I&T Systems Architect

Department: Innovation and Technology Department
Salary: $108,851.00 - $156,473.59 Commensurate with Experience

Welcome to the City of Charlotte

Charlotte is America’s Queen City, opening her arms to a diverse and inclusive community of residents, businesses and visitors alike. Here you will find a safe, family-oriented city where people work together to help everyone thrive. The mission of the City of Charlotte is to deliver quality public services and promote the safety, health, and quality of life for all residents.

Our guiding principles include:

- Attracting and retaining a skilled and diverse workforce
- Valuing teamwork, openness, accountability, productivity, and employee development
- Providing all customers with courteous, responsive, accessible, and seamless quality services
- Taking initiative to identify, analyze, and solve problems
- Collaborating with stakeholders to make informed decisions

SUMMARY
The purpose of this position is to define, maintain, and govern the City’s enterprise technology architecture by developing strategic technology plans, standards, roadmaps, and solution designs that guide how systems are selected, implemented, integrated, and supported. The role ensures that technology decisions are consistent, well‑designed, and aligned with business needs, long‑term strategies, and regulatory and cybersecurity requirements.

This position serves as a central liaison across customer department stakeholders, technology teams, vendors, project managers, and leadership. It interprets business goals, functional needs, and operational constraints, and translates them into clear architectural direction, requirements, and solution approaches. The role helps shape technology investments through standards development, proposal creation, procurement support, and architectural review.

In addition, the position provides leadership throughout the full solution lifecycle—guiding discovery, evaluating alternatives, developing architectural artifacts, and advising on design, implementation, and governance activities. By connecting strategy, standards, and solution delivery, the role ensures that the City’s technology environment remains secure, scalable, cost‑effective, and able to support evolving city priorities.

Major Duties and Responsibilities:

Standards and Model Development

- Develop and maintain enterprise technology standards, architectural principles, reference architectures, and design patterns across applications, infrastructure, cloud, data, integration, security, and operations.

- Establish architectural guidelines for scalability, availability, performance, interoperability, security, privacy, accessibility, and cost effectiveness, ensuring alignment with business and technical needs.

- Collaborate with technology and business partners to apply industry best practices and assess the organizational, financial, operational, and security impacts of proposed standards.

- Maintain architecture repositories, capability models, documentation, and technology inventories; support architecture governance and review technologies for compliance with enterprise direction.

Proposal Creation

- Develop clear, executive‑ready technology proposals and business cases that incorporate cost and TCO analysis, staffing impacts, timelines, risks, mitigation strategies, and cost–benefit evaluations.

- Address enterprise considerations such as security, privacy, compliance, accessibility, integration, data, infrastructure, and business continuity in proposed solutions.

- Evaluate vendor offerings, contractual requirements, technical alternatives, and solution risks; articulate dependencies, assumptions, constraints, and decision rationale.

- Produce conceptual, logical, and physical architecture diagrams to support proposals, communicating recommendations, tradeoffs, and risks to technical and nontechnical audiences.

- Recommend solutions that are secure, scalable, maintainable, cost‑effective, and aligned with enterprise architecture standards and business priorities.

Proposal Solicitation & Review

- Shape technology investments by contributing to solicitation language, requirements, and procurement documentation (RFI/RFP/etc.).

- Define or refine technical, functional, and nonfunctional requirements, along with architecture diagrams, integration needs, security/privacy standards, data and accessibility requirements, SLAs, and implementation/support expectations.

- Review vendor proposals, statements of work, architectures, and technical designs to ensure alignment with enterprise architecture, cybersecurity, infrastructure, data, procurement, and operational standards.

- Evaluate vendor solutions, implementation approaches, licensing models, support structures, technical risks, and potential lock‑in; participate in demos, technical evaluations, negotiations, and proof‑of‑concepts.

- Identify gaps, unsupported assumptions, hidden costs, dependencies, and implementation risks; contribute to contract language, SOWs, acceptance criteria, and architecture deliverables for selected solutions.

Solution Architecture

- Develop end‑to‑end solution architectures by translating business requirements, constraints, and desired outcomes into secure, scalable, reliable, and cost‑effective designs.

- Lead discovery, requirements workshops, and architecture/design reviews to analyze current and future functional, technical, security, data, integration, and infrastructure needs.

- Produce key architectural artifacts, including context, system, integration, and data‑flow diagrams; deployment models; interface specifications; and definitions of system components, dependencies, environments, and nonfunctional requirements.

- Design and evaluate application, infrastructure, cloud, integration, data, identity, and security architectures across on‑prem, cloud, hybrid, and multi‑cloud environments.

- Architect secure and scalable AWS solutions using cloud best practices and the AWS Well‑Architected Framework, supporting landing zones, modernization efforts, IaC approaches, migration strategies, and the City’s cloud governance.

- Research technologies and vendor offerings, assess alternatives and risks, and communicate solution options, tradeoffs, and recommendations to technical and nontechnical stakeholders.

- Provide architectural guidance throughout planning, design, development, testing, deployment, and operations; review deliverables for compliance with approved architectures and identify technical debt, risks, and improvement opportunities.

Knowledge, Skills & Abilities

- Broad understanding of enterprise‑level technology domains and how they fit together to support business strategy.

- Strong collaboration, facilitation, communication, and stakeholder‑engagement skills.

- Ability to quickly understand business functions, processes, and organizational context.

- Ability to apply architectural best practices, frameworks, and standards to guide decision‑making.

- Proven ability to lead discussions with senior leadership and communicate complex ideas clearly.

- Strong analytical, writing, research, presentation, and influencing skills.

- Ability to assess market trends, vendor capabilities, and technology options.

- Skilled at evaluating complex problems and developing practical, sustainable solutions.

- Ability to develop cost estimates, business cases, roadmaps, risk assessments, and implementation plans.

- Ability to interpret and produce clear architectural documentation and models.

- Strong change‑management, relationship‑building, and conflict‑resolution capabilities.

- Knowledge of key IT governance areas such as cybersecurity, privacy, continuity planning, and risk management.

- Familiarity with project lifecycles, IT service management, and technology governance processes.

- Ability to manage competing priorities and deliver high‑quality work on time.

Minimum Qualifications:

- High School Graduate or Equivalent and nine (9) years of related work experience
- or
- 2 Year College Degree in Computer Information Systems, Computer Science, Information Technology, Business Administration, Public Administration, or a directly related field and seven (7) years of related work experience
- or
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Information Systems, Computer Science, Information Technology, Business Administration, Public Administration, or a directly related field with five (5) years of relevant work experience;
- or
- Master's Level Degree in Computer Information Systems, Computer Science, Information Technology, Business Administration, Public Administration, or a directly related fieldand three (3) years of related work experience
- or
- an equivalent combination of education and relevant experience that provides the necessary knowledge, skills, and abilities to successfully perform the essential job duties.

Preferred Skills:

- Familiarity with modern cloud practices and architecture principles (Specifically AWS Well-Architected Framework).

- Experience supporting cloud migration or modernization efforts.

- Experience with enterprise architecture frameworks, modeling, and technology roadmapping.

- Understanding of cybersecurity concepts and regulatory or compliance considerations.

- Experience with IT service management, configuration/asset management, or portfolio governance.

- Experience working in public‑sector or municipal environments.

- Experience contributing to procurement activities, vendor evaluations, and contract development.
- Master’s degree in Computer Information Systems, Computer Science, Business Administration, Public Administration, Information Technology, or a directly related field with three (3) years of relevant experience.

- Ten or more years of direct technology industry experience, including experience in systems architecture, solution architecture, enterprise architecture, cloud architecture, or a related discipline.

- Professional certification in cloud architecture, enterprise architecture, cybersecurity, project management, IT service management, or related disciplines.

CONDITIONS OF EMPLOYMENT

The City’s Background Check Policy requires background checks to be conducted on final internal or external candidate(s) applying for any position with the City of Charlotte. The type of information that will be collected as part of a background check includes, but is not limited to: reference checks, social security verification, education verification, criminal conviction record check, and, if applicable, a credit history check, sex offender registry and motor vehicle records check.

Background checks must be in compliance with all federal and state statutes, such as the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). The checks must be consistent with the guidelines set forth by these laws requiring organizations to obtain a candidate’s written authorization before obtaining a criminal background report, motor vehicle records check or credit report; and to properly store and dispose of information derived from such reports.

Final candidates must pass a pre-employment drug-screening test and physical examination. During the selection process, candidates may be asked to take a skills test, and/or participate in other assessments.

The City of Charlotte is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not unlawfully discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, national origin, marital status, age, disability, sexual orientation, political affiliation or on the basis of actual or perceived gender as expressed through dress, appearance, or behavior.

Our culture is to serve the community honorably.

HOW TO APPLY

Apply online.

Federal law requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities. Please tell us if you require a reasonable accommodation to apply for a job.

You are welcome to visit the City of Charlotte Human Resources Department lobby, where self-service application kiosks are available. They are located in our office at 700 East 4th Street, Suite 200, Charlotte, NC 28202. We are open Monday through Friday, from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. (EST), excluding official City holidays.

For questions about your application or the hiring process, please email [email protected] .

The City of Charlotte is committed to making our services and programs accessible to all. Upon request, auxiliary aids, written materials in alternate formats, language access, and other reasonable accommodations or modifications will be provided. To make a request, please fill out the Innovation & Technology ADA request form or call 704.336.4120.

BENEFITS

The City of Charlotte provides a comprehensive benefits package to eligible employees.

Click   here   to learn more about the City of Charlotte’s benefits.

The City of Charlotte is a drug and alcohol-free workplace.