Software Architect

About the role

Harris Digital Learning helps school districts build and run successful digital learning programs. At the heart of our work is eSchoolware™, our proprietary learning management system. It brings together everything districts need to manage, deliver, and support online and hybrid learning in a single platform.

eSchoolware serves students, teachers, parents, and administrators alike. It offers age-appropriate learning experiences for middle and high school students, mastery-based course progression, tools for communication and collaboration, and a reporting system with more than 200 standard reports, so educators always have the data they need to support student success. Our mission is simple: empower educators and engage every learner at every stage of their education.

What you will own

Year one

• Define the target architecture and the sequence to reach it. The platform has no module seams today, so this is strangler-fig work around functional verticals on a shared foundation.
• Specify and accept our modernization partner's deliverables against defined criteria. You are the technical counterpart holding a fixed-price statement of work to account.
• Lead the data-layer modernization: retire the XDoclet-generated Hibernate mappings in favour of JPA, and oversee the Oracle to PostgreSQL conversion alongside a specialist contractor.
• Stand up the REST API façade and the identity, organization and enrollment foundation that everything else depends on.
• Establish engineering practice from close to zero - CI/CD, code review, and characterization tests on a system with almost no test coverage today.
• Recommend the shape of the team, and help us hire it.

Ongoing

• Architecture standards, design patterns and technical governance
• Mentoring engineers and contractors
• Making AI-assisted development a normal part of how the team works
• Ensuring quality, maintainability, accessibility and security are built in rather than retrofitted

What Good Looks Like at 90 Days

A validated target architecture and a sequenced roadmap that leadership can fund * acceptance criteria agreed in writing with our modernization partner * your recommendation on the team we should build and in what order.

What we need

Must Have

• 8+ years building enterprise software, including 5+ leading engineering teams or owning architecture on significant programs
• You have actually modernized a large legacy system - decomposed a monolith, replaced a data layer, migrated a platform off an unsupported stack. We care far more that you have done it than which technologies it happened to be.
• Strong Java and Spring Boot, and genuine comfort in a modern front-end stack. We are targeting Angular, React, and TypeScript.
• Relational database depth - schema design, ORM behaviour, query performance. Oracle and PostgreSQL are both in play.
• Experience owning a vendor or systems-integrator relationship: writing the specification, defining acceptance, and holding the line when delivery drifts.
• Cloud-native delivery on Azure or equivalent - CI/CD, infrastructure as code, monitoring and observability.
• Building to WCAG 2.2 AA. Accessibility is a contractual obligation passed to us by the districts we serve, not a nice-to-have.
• Experience working with Linux servers

Genuinely Helpful, and Not Required

• K-12 or higher-education technology, and the 1EdTech standards - LTI 1.3, Common Cartridge and Thin Common Cartridge, OneRoster, QTI
• Oracle-to-PostgreSQL migration, ora2pg, cutover planning and rollback strategy
• Establishing test coverage on systems that have none
• Remediating security findings in legacy code - secrets management, dependency CVEs, audit logging
• Student data privacy: FERPA, COPPA, and district data-protection agreements
• Portal frameworks such as Liferay. We are migrating away from it, so we are interested in the experience rather than a plan to keep it.
• Gamified learning experiences and engagement mechanics
• Fluent use of AI-assisted development tools in real delivery work, not just experimentation

A Note on the List Above

We do not expect one person to bring all of this. If the first list describes you and two or three items in the second look familiar, please apply - we would rather talk to you than guess.

Education

Bachelor's degree in software engineering, computer science or a related field, or the equivalent in demonstrated experience. We mean the second half of that sentence.

Salary range

$115,000 - $125,000 USD per year.