MGR SYSTEMS ARCHITECT - INDIA

Lumen is the trusted network for the AI-powered world, connecting people, data, and applications through our expansive fiber network and connected ecosystem. We enable secure, high-performance connectivity across cloud, edge, and AI workloads for enterprises, governments, and communities.

At Lumen, you’ll work on infrastructure customers rely on today and build for what’s next, where performance, security, and resilience matter.

This is a high accountability environment where bold ideas drive real innovation for our customers, partners, and industry. The work is challenging, expectations are clear, and trust is built into how we operate. If you’re ready to take ownership, deliver meaningful impact, and help shape the future of AI-ready connectivity, join us today.

The Role

Team Management: Mgr. Systems Architects manage a team of 6 to 10 Sr. system architects, lead architects, and associate managers, assigning them to the right Agile Release Trains (ARTs).

Guidance and Mentorship: They guide and enable the team to deliver designs efficiently, mentor reportees, and ensure they contribute towards achieving business goals and managing technical debt.

Architectural Oversight: They oversee system design and roadmap, drive architectural initiatives, identify opportunities for optimization, and ensure designs adhere to Lumen Enterprise IT guidelines.

Coordination Across ARTs: Mgr. Systems Architects ensure technology alignments across ARTs, confirm capabilities meet Definition of Ready (DoR), and review estimates and critical features by working with other architects.

Production Performance and Stability: They maintain full awareness of application performance in production environments, participate in SWAT calls to address stability issues, and help document root causes.

Engagement and Collaboration: They engage with system architects, outside vendors, and various teams to review and ensure the success of designs, and participate in Continuous Exploration processes.

The Main Responsibilities

• Manage a team of 6 to 10 Sr. system architects / lead architects / associate mgr system architects and assign to right ARTs.
• Guide and enable the team to deliver designs efficiently
• Enable system architects in the team to own and contribute towards achieving business goals and technical debt.
• Understand overall system design and roadmap
• Drive architectural initiatives and identify opportunities for optimization
• Oversee, mentor and guide reportees.
• Identify areas where POCs are required and assign to reportees as appropriate and track the same to completion.
• Mgr System Architects manage reportees working across ARTs.
• Ensure technology alignments across ARTs; align teams of multiple ARTs to a shared technical direction by working with respective ART System architects
• Confirm Capability meets Definition of Ready (DoR) before approving for multiple ARTs
• Attend and participate in Mass Markets Architecture Review Boards
• Review Capability estimates by working closely with other system architects across ARTs.
• Ensure ART system designs adhere to Lumen Enterprise IT roadmap, guidelines, principles
• Review critical enabler Features and NFRs created by ART architects
• Engage with other system architects and establish an integrated technical design
• Engage with outside vendors to ensure design success
• Engage system architects to review designs and ensure complete end to end success (ie. Omni channel, flow through, etc.)
• Actively participate in the Continuous Exploration (keeping up with the industry) process as part of the Continuous Delivery Pipeline, especially with Enabler Epics
• Collaborate with their application/service development team, Load and Performance team, chaos engineering team, SRE SPOC etc.
• Have full awareness of application/service performance in production environment, upstream / downstream applications, database performance characteristics etc.
• Participate in Proactive / Reactive SWAT calls to address production stability issues, help teams on identifying and documenting accurate root cause of issues.
• Review ART technical enabler Feature content
• Review ART environment performance, stability, and scalability targets
• Review critical nonfunctional requirements. Provide inputs based on production stability, performance issues, bottle necks, User experience issues, security etc.
• Review ART system designs focused on system components which align to the larger end state designs
• Review ART technical system design documents
• Review deisgn of subsystems and their interfaces; allocate responsibilities to subsystems; understand design deployment; communicate requirements for interactions within design context.
• Review ART data flow, sources, storage, format
• Review technical and architectural vision for the ARTs and provide inputs to system architects

What We Look For in a Candidate

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

• Minimum 10 years of software development experience, with deep expertise in C#, .NET / .NET Core, ASP.NET Core, Entity Framework / EF Core, and LINQ.
• At least 3 years in a solution/application architect role, an engineering manager role, or both.
• Proven experience designing and delivering enterprise applications on Microsoft Azure.
• Strong expertise in microservices, API design, distributed systems, and design patterns (including SOLID, domain-driven design, CQRS, and event-driven architecture).
• Deep experience with Microsoft SQL Server: data modeling, complex T-SQL, stored procedures, indexing, query and performance tuning, execution plans, and transaction and locking behavior.
• Experience with GitHub, GitHub Actions, and modern CI/CD and DevOps practices.
• Strong knowledge of application security, including OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, Azure AD / Entra ID, secrets management, and secure handling of sensitive financial data.
• Experience with observability and production support tools such as Application Insights and Azure Monitor.
• Experience leading Agile/Scrum teams using Jira (Confluence is a plus).
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, with experience working across time zones with US-based leadership and business teams.

Preferred / Nice-to-Have Skills

• AI/ML: experience designing or delivering AI/ML or LLM-powered solutions (RAG, agents, Semantic Kernel, Azure OpenAI, Azure Machine Learning).
• Palantir: exposure to Palantir Foundry or AIP.
• Python: hands-on experience with Python for services, automation, or data work.
• Multi-cloud: experience architecting across AWS or Google Cloud in addition to Azure.
• Containers and orchestration with Docker and Kubernetes (AKS).
• Infrastructure as Code with Terraform or Bicep.
• Front-end architecture experience with Angular, React, or Blazor.
• Experience with messaging and streaming platforms (Azure Service Bus, Event Grid, Kafka).
• Domain knowledge in billing, payments, invoicing, collections, revenue management, or other financial systems, ideally in telecom or large enterprise.

What We're Looking For

• A leader who balances hands-on technical depth with strong people management.
• A strategic thinker who can set a clear technical direction and turn it into practical delivery plans.
• Someone who builds trust across teams and time zones through clear, proactive communication.
• A mentor who enjoys developing engineers and raising the bar for the whole team.
• Someone excited to help the team adopt cloud and AI in a responsible, business-focused way.

Requisition #: 343990

Life at Lumen

Life at Lumen is human and connected, even in a fast moving, AI-focused organization. We set clear expectations and trust people to meet them. With real support and shared accountability, teams collaborate better, move faster, and deliver meaningful outcomes.

Our Lumen 8 behaviors guide how we interact, make decisions, and work together, shaping a culture built to perform and win.

To learn more about Life at Lumen and how we live the Lumen 8, please visit:

https://jobs.lumen.com/global/en/life-at-lumen

Background Screening

If you are selected for a position, there will be a background screen, which may include checks for criminal records and/or motor vehicle reports and/or drug screening, depending on the position requirements. For more information on these checks, please refer to the Post Offer section of our FAQ page. Job-related concerns identified during the background screening may disqualify you from the new position or your current role. Background results will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

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Disclaimer

The job responsibilities described above indicate the general nature and level of work performed by employees within this classification. It is not intended to include a comprehensive inventory of all duties and responsibilities for this job. Job duties and responsibilities are subject to change based on evolving business needs and conditions.

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