Solution Architect

Currently, for one of our Partners, we are looking for an experienced Solution Architect (m/f/n) to support a long-term project delivered for an organization of the European Commission based in Brussels.

Tasks:

• Lead the research, design and validation of innovative software architectures for the EU Verify service, combining advanced architectural design with applied research in Web3, distributed systems, cryptography, and decentralised identity technologies

• Conduct advanced technical research on emerging distributed ledger technologies, decentralised identity protocols, cryptographic mechanisms, and trust infrastructures to identify architectural innovations applicable to the platform.

• 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 the system architecture, providing evidence-based recommendations for technology adoption.

• Provide technical leadership in the definition of innovative solution patterns, ensuring alignment between research activities, software engineering practices, and long-term architectural strategy.

• Produce architectural studies, technical white papers, and research reports documenting design decisions, evaluation methodologies, and recommendations for future evolution of the platform.

• Design and develop comprehensive business and technical architectures for digital solutions to meet business needs, defining measurable non-functional requirements.

• Collaborating with stakeholders to gather and analyse requirements

• Evaluating and selecting 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.

• Ensuring solutions are scalable, secure, and reliable

• Guiding development teams during implementation phases

• Conduct architecture to ensure adherence to enterprise standards (e.g., Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP)) throughout the implementation lifecycle.

• Identifying and mitigating potential risks and technical challenges

• Assessing and incorporating emerging technologies

• Providing technical leadership and support to development teams and other stakeholders

• Define integration patterns (e.g., event-driven, Enterprise Integration Patterns (EIP)), data flows, and API standards (OpenAPI/AsyncAPI) to ensure coherent and scalable system interactions.

• Identify and define architecture for verifiable credential exchange.

• Define appropriate signature profiles for verifiable credential and tokenization use cases.

• Define zero knowledge proof for unlinkable and privacy preserving proofs.

• Defining digitalization strategies for public administrations.

Requirements:

• Education: EQF7 in Mathematics, Physics, Engineering or IT

• At least 10 years as an IT solution architect and leading IT projects.

• At least 5 years of experience contributing to the development of technical standards through participation in technical standardisation bodies, such as OIDF, ISO, CEN/CENELEC, or ETSI working groups.

• Author or co-author of at least 2 publications in a peer-review magazine in the field of IT, electronics or mathematics.

• At least 1 year of experience in projects involving the tokenisation in compliance with, or aligned with, relevant EU regulatory frameworks

• Experience in systems and software architecture design, including at least 7 years in architecture governance and documentation practices (decision records, C4 diagrams, architecture reviews) - at least 10 years.

• Experience with designing enterprise applications and middleware, including microservices architectures and APIs (e.g. REST) for modular, reusable solutions, and database management systems - at least 7 years.

• At least 5 years working with cloud services (e.g. AWS, Azure), designing architectures that leverage native services to minimise custom development, including at least 5 years in observability and monitoring practices (logging, tracing, metrics) and in using Go, C++, or equivalent programming languages.

• Experience in networking concepts and protocols - at least 10 years.

• Experience applying cybersecurity principles and standards (e.g., ISO 27001, OWASP, Zero Trust) to ensure secure solution design - at least 5 years.

• At least 7 years with OAuth2 and OIDC, including at least 5 years with OID4VC (OID4VCI, OID4VP) or similar credential exchange protocols, at least 5 years with data models such as W3C VCDM, SD-JWT and mDoc including data modelling experience, and at least 2 years defining digital signature profiles.

• Experience with zero-knowledge proof frameworks (e.g. Gnark, Longfellow-zk or similar) - at least 1 year.

• Experience with implementing real-world asset tokenisation - at least 1 year.

• At least 1 year of experience in the implementation of EU policies related to carbon markets.

• At least 1 year of experience working with customs procedures.

• Excellent knowledge of English (minimum level C1 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages - CEFR), with strong written and oral communication skills.

Offer:

• B2B contract

• Mostly remote set-up. Services must be performed from within the EU. Two physical meetings with the customer are foreseen per 12-month period, max 2 days each. These planned meetings are at the contractor's cost.

• Rate: 450-540 EUR/MD