Technical Architect

The role supports a long-term project delivered for an organization of the European Commission based in Brussels.

• Education: EQF7 in IT, Engineering, Physics, or Mathematics.
• At least 5 years of architectural experience in IT and leading IT projects.
• Minimum 5 years in systems and software architecture design, including 3 years in architecture governance and documentation (decision records, C4 diagrams, architecture reviews).
• At least 5 years in enterprise applications and middleware, including 2 years with microservices architecture and API management (REST).
• Minimum 5 years experience with database management systems.
• Minimum 5 years in data modelling.
• At least 2 years with cloud services (e.g., AWS, Azure), designing architectures leveraging native services including observability and monitoring practices (logging, tracing, metrics).
• At least 5 years programming in Python, Go, or C++.
• Minimum 3 years with networking concepts and protocols.
• At least 2 years with OAuth2, OIDC, OID4VC, WebAuth, and similar protocols; including experience with data models such as W3C VCDM, decentralized identifiers, and SD-JWT.
• At least 2 years defining digital signature profiles.
• Minimum 2 years with Web3 technologies and components, including 1 year implementing real-world asset tokenisation.
• At least 1 year with zero-knowledge proof frameworks (e.g., Gnark, Longfellow-zk).
• Minimum 2 years in the content protection domain.
• Excellent English knowledge (minimum B2 level CEFR) with strong written and oral communication skills.

• Design and develop comprehensive business and technical architectures for digital solutions to meet business needs, defining measurable non-functional requirements.
• Conduct advanced technical research on emerging distributed ledger technologies, decentralised identity protocols, cryptographic mechanisms, and trust infrastructures.
• Evaluate and compare alternative architectural approaches through formal technical analysis, modelling, proof-of-concepts, and performance assessments.
• Assess the impact of emerging standards, scientific advances, and regulatory developments on system architecture, providing evidence-based recommendations.
• Manage stakeholders and facilitate requirement gathering, negotiate technical solutions, and align diverse interests.
• Communicate and present complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to gather and analyse requirements.
• Evaluate and select appropriate technologies and frameworks.
• Create and maintain key architectural artifacts including Solution Context diagrams, C4 model views, API contracts, data models, threat models, and deployment diagrams.
• Ensure solutions are scalable, secure, and reliable.
• Guide development teams during implementation phases.
• Conduct architecture reviews to ensure adherence to enterprise standards like OWASP throughout the implementation lifecycle.
• Identify and mitigate potential risks and technical challenges.
• Assess and incorporate emerging technologies.
• Provide technical leadership and support to development teams and other stakeholders.
• Define integration patterns such as event-driven and Enterprise Integration Patterns (EIP), data flows, and API standards (OpenAPI/AsyncAPI) to ensure system coherency and scalability.
• Identify and define architecture for verifiable credential exchange.
• Define appropriate signature profiles for verifiable credential and tokenization use cases.
• Define zero knowledge proofs for unlinkable and privacy preserving proofs.

Services must be performed from within the EU. Two physical meetings with the customer are foreseen per 12-month period, each lasting a maximum of 2 days. These meetings are at the contractor’s cost.