Location: Houston, TX
Duration: 6 months
GBaMS ReqID: 10923501
Role Overview
The Solution Architect will lead the architecture, design, governance, and execution of Enbridge's strategic migration from a traditional Hub-and-Spoke network architecture to Azure Virtual WAN (VWAN). This role requires a strong background in application development, solution design, and enterprise architecture, with the ability to bridge application, cloud, network, security, and infrastructure domains. The ideal candidate will have hands-on experience designing and developing enterprise applications and transforming them into scalable, secure, cloud-based solutions. The architect will ensure that application and infrastructure migrations are executed together, minimizing risk while improving performance, resiliency, and operational efficiency.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead the end-to-end solution architecture, design, and governance for migration from Hub-and-Spoke to Azure VWAN, ensuring alignment with enterprise architecture, cloud, security, and application modernization standards.
- Define and implement application-centric migration strategies, ensuring complete application stacks, including web applications, middleware, APIs, databases, integrations, and infrastructure components, are migrated cohesively.
- Assess current-state applications and design target-state solution architectures that support scalability, resiliency, security, performance, and maintainability within Azure.
- Perform comprehensive application portfolio assessments and dependency analysis, identifying relationships between DMZ-hosted applications, internal systems, databases, APIs, shared services, and third-party integrations.
- Collaborate with application development teams to review application architecture, identify modernization opportunities, and validate cloud readiness before migration.
- Define and oversee the transit firewall decommissioning strategy, reducing routing complexity, latency, and operational overhead while maintaining security, compliance, and business continuity.
- Lead the implementation of Web Application Firewall (WAF) architecture and compliance standards in Azure, ensuring all internet-facing applications meet enterprise security and regulatory requirements.
- Design and govern network architecture within Azure VWAN, including routing, traffic engineering, User Defined Routes (UDRs), connectivity, micro-segmentation, and hybrid-cloud integration.
- Oversee firewall policy redesign and migration, ensuring secure communication between DMZ, internal environments, Azure services, and application workloads.
- Define and execute the roadmap to decommission the legacy Hub-and-Spoke architecture and complete the transition to Azure VWAN.
- Lead architecture reviews for application integrations, authentication mechanisms, API communications, data flows, and service dependencies to ensure migration readiness.
- Develop migration patterns, reference architectures, standards, and playbooks covering re-IP strategies, domain migration, service accounts, DNS updates, authentication integration, data migration, cutover approaches, rollback procedures, and validation testing.
- Support application modernization initiatives, including adoption of cloud-native services, microservices architectures, containerization, API management, platform services, and DevSecOps practices where appropriate.
- Provide hands-on architectural support during migration execution, including troubleshooting complex issues, validating designs, optimizing performance, and making real-time decisions during critical migration and cutover windows.
- Collaborate closely with Application Development, Cloud Engineering, Network, Security, Infrastructure, Database, Operations, and Business teams to ensure coordinated delivery and successful outcomes.
- Identify and mitigate architectural risks related to application dependencies, shared databases, network constraints, authentication models, performance bottlenecks, and operational resilience.
- Establish and enforce architecture governance, solution standards, reusable design patterns, and review processes across the migration program.
- Ensure migrated solutions meet enterprise requirements for security, compliance, disaster recovery, high availability, monitoring, and operational supportability.
- Support migration activities across EST and MST time zones, including participation in critical release, migration, and production cutover windows.
- Present solution architecture strategies, design decisions, risks, and recommendations to senior leaders and stakeholders, translating complex technical concepts into business-focused outcomes.
Required Qualifications
- 10 years of experience in application development, software engineering, solution design, and architecture roles.
- Proven experience designing and developing enterprise applications using technologies such as .NET, Java, Python, REST APIs, microservices, messaging platforms, and integration frameworks.
- Strong experience transitioning from Application Developer, Technical Lead, Application Architect, or Solutions Designer into Solution Architecture roles.
- Demonstrated expertise in enterprise application architecture, integration design, and cloud transformation initiatives.
- Hands-on experience with Microsoft Azure, including Azure Virtual WAN (VWAN), networking, identity, security, platform services, and cloud-native architectures.
- Strong understanding of SDLC, DevOps, CI/CD pipelines, application security, and infrastructure-as-code principles.
- Experience performing application dependency mapping, architecture assessments, and migration planning for large-scale enterprise environments.
- Working knowledge of enterprise networking, firewalls, load balancers, DNS, identity services, and hybrid-cloud connectivity.
- Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills, with the ability to influence technical and business audiences at all organizational levels.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience leading large-scale cloud migration, data center transformation, or DMZ modernization programs.
- Azure certifications such as Azure Solutions Architect Expert (AZ-305).
- TOGAF, Zachman, or equivalent enterprise architecture certification.
- Experience with container platforms (AKS, OpenShift, Kubernetes), API management, and modern application architectures.
- Experience in regulated industries with strong security and compliance requirements.
Ideal Candidate Profile
A seasoned Application Architect/Senior Developer turned Solution Architect who possesses deep application design expertise and can effectively integrate application, cloud, security, infrastructure, and network architecture disciplines to drive the successful delivery of the Azure VWAN Migration Program.