Application Architect

Overview Insight Global is seeking an Application Architect (Integration) for one of our top retail e-commerce clients. This Architect will be brought on to design and evolve the integration layer for retail e-commerce—spanning APIs, asynchronous messaging, and event-driven systems. You’ll partner with product, engineering, and client stakeholders to define integration patterns, enforce standards, and guide delivery teams toward scalable, resilient, and observable solutions. This is a contract role with a path to full-time conversion for someone excited to grow with a company that invests in long-term development. Key Responsibilities Integration Architecture & Design Lead the architecture of the integration layer (API gateways, service mesh, event backbone, messaging) to enable scalable, decoupled systems. Define and socialize API and event contracts (OpenAPI/Swagger, AsyncAPI), versioning strategy, and backward compatibility rules. Establish event-driven patterns (pub/sub, event sourcing, CQRS, outbox, saga orchestration/choreography) and ensure idempotency and eventual consistency. Create canonical data models and schema governance (e.g., Avro/JSON Schema with Schema Registry). Select and standardize integration patterns (sync vs. async, request/reply, fan-out, bulk/batch vs. streaming, CDC) with clear decision records (ADRs). Delivery & Enablement Provide hands-on guidance to squads implementing APIs, messages, topics, and streams ; review designs and PRs for integration concerns. Drive reusability via shared libraries, policies, and templates (authN/Z, retry/backoff, circuit breaking, correlation/trace IDs). Partner with engagement managers on estimation and sequencing of integration milestones; unblock teams with reference implementations. Reliability, Observability & Security Define SLOs/SLIs for integration services; embed observability (OpenTelemetry tracing/metrics/logs) across the estate. Implement resilience patterns (dead-letter queues, poison-message handling, replay, exactly-once/at-least-once semantics where appropriate). Establish API security standards ( OAuth2/OIDC, JWT , mTLS, WAF, IP allowlists), PII handling , and zero-trust principles. Promote performance engineering (throughput, p99 latency, back-pressure, partitioning, consumer scaling). Governance, Documentation & Stakeholders Maintain architecture runway : integration roadmaps, diagrams, sequence/flow charts, and runbooks. Champion standards and guardrails (API style guide, AsyncAPI conventions, naming, topic/queue taxonomy, error models). Communicate architectural decisions and trade-offs clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders; gather and refine requirements. Required Skills & Experience Industry Experience 5 years in software engineering with 2 years in an architecture/technical-lead capacity focused on systems integration . Experience across retail e-commerce workflows (catalog/PIM, search, cart/checkout, payments, order/fulfillment, customer/loyalty). Technical Proficiency (Integration-First) API Management/Gateways: Azure API Management, Apigee, Kong or equivalent; OpenAPI , API lifecycle , throttling/quotas, monetization a plus. Messaging & Streaming: Kafka/Confluent (preferred), Azure Event Hubs, RabbitMQ, Azure Service Bus, SNS/SQS, or Pub/Sub; Schema Registry , partitions, consumer groups, DLQs. Event-Driven Architecture: CQRS, event sourcing, outbox/saga, choreography vs. orchestration; AsyncAPI . Data & Consistency: SQL/NoSQL patterns, eventual consistency , transactional messaging, CDC (Debezium or equivalent). Backend: Node.js or ASP.NET Core for service/API development; REST and GraphQL where appropriate (BFF, federated gateways). Security: OAuth2/OIDC, JWT, mTLS, secrets management (Key Vault/Secret Manager), least-privilege IAM. Infra & Ops: Azure (preferred) or GCP; Kubernetes & Docker; CI/CD; IaC (Terraform/Bicep); blue/green or canary releases. Observability: OpenTelemetry, distributed tracing, structured logging, metrics/alerts (Prometheus/Grafana, Azure Monitor, Datadog, etc.). Platform Awareness (Retail Stack) Commerce & Channels: Shopify (Hydrogen/Storefront/Admin APIs), headless architectures. PIM/CMS/Search: Akeneo , Contentful, Algolia. Enterprise Systems: OMS, WMS (MAWM), TMS integration patterns; payment gateways; tax/shipping providers. Nice to Have Service mesh (Istio/Linkerd), gRPC, GraphQL federation. Experience with high-throughput peak events (holiday traffic, drops, flash sales) and back-pressure strategies. Knowledge of data privacy/regulatory constraints (PCI, GDPR/CPRA) in integration design. Experience introducing platform engineering practices for reusable integration scaffolding.

Location: Canada, CA

Posted Date: 11/6/2025