Software Architecture Director

Kforce has a client that is seeking a Software Architecture Director in Waukegan, IL. Overview: This is a large, privately held North American organization operating at enterprise scale across distribution, eCommerce, and supply chain platforms. The company supports high-volume, business-critical systems and maintains a fully in-house technology team responsible for building and scaling these solutions. As part of a broader multi-year transformation, the organization is investing heavily in modern software architecture, including Kubernetes-based container platforms, microservices, and cloud-native development practices to improve scalability, resilience, and delivery velocity across the enterprise. Project Overview: This role will lead enterprise-wide software architecture strategy and drive alignment across a growing engineering organization. The focus is on standardizing how applications are designed, built, and deployed in a highly distributed, high-volume environment. Key initiatives include:

• Defining and scaling enterprise architecture standards across microservices, APIs, and platform services
• Driving adoption of Kubernetes (RedHat OpenShift) and container-based architectures
• Standardizing CI/CD pipelines and DevOps practices across multiple teams
• Leading architecture governance, design reviews, and cross-team technical alignment
• Guiding the transition from legacy systems to scalable, cloud-native platforms
• Improving system performance, reliability, and observability across a complex ecosystem
• Partnering with engineering and business leaders to align architecture with long-term business strategy
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills including ability to present complex topics in terms relatable to business partners
• Demonstrated ability to solve problems, determine appropriate actions and complete projects with little direction
• Ability to meet tight deadlines and thrive in a multi-project environment, while ensuring production systems are up and performing well
• May require travel to branch and international locations
• Exhibits qualities such as being decisive, organized, empathetic and dedicated
• Strong prior experience with management of architectures leveraging a distributed micro-services architecture developed in Java, JavaScript or C#
• Ability to motivate and inspire team members; Well-developed coaching and performance management skills