Business Unit Description

AARP is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, with a membership of nearly 38 million that helps people turn their goals and dreams into 'Real Possibilities' by changing the way America defines aging. With staffed offices in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, AARP works to strengthen communities and promote the issues that matter most to families such as healthcare security, financial security and personal fulfillment. AARP also advocates for individuals in the marketplace by selecting products and services of high quality and value to carry the AARP name.

Information Technology Solutions (ITS) is AARP's technology leader in positive social change and member value, enabling a more effective workforce and globally connecting employees, members, volunteers, partners and advocates to maximize engagement.
Summary

The Senior Solutions Architect, Digital Experience Platform is a core technical resource on a capability team responsible for the architecture design, development, maintenance, administration, and continuous improvement of solutions in AARP's content publishing systems, including censhare and digital asset management. This position is accountable for the technical components of the capability strategy and lifecycle and will be expected to deliver incremental business value in an agile environment. The Engineer II - Content Publishing must be a multi-faceted technologist able to build business-value based objectives and perform "hands on" development and configuration within AARP's content publishing and management ecosystem.

Other core roles on the team will include the Platform Manager and Delivery Lead.
Responsibilities

Technical Responsibilities

Design and architecture

• Ensure sound integration, data, security, and business architecture design throughout all stages within the platform lifecycle.
• Lead the implementation of information security requirements in order to meet users' defined outcomes within one or more customer/employee journeys.
• Lead design and development of proof-of-concepts or minimum viable products as well as architecture design and technology evaluation artifacts.
• Drive reuse of common services defined by AARP's enterprise architecture standards.
• Provides oversight and governance of AARP technology standards and frameworks for assigned systems and platforms.
• Participates in development of Enterprise Engineering and Architecture Standards and Practices as required

Product Roadmap

• Establish the technical framework for the capability strategy and lifecycle.
• Work with the capability manager to define business-value based objectives and user stories for upcoming sprints
• Develop innovative solutions, taking into consideration performance, scalability, and availability with realistic implementation schedules.

Consulting

• Guide business and/or capability manager with investment and budget decisions based on the portfolio of tools needed to accomplish a desired outcome.
• Investigate new technologies and make recommendations to capability manager regarding potential usage.
• Collaborate with the capability manager during complex discussions with business stakeholders, vendors, or technology, particularly when determining the technical requirements/capabilities needed to meet business goals.

Continuous Improvement/Operations

• Provide critical input to other capability and platform teams as needed to ensure alignment with broader ITS strategic objectives.
• Drive the continuous improvements of implementation methodology and service offerings based on customer/employee experiences.
• Work to streamline processes, with the goal of speeding delivery to the customer, while balancing risk management objectives.
• Work with developers, administrators and support staff to analyze incident trends & underlying system problems to identify incremental improvement opportunities that support/drive key business value drivers.
• Follows ITS Disaster Recovery (DR) policy and standards.

Technical Leadership / Active Practitioner

• Participate in a Community of Interest for engineers across all capability (platform) teams to share information and strengthen understanding of business needs and technology-based business solutions.
• Serve as the technical liaison and subject matter expert in business interactions.
• Provide 'level 2 or 3' support and problem management guidance for the platform team.

Domain Responsibilities

• Create and manage standards and best practices for content publishing and digital asset management, including the censhare application.
• Provide technical leadership and guidance to platform, capability, and business teams on integration with content publishing environments.
• Monitor availability and performance of content publishing and digital asset management systems and services.
• Provide level 3 support for content publishing systems and escalate issues to vendors/manufactures for technical support as needed.

Requirements

Desired Education and Certifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent work experience in Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering or related field
• censhare administrator and/or developer experience a plus

Work Experience

• 10+ years of IT experience, including print and digital content publishing expertise
• Experience in enterprise architecture practices, frameworks and methodologies
• A demonstrated ability to work within a team and build consensus towards a technical direction
• Strong technical expertise in executing proofs of concept and experimentation with development teams
• Technology delivery experience through concept, development, validation, deployment, and support
• Product evaluation through RFI/RFP including working with vendors and internal stakeholder groups
• An understanding of external cloud hosting providers including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure
• Solution Architecture experience with projects using Agile and Iterative approach
• Experience with Adobe Manager a plus
• An understanding of Mac technologies for publishing
• Broad understanding of the following censhare/CPS core applications, including
  • InDesign/InCopy
  • AEM
  • IMP
  • Digital Asset Management

Compensation and Benefits

AARP offers competitive benefits with a 401(k); 100% company-funded pension plan; health, dental, and vision plans; life insurance paid time off to include company and individual holidays, vacation, sick, caregiving, and parental leave; performance-based and peer-based recognition; tuition reimbursement; among others. Visit careers.aarp.org/benefits for more information.

As a result of the COVID pandemic, all interviews will be held virtually and all non-essential employees will continue to work remotely until further notice.
Equal Employment Opportunity

AARP is an equal opportunity employer committed to hiring a diverse workforce and sustaining an inclusive culture. AARP does not discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, sex, color, national origin, age, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, mental or physical disability, genetic information, veteran status, or on any other basis prohibited by applicable law.