Application Architect

Job Description

<p>Job Description</p><p><br></p><p>Insight Global is seeking an Application Architect specialized in Integration to join one of Canada's largest Retailers. This role is a contract opportunity, and the intention is for this contract to convert to a full-time position. This individual will be responsible for designing and evolving the integration layer for retail e-commerce-spanning APIs, asynchronous messaging, and event-driven systems. You'll partner with product, engineering, and client stakeholders to define integration patterns, enforce standards, and guide delivery teams toward scalable, resilient, and observable solutions. This is a contract role with a path to full-time conversion for someone excited to grow with a company that invests in long-term development.</p><p><br></p><p>Industry Experience</p><p><br></p><p>• 5+ years in software engineering with 2+ years in an architecture/technical-lead capacity focused on systems integration.</p><p>• Experience across retail e-commerce workflows (catalog/PIM, search, cart/checkout, payments, order/fulfillment, customer/loyalty). Technical Proficiency (Integration-First)</p><p>• API Management/Gateways: Azure API Management, Apigee, Kong or equivalent; OpenAPI, API lifecycle, throttling/quotas, monetization a plus.</p><p>• Messaging & Streaming: Kafka/Confluent (preferred), Azure Event Hubs, RabbitMQ, Azure Service Bus, SNS/SQS, or Pub/Sub; Schema Registry, partitions, consumer groups, DLQs.</p><p>• Event-Driven Architecture: CQRS, event sourcing, outbox/saga, choreography vs. orchestration; AsyncAPI.</p><p>• Data & Consistency: SQL/NoSQL patterns, eventual consistency, transactional messaging, CDC (Debezium or equivalent).</p><p>• Backend: Node.js or ASP.NET Core for service/API development; REST and GraphQL where appropriate (BFF, federated gateways).</p><p>• Security: OAuth2/OIDC, JWT, mTLS, secrets management (Key Vault/Secret Manager), least-privilege IAM. • Infra & Ops: Azure (preferred) or GCP; Kubernetes & Docker; CI/CD; IaC (Terraform/Bicep); blue/green or canary releases.</p><p>• Observability: OpenTelemetry, distributed tracing, structured logging, metrics/alerts (Prometheus/Grafana, Azure Monitor, Datadog, etc.).</p><p><br></p><p>Nice to Have Skills & Experience</p><p><br></p><p>• Service mesh (Istio/Linkerd), gRPC, GraphQL federation.</p><p>• Experience with high-throughput peak events (holiday traffic, drops, flash sales) and back-pressure strategies.</p><p>• Knowledge of data privacy/regulatory constraints (PCI, GDPR/CPRA) in integration design.</p><p>• Experience introducing platform engineering practices for reusable integration scaffolding.</p>