Package Description
Joining Serco amazing team offers:
* Competitive Salary
* Great career opportunities
* Corporate Benefits Package
* International environment
* Possible hybrid work
Job Introduction
Serco is the preferred partner for European Institutions and International Organisations, offering ICT services and Contact Centre management across Europe. Our expertise extends from Information System support to consultancy under the government framework, supporting key entities such as the European Commission and Executive Agencies. As a leader in Service Integration and Management, we ensure seamless delivery of services across various platforms, embodying our commitment to excellence in every aspect of our work.
We are hiring a Application/Cloud Architect for the EU Commission in Brussels, Belgium, and various locations around Europe.
Main Responsibilities
* Design high-level application architecture that is scalable, maintainable, and aligned with modern development practices.
* Define application frameworks, component interactions, and integration points.
* Evaluate appropriate technologies, platforms, and tools.
* Lead the development of architectural blueprints and technical documentation.
* Ensure adherence to coding standards, design principles, and security practices.
* Collaborate with DevOps teams on CI/CD pipelines, containerization, and cloud deployment strategies.
* Participate in code reviews and ensure architectural integrity across teams.
* Guide development teams through technical decisions and challenges.
* Monitor and improve application performance, reliability and scalability.
* Identify technical debt and work toward continuous improvement.
* Analysis of the integration of different information systems.
* Data analysis and data modelling.
* Participation in technical working groups, progress meetings and meetings with the users.
* Assistance during relevant parts of testing, analysis, technical documentation, deployment, evaluation and reporting.2
* Analysis, design and implementations of services and components in a domain driven architecture.
* Provision of technical expertise, feasibility/risk/impact analysis and evaluations in relation with information systems.
* Act as a senior full stack developer and technical lead. Develop and review code when needed.
* Familiar with Agile practices. Willing to help the team mature in Agile driven processes.
* Provision of security assessments and solutions associated with information systems.
* Review, evaluate and test applications or (also third party) components to ensure integration with the other application components, and compliance with the requirements and standards.
Knowledge and Skills
Architecture & Design
* Very good knowledge of architecture design patterns and enterprise architecture frameworks (e.g., TOGAF).
* Very good knowledge of applications design, including multi-tier applications.
* Strong experience with transitioning from monolith to microservices architecture.
* Very good knowledge of microservices and cloud architecture.
* Relevant and proved experience with event-driven architecture, eventual consistency, and microservice orchestration.
* Good knowledge of interoperability technologies: web services, message-oriented middleware (MOM), Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), and service-oriented architecture (SOA).
Programming & Development
* Strong experience with Java (JEE/Jakarta EE), including migrations (Java 8 to Java 21, J2EE to Jakarta EE 8).
* Strong experience with Spring ecosystem (Spring Framework, Spring Boot).
* Front-end experience with Angular (2+), ideally latest versions, and modern UI paradigms (client-side scripting, React).
* Experience in object-oriented design, reusable component design, and UML modelling.
* Experience with RESTful API design and WS SOAP development (Oracle WebLogic, Oracle SOA Suite).
* Familiarity with XML, XSD, SOAP, JAX-WS, JAXB, WSDL, JAX-RPC.
Cloud & Infrastructure
* Proven experience with cloud-native applications and Containers as a Service (CaaS).
* Strong experience with Infrastructure as Code (IaC).
* Strong experience with Docker images and containers.
* Relevant experience with Vault (secrets management) and Consul (service discovery).
* Experience with API Gateway and API validation tools (OpenAPI/Swagger).
* Proved experience with NGINX server.
Integration & Messaging
* Strong practical experience with Kafka.
* Experience with Message-Oriented Middleware and Enterprise Service Bus technologies.
* Strong experience with event-driven systems and microservice orchestration.
Additional Knowledge and Skills
Databases & Persistence
* Good knowledge of relational DBMS (PostgreSQL and Oracle).
* Experience with dedicated database per domain and interoperability patterns.
* Experience with Redis for session and cache management.
* Experience with Liquibase for database migrations.
* Familiarity with PL/SQL, SQL, Hibernate, JPA.
Testing, Quality & CI/CD
* Experience with unit and integration testing frameworks: JUnit, DbUnit, ArchUnit, in-memory databases.
* Experience with automated testing and branch management.
* Experience with cloud-native CI/CD pipelines.
* Experience with Jenkins, Sonar, Bitbucket, GitLab for continuous integration and code quality.
* Experience with architecture decision enforcement at pull request level before merging.
* Experience with automation test frameworks.
Monitoring & Logging
* Experience with Dynatrace, ElasticSearch, and Grafana.
* Experience with Cloud Native observability.
Security
* Experience with OAuth2 and OpenID Connect.
* Experience with Vault for properties and secrets management.
Tools & Miscellaneous
* Experience with version control tools (GIT).
* Familiarity with development tools and IDEs (IntelliJ, Eclipse).
* Experience with build tools and dependency management (Maven, Ant).
* Experience with SoapUI for web service testing.
* Familiarity with Scrum and Agile methodologies.
* Practical experience with JSON, HTML, CSS, JavaScript.
Soft Skills
* Strong analysis and problem-solving skills.
* Ability to participate effectively in technical meetings.
* Good communication skills.
* Ability to adapt to fast-changing technologies in application architecture and design.
* Commitment to applying high-quality standards.
Specific Expertise
* At least 10 years of experience with Architecture Design - Competence level 5.
* Including experience with architecture design patterns, enterprise architecture frameworks (e.g., TOGAF), and multi-tier application design.
* At least 10 years of experience with Micro-services – Competence level 5.
* Experience with microservices design, event-driven architecture, eventual consistency, and transitioning from monolith to microservices.
* At least 10 years of experience with Cloud Native applications– Competence level 5.
* Design and development of cloud-native solutions leveraging containerization, orchestration, and scalable cloud services.
* At least 10 years of experience with Java/JEE – Competence level 5.
* Strong experience with Java frameworks including Spring Boot; migrations across Java versions.
* At least 5 years of experience with Angular 2 plus – Competence level min 4.
* Experience with Angular 2+ (preferably Angular 18), modern UI paradigms, and client-side scripting.
* At least 5 years of experience with Cloud DevSecOps – Competence level min 4.
* Expertise in Infrastructure as Code (IaC), containerization (Docker), service discovery (Consul), secrets management (Vault), and security frameworks (OAuth2, OpenID Connect).
* At least 5 years of experience with Cloud & Container Services– Competence level min 4.
* Experience with container orchestration, CaaS, and cloud infrastructure management.
* At least 5 years of experience with Architecture Enforcement & Review – Competence level min 4.
* Experience enforcing architectural decisions at the pull request level and implementing architecture-as-code practices.
* At least 5 years of experience with Observability/Monitoring Tools– Competence level min 4.
* Use of Dynatrace, ElasticSearch, and Grafana for performance monitoring and logging.
Certifications & Qualifications
Following certificates & standards are ideal for the performance of tasks:
* TOGAF (The Open Group Architecture Framework)
* ITIL Foundation / ITIL 4 Certifications
* Certified Software Architect (IASA Global)
* Certified DevSecOps Professional (CDP)
* Oracle Certified Professional : Java SE Programmer
* Spring Professional Certification
* Certified Angular Developer
* Certified Cloud Security Professional
* Certified OAuth 2.0 Specialist
* Bachelor's Degree