Application / Solutions Architect

Location: Lansing, Michigan, United States

Workplace: hybrid

Employment Type: contract

Description

Stafford Gray is building an ongoing pipeline of Application/Solutions Architects to support enterprise system modernization and operations work across our client engagements. This posting covers architects with deep expertise in any major enterprise platform — including Salesforce, .NET, Java, or cloud-native architectures — who can lead technical design, mentor development teams, and translate business requirements into scalable, maintainable solutions.

We currently have an immediate need for an architect with strong Salesforce platform expertise (Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Experience Cloud, and Field Service Lightning), but we welcome applicants from other architecture backgrounds to join our broader talent pipeline for future opportunities.

Job Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end architecture and technical design of enterprise solutions supporting case management, service operations, and user engagement.
• Conduct platform health checks and assessments, delivering actionable recommendations based on industry best practices.
• Participate in design & discovery sessions and promote adoption of well-architected framework principles.
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to development teams, including internal staff and contractors.
• Collaborate with business analysts, product owners, and stakeholders to translate complex business requirements into scalable, maintainable solutions.
• Oversee proof-of-concepts (POCs) to validate technical feasibility and business value of proposed solutions.
• Ensure secure application development lifecycle (SDLC) practices are followed throughout all phases of development and deployment.
• Set technical direction for assigned application portfolios.
• Support high-availability operations for mission-critical, high-user-volume applications.
• Ensure compliance with security, performance, and regulatory standards.

Requirements

Required Skills

• 5+ years of experience gathering and analyzing business and technical requirements in collaboration with stakeholders
• Experience designing and implementing CI/CD pipelines, including pipeline-as-code, branching strategies, automated code reviews, and testing
• Strong ability to communicate technical concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences
• For Salesforce-track candidates: 2–3 Salesforce certifications required, plus 5+ years of hands-on Salesforce, SQL, Java, and web services development
• For other platform tracks: 5+ years of hands-on architecture/development experience with the relevant platform, plus relevant certifications

Most Preferred Skills

• Architect-level certification on your platform (e.g., Salesforce Certified Technical Architect/Application Architect, AWS/Azure Solutions Architect, etc.)
• Experience working on enterprise-level implementations
• Database-related certifications

Other Preferred Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience working within Agile development environments
• Strong experience with SQL development, including query execution and performance tuning
• Experience with DevOps practices, including automated builds, testing (regression/smoke), and multi-environment deployments
• Demonstrated ability to troubleshoot complex system issues and provide technical guidance/leadership to development teams