Application Development Architect

About the role

OnTrac is seeking an experienced Application Development Architect for a client's Application Development department, which is part of a leading Google Cloud partner. This is a department role rather than a single customer project: the architect holds billable engagements and pre-sales work at the same time and acts in the best interest of stakeholders and customers. The role suits a hands-on architect who owns application architecture on billable engagements, supports Enterprise Cloud Architects (ECAs) in pre-sales, and leads engineering teams.

Key responsibilities

• Own application architecture on assigned billable engagements, including technical design documents, architecture diagrams and key implementation decisions, staying hands-on in the codebase where needed.
• Support ECAs in pre-sales: join discovery sessions, define application development scope, produce level-of-effort estimates and staffing recommendations, and author the application development sections of SOWs and proposals.
• Translate SOW scope into an implementation plan and backlog for the engineering team, keeping delivery aligned to that scope.
• Identify problems in architecture, delivery or team practice and resolve them or drive them to resolution without waiting for escalation.
• Lead engineering teams: set technical direction, review designs and code from L3 and L4 engineers, and develop the engineers around you.
• Set and improve the department's engineering standards, including agent-driven delivery procedures, and maintain the billable utilization target while carrying pre-sales duties.

Required profile

• Professional software engineering and architecture experience at staff or principal level, owning solution architecture and guiding delivery teams.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience.
• Production delivery experience on Google Cloud Platform.
• Pre-sales skills: discovery facilitation, solution scoping, level-of-effort estimation, and technical input to SOWs and proposals.
• Experience presenting and negotiating technical trade-offs with customer stakeholders.

Required skills

• Cloud-native application architecture: microservices, API design, event-driven patterns and data modeling.
• Java and Spring Boot, plus at least one other backend stack such as Node.js/TypeScript or Python.
• GCP services: Cloud Run, GKE, Pub/Sub, Cloud SQL or AlloyDB, and IAM.
• Design of agentic AI systems on Google Cloud (Gemini models, Google ADK, Vertex AI).
• Daily use of AI coding assistants and agentic development tools.
• Useful: Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect certification, workflow or business rules engines (Camunda, Flowable), React frontend architecture, reusable platform components, government or regulated environment experience, and prior professional services experience at a cloud partner.