ABOUT UE:
United Educators (UE) is a liability insurance company that serves K-12 schools, colleges and universities across the United States. UE focuses on long-term partnerships that help educational institutions identify, avoid, and manage risks. Guided by our mission to support education, we provide customized coverage, relevant risk management resources, and claims support grounded in education-sector expertise. At UE, you will join a collaborative, mission-driven team committed to delivering flexible insurance solutions, responsive service, and meaningful value to the institutions we serve.
The Senior Application Architect is responsible for developing and evolving UE's application-layer architecture following the Agile Software Development Life Cycle. This role shapes the technical direction of UE's business applications by defining application design, domain models, REST API strategy, integration patterns, and code-level standards to ensure systems are scalable, secure, maintainable, and aligned with business strategy.
This position is not an infrastructure or cloud platform architect role. While the Senior Application Architect partners closely with cloud, operations, data, and cybersecurity teams, the primary accountability is for application architecture and application design decisions, including ownership of RESTful services and application integration strategy from concept through implementation and long-term evolution.
The Senior Application Architect works closely with engineering teams, product owners, operations, and security to design and guide the implementation of modern, reliable, and well-integrated application solutions.
Responsibilities:
- Own the end-to-end application architecture for key business systems, including domain modeling, application decomposition, service boundaries, and integration patterns.
- Define and own UE's API strategy, including RESTful API design standards, documentation, versioning, lifecycle management, and governance.
- Design and govern REST APIs and service contracts that enable reuse, scalability, and consistent integration across internal applications and external partners.
- Strong hands-on experience in .NET, C#, ASP.NET, SQL Server, REST APIs, domain modeling, and database schema design for enterprise applications.
- Collaborate with business and technical stakeholders to translate strategic objectives and functional needs into application architecture, REST API designs, and implementation approaches.
- Develop and maintain technical and business feature roadmaps in consultation with stakeholders; identify risks, track progress, and communicate status updates to project sponsors.
- Lead the design and implementation of scalable, secure, and resilient enterprise application architectures, with a focus on maintainability, extensibility, and performance.
- Define and enforce application architecture standards, design patterns, and coding guidelines to ensure consistency and interoperability across development teams.
- Design and document software architectures using diagrams and models that guide development and support long-term system sustainability.
- Review application and API implementations to ensure adherence to architectural intent, clean code principles, and design patterns.
- Lead application modernization and refactoring efforts, including decomposition of legacy systems into modular or service-aligned architectures.
- Evaluate emerging technologies—including AI, ML, and application integration frameworks—through proofs of concept and pilot implementations, focusing on application-level feasibility and business value.
- Architect, prototype, and build hands-on components of AI-enabled application capabilities, such as generative AI.
- Partner with data engineering teams to design application-aligned data access patterns, pipelines, and governance supporting analytics and machine learning initiatives.
- Engage directly in complex solution development when needed, contributing application code, prototypes, and architectural exemplars.
- Integrate security, privacy, and compliance requirements into application and API design in alignment with UE governance standards.
- Engineer applications and APIs for reliability, scalability, and performance by proactively identifying and resolving architectural bottlenecks.
- Mentor developers and other architects, fostering a culture of hands-on learning, strong design discipline, and technical excellence.
- Lead vendor and product evaluations from an application and API architecture perspective, assessing extensibility, integration capability, and alignment with UE's application roadmap.
Requirements:
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, or a related field; advanced degree preferred
- Typically requires 10+ years of experience in software design and development, including at least 5 years of architecting enterprise-level applications
- Demonstrated experience designing and evolving application architecture, rather than primarily infrastructure, cloud, or data architecture
- Proven experience defining and implementing RESTful API strategies, including API design, versioning, documentation, security, and governance
- Experience making architectural decisions across application layers, including UI, backend services, REST APIs, and data access
- Skilled in database modeling, relationship design, and writing queries and stored procedures in support of application needs
- Working knowledge of cloud platforms and DevOps practices as they relate to application deployment and runtime concerns; this role does not own cloud infrastructure architecture
- Experience working in Agile delivery environments, collaborating across teams to deliver iterative, high-quality application solutions
- Strong understanding of application security and enterprise architecture, supported by hands-on leadership in large-scale application and API design
- Experience collaborating with data engineering teams to support application-driven analytics and data initiatives
- Excellent analytical, communication, and problem-solving skills, with the ability to lead through influence and adapt to evolving priorities
- Enterprise Architecture certification preferred
- Insurance or risk management industry experience a plus
Benefits:
- Health Insurance — We offer subsidized plan options with an optional pre-tax Health Savings Account (HSA), including an annual employer contribution and investment options. The plans offer a prescription benefit and telehealth
- Dental Insurance — Two plan levels are available, depending on needs
- Vision Insurance —We offer in- and out-of-network options; Lasik discounts are available.
- 401(k) — UE makes a 3% safe harbor non-elective contribution beginning the first of the month after date of hire; these funds are vested immediately. After one year of service, employees receive a 7% profit sharing non-elective contribution, as well as become eligible for a matched contribution of 25% of the first 5% employee deferral. Employees can make pre-tax contributions or taxed (Roth) salary reductions. Catch-up contributions for employees 50 years old and over. Employer contributions are fully vested immediately
- Life Insurance — UE pays for Basic Life Insurance, and employees have the option to apply for additional Voluntary coverage
- Short- and Long-Term Disability Insurance — We offer coverage in the event employees are unable to work for a period of time
- For the first two years of employment, employees accrue PTO at 24 days per year. At the beginning of the third year of service, employees accrue 30 days per year of PTO
- 11 paid holidays annually including Juneteenth and an employee choice floating holiday
- Bonus eligibility is based on salary earned and performance for the year
- Hybrid environment - employees are typically in the office 2-3 days per week after the initial training period
- Inclusive and supportive culture that embraces diversity and provides opportunities for all to succeed
- Monthly lunches and various social events throughout the year
- Opportunities to join the Social Committee, Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), and Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity Alliance (IDEA)
