Solution Architect

BACKGROUND
The CalSTRS Technology Services (TS) Branch supports approximately 1,700 employees and contractors at the headquarters and seven Member Service Centers (MSC) throughout the State of California. The CalSTRS Technology Services (TS) Branch delivers technology products, services, and business solutions which support all information technology systems throughout the organization including implementation of enterprise projects. TS programs and projects utilize the System Development Life Cycle (SDLC)
methodology and Agile Development guidelines. The goal of this engagement is to construct a team of technical resources, with all the necessary skillsets collectively, for maintaining and advancing CalSTRS' IDW platform with GenBI/ AI/ML capabilities, as well
as designing/building additional GenBI solutions or use cases that will be deployed onto the IDW platform.

Minimum Technical Qualifications

• At least fifteen (15) years of experience in the Information Technology (IT) field with extensive experience in positions of technical developer/lead, software engineer, application architect, enterprise architect, etc.
• At least ten (10) years of experience incorporating an industry's open & non-proprietary SDLC methodology to lead and manage various technical aspects of solution/software implementation projects, while facilitating and collaborating closely with organization's IT divisions and business stakeholders to follow all applicable project's implementation standards, processes, procedures, and best practices, etc.
• At least seven (7) years of experience of architecting, designing & implementing AI/ML use cases or GenAI solutions.
• At least five (5) years of experience in leading cloud architecture (AWS, Azure, GCP) for large or complex environments (multi-tier apps, enterprise integrations, or migrations), and proven delivery of end-to-end cloud solutions (not just components).
• At least three (3) years of experience in designing high availability & fault-tolerant systems, and cost optimization strategies on SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS, etc.
• At least two (2) years of experience in working with AI infrastructure & agentic workflows/orchestration, Generative AI design patterns, cloud strategy & FinOps, hybrid & multi-cloud systems, security & compliance (AI Governance), etc.
• At least two (2) years of experience in designing Microservices, distributed systems, event-driven and API-based architecture.

Desirable Technical Qualifications

• Holding technical certifications in the areas of cloud platform/architecture and/or GenAI or GenBI such as:
  • Snowflake SnowPro Advanced - Architect
  • AWS Solutions Architect - Professional
  • Azure Solutions Architect Expert
• At least two (2) years of experience providing IT consulting services in technical solution implementations to large public/governmental agencies.
• Experience supervising and guiding the implementation using industry standards and best practices such as Project Management Institute (PMI) Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK), Scaled Agile Framework, IEEE, etc.
• Have a bachelor's degree in computer science, computer engineering, or related fields from an accredited or government sanctioned college/university. CalSTRS may request a copy of the diploma/degree.
• The proposed onsite project person will be able to adhere to the hybrid working model by working on-site 2 to 3 business days per week at CalSTRS Headquarters, West Sacramento, CA. (no points)

Description of Services
The Tech-Team will be primarily managed by and work directly with the CalSTRS Investment Data Solutions division daily. Collectively, this Tech-Team is expected to provide full-stack development coverage, as well as the ongoing support to maintenance and operations (M&O) of the IDW and use cases deployed on it. The scope of key responsibilities and activities include but is not limited to the following: Full-Stack Development with GenBI/GenAI and AI/ML, and Ongoing M&O

• Effectively apply User Interface (UI)/ User Experience (UX) design principles for designing and building analytics dashboards with technologies such as Chainlit, Streamlit, and React.
• Create interactive reporting and storytelling based on data visualization best practices, and humancentered design.
• Leverage Out-of-Box (OOB) services/functions/APIs (e.g., calling SNOWFLAKE.CORTEX functions via SQL or configuring AWS Bedrock Knowledge Bases) to accelerate the design and implementation of use cases.
• Build automated tests to ensure the platform's Text-to-SQL engine isn't hallucinating incorrect numbers.
• Perform continuous prompt engineering to guide and finetune the platform's system behavior.
• Execute statistical analysis, predictive analytics, optimization; conduct AI/ML model prototyping with ML frameworks such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, scikit-learn.
• Apply expertise in platform-specific semantic layers or dbt (Data Build Tool), advanced SQL and dimensional modeling (Star Schema), and cloud ML platforms (e.g., AWS SageMaker, Azure ML, GCP Vertex AI)
• Implement containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Operate CI/CD pipelines for ML and data workflows, data integration, cleaning, and transformation processes.
• Responsible for monitoring, tuning, and logging for AI/ML and GenBI solutions, Extract, Transform, Load (ETL)/ Extract, Load, Transform, (ELT) pipelines (e.g., Airflow, Matillion), cloud data warehouses & lakes (e.g., Snowflake, Redshift, BigQuery, Azure Synapse), and cloud infrastructure automation (e.g., Terraform, Ansible).
• Continuously enhance and verify that the entire IDW ecosystem/solution are cost-effective, secure, and scalable.
• Provide technical leadership, solution guidance to project teams in support of solution design and development, and act as a technical liaison among Investment stakeholders, technical developers, 3rd party vendor teams and tech support.
• Apply vast experience and multidisciplinary expertise in AI Infrastructure & Agentic Workflows/Orchestration, Generative AI Design Patterns, Cloud Strategy & FinOps, and Security & Compliance (AI Governance) to support key Investment's initiatives.
• Analyze solutions and technologies and make recommendations based on knowledge of CalSTRS Investment Branch's current and future needs.
• Proactively monitor and assess strategic direction of solution vendors, technology and market trends, and determine their potential impact and value to the IDW; prepare presentations, documents, diagrams, models, and other artifacts as required to communicate analysis, recommendations, or designs

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or protected veteran status.