customer and market trends. You must have the ability to contribute to future vision and strategy by conducting research and proof of concepts, maintaining a broad knowledge of new technical tools and trends, and envisioning how those tools could be used in improving the business processes.

Adhere to ethical standards and comply with the laws and regulations applicable to your job function.

Education, Certifications, or Special Licenses:

Bachelors degree is computer science or related discipline. Masters degree preferred.

Relevant Years of Experience Required:

10 years of progressively responsible experience in IT.

Minimum 3 years of experience in IT Architecture and application design

Other Requirements (Specialized skill sets, behavioral/technical):

Varied experience in following areas is required:

Software Performance Engineering practice and consultation

Rich and varied IT solutions design and development experience

Architecture principles and frameworks (TOGAF, Zachman, Gartner, DOD etc.)

Application and Integration design methodologies, standards and best practices (SOA, OOAD, AOP)

Business requirements gathering, Joint Application Design (JAD), Business Process Modeling (BPM) and Business Process Decomposition processes

Full software development lifecycle (SDLC) experience

UML and Business process modeling

Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) and business integration

Industry standard processes (SDLC, CMMI, Change Mgmt, ITIL, etc.)

Familiarity with User Interfaces (Web, GUI, Legacy, Handhelds) and usability methodologies

Data warehouse design and data modeling

Disaster recovery and business availability

Vendor package selection (Leverage, Build and Buy decisions)

Familiarity with Audit and compliance policies (SOX, HIPAA)

Technical and Infrastructure architecture design experience is desirable

Hands-on experience in one or more of the following technologies is required:

Java , J2EE, EJB and JMS, Web services and XML

Java Application Servers (WebSphere, JBoss)

Web Servers

C++ , .NET or COBOL development

IBM MQ integration environments

COGNOS and/or Oracle reporting environments ? IDMS, Oracle and/or SQL Server database technologies

Windows, Z/OS, Solaris and Varieties of Linux operating systems

The following competencies are desirable:

Strategy Competency:

Influence business strategy

Translate business strategy into technical vision and strategy

Understand business domains, customer and market trends

Capture customer, organizational and business requirements on architecture

Organizational Politics Competency:

Excellent communication skills

Listen, network, influence

Sell the vision, keep the vision alive

Take and retake the pulse of all critical influencers of the architecture project

Consulting Competency:

Be available, build "trusted advisor" relationships

Understand what the teams want and need from architecture

Help teams see the value of the architecture and understand how to use it successfully

Mentor other architects and developers

#LI-REMOTE

#LI-NA1

ETS believes in a Total Rewards philosophy for our employees, and they include:

• Health, Vision, Dental insurance plans to choose from
• Generous continuous learning support, from individual learning grants to up to 6 classes a year for tuition reimbursement as well as on-line learning access
• Generous PTO and vacation time to balance your work and life
• Additional 8 hours of PTO for volunteer work
• Retirement plan (401(a)) and traditional Roth (403b) with company contribution
• Commuter Benefits, Pet Insurance, 1 year subscription to Calm App

ETS is mission driven and action oriented

• Diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging is at the forefront of the ETS employee's daily work. To further foster an inclusive environment ETS is home to a wide variety of Affinity groups that celebrate the diversity of our talented employees.
• How about cultivating growth, innovation, and continuous transformation for the next generation of rising professionals as leaders? ETS offers multiple Business Resource Groups (BRG) for you
• Are you passionate about volunteering and being active in your career and community? ETS offers our Center for Advocacy & Philanthropy (CAAP) where we encourage ETS employees to become active volunteers in their communities and schools through the ETS Cares Giving Campaign. Our employees can support any 501c3 or eligible charity of their choice.

ETS is an Equal Opportunity Employer comprised of people with different experiences, strengths, and backgrounds who share a passion for advancing quality and equity in education. We are dedicated to building teams that reflect the various backgrounds, experiences, and identities of those we serve. The Talent Acquisition team strives to ensure candidates enjoy a fair and equitable hiring process. We believe our differences empower us to be a better team, making better decisions and delivering better results.