At Spear, our mission is to help dentists and their teams pursue and achieve “Great Dentistry.” Spear drives dental practice growth by advancing our clients clinical skills, improving their practice management capabilities and enhancing the patient experience by leveraging both our deep dental expertise and our technology forward solutions. We offer holistic solutions that include a full learning management system, a practice consulting service supported by a robust analytics platform and industry experts, and patient engagement tools that complement the normal workflows within a dental practice. In addition, we deliver live, collaborative education led by the brightest clinical and business minds in dentistry through virtual seminars and events, as well as through hands on learning opportunities at our state-of-the-art campus in scenic North Scottsdale. 

The Solutions Architect will play an important role in the architecture, design, development, and support of next-generation applications at Spear. This role bridges the gap between business problems and technology solutions by describing how different components of business, information, and technology are used in a particular solution. The architect will provide leadership and solutions support for infrastructure operations, development operations, application development, API development, and multi-platform integrations.

This position is remote eligible.

Responsibilities and Duties:

• Lead the planning and design of application architecture in collaboration with stakeholders and technical teams
  • Collaborate with Spear's Enterprise Architect and Data Architect (position to be filled) on cohesive and consistent architecture approaches and best practices
  • Collaborate with delivery teams on implementation according to design standards and best practices
• Deliver architecture documentation that supports the most efficient and secure IT environment meeting customer’s business needs
  • Define the architecture, system modules, interfaces (API), and data for a system to satisfy specified requirements, performance, and security
• Construct best-in-class integration solutions paying close attention to scale, high-availability, performance, and security
• Perform any necessary build-vs-buy analysis to determine the right investment given the desired feature needs, time-to-market, quality, and customization needs of an initiative
• Provide architectural oversight for the deployment of Spear's software solutions
• Fill communication gaps between technical and non-technical specialists
• Provide key architectural vision and roadmap for Spear’s software solutions
• Utilize application performance monitoring tools (i.e. new Relic) to stay ahead of performance issues and to guide performance-related solutions
• Perform development quality checks and provide guidance and mentorship to less experienced developers
• Provide Level 3 production support, involving relevant product teams, where applicable
• Coordinate communications, issue resolution, implementation and testing plans, training plans, and successful transition to support and maintenance teams of architecture and operations activities
• Estimate costs (in both human capital and bill of materials) for complex projects and initiatives based on complexity, risk, and effort
• Adhere to Spear's company values and promote creativity, collaboration, and growth in the workplace

Role Competencies:

• Strong understanding of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) and experience with current techniques (i.e Agile Methodology, Cloud-Native Computing, DevOps, Microservices, and Event-Driven Architecture)
• Extensive experience working with different software development platforms and environments, third party libraries and APIs
• Ability to perform cost and feature comparison of competing offerings and drive the drive RFP process
• Ability to provide accurate cost estimates and projections based on anticipated usage and maintenance
• Technical expertise with DevOps automation and enablement technologies (i.e. Jenkins, Ansible/Tower, Jira, Git/Bitbucket, etc.)
• Technical experience with microservices architecture and SOA enabling tools (i.e. Amazon API Gateway, Swagger, Docker/Kubernetes)
• Knowledge of security aspects of integrated system design and associated protocols
• Strong, independent, ownership-focused technical leader requiring minimal oversight including the ability to prioritize work and meet deadlines
• Ability to think critically, solve problems, and influence others to achieve desired results
• Excellent verbal communication skills with the presence and authority to influence stakeholders and partners
  • Ability to develop and deliver technical presentations to multiple levels of internal stakeholders
• Proven leadership and project management skills

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems or related field
• 8+ years experience working in one or more IT areas
• 3+ years experience in IT infrastructure and cloud development
• Certifications in Agile, AWS, and DevOps a plus

What Spear Offers

• Beautiful Facility
• Company Sponsored Events (Think costume contests, holiday parties and 5k’s!)
• 24 Hour Onsite Gym
• The Most Amazing Coworkers Around
• Spear Cares
• Final 30 (A great way to wrap up a productive week!)
• Great work/life balance
• Regular Town Halls and CEO Lunches
• Career Development Pathways
• Flexible Time Off plus Spear Holidays
• And much more!

Spear Education deeply values diversity and what it brings to our communities and our organization. 

Everyone is welcomed here, regardless of how you look, your physical abilities, where you come from, when you were born, what you believe in, how you identify, who you love, how you think, and whether or not you have served.

We seek to create a culture where each person feels heard, supported and engaged in a positive, empathetic way. 

We are allies in, and advocates for, our shared humanity.

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.