Lead Solution Architect
C5MI Insight · United States
C5MI is not your typical consulting firm. We are a high-performance team of SAP and supply chain experts who solve complex, mission critical challenges for organizations that cannot afford failure.
We hire consultants who thrive in complexity, move fast, take ownership, and deliver under pressure. At C5MI, you will not be siloed or stuck in theory. You will be hands on, client facing, and directly influencing outcomes that matter.
Our culture rewards initiative, accountability, and continuous growth. This is a place where your expertise is valued, your work is meaningful, and your performance truly matters. If you’re energized by learning through real-world challenges, collaborating with top-tier talent, and expanding your capabilities every day, C5MI is where strong consultants level up.
The Lead Solution Architect is the single technical design authority for a large-scale, greenfield SAP S/4HANA financial management modernization program for a Department of War (DoW) organization, accountable for the integrity, coherence, and deliverability of the end-to-end solution across all nine financial process areas. This position leads the program’s architecture function, directing process area solution architects and partnering with cloud, data, and platform architecture leadership to ensure a unified target architecture built on a fit-to-standard, clean-core approach. The Lead Solution Architect chairs architecture governance, approves or rejects design decisions and extension requests, resolves cross-process-area design conflicts, and is accountable to government leadership for the technical defensibility of the delivered solution at every milestone gate.
Note: This position is contingent upon contract award.
Essential Functions and Responsibilities:
- Owns the end-to-end target solution architecture spanning core finance, budgetary execution, asset accounting, payables and receivables, managerial cost accounting, inventory, financial reporting, integration, and legacy data transition.
- Leads, develops, and allocates the program’s solution architecture team, including process area-aligned solution architects, and coordinates the federated architecture community across cloud, data, platform, and security domains.
- Chairs the program architecture review board; establishes design principles, solution patterns, naming and configuration standards, and the decision record process.
- Enforces a fit-to-standard, clean-core delivery posture; adjudicates every request for custom development or extension against standard and pre-delivered federal content, and documents the rationale for approved deviations.
- Directs design of the single, standards-aligned chart of accounts and financial data model, ensuring every financially relevant event posts to a single, immutable, auditable document chain.
- Governs integration architecture across the financial core, the low-code extensibility layer, analytics and reporting platforms, and interfacing logistics, procurement, and personnel domains.
- Owns non-functional requirements, including performance, scalability, availability, recoverability, and resilience in denied, degraded, intermittent, and limited-bandwidth operating conditions.
- Serves as the senior technical authority in milestone gate reviews, presenting and defending the architecture at preliminary design review, critical design review, and production readiness review.
- Partners with security and risk management framework leadership to ensure the architecture is authorizable, inherits available control sets, and sustains its authority to operate through change.
- Reviews and approves functional and technical design documentation produced across delivery teams, ensuring traceability from requirement to design to test.
- Establishes the technical debt and architectural runway strategy, balancing near-term milestone delivery against long-term sustainment and upgrade cost.
- Mentors solution architects and senior functional leads, building enterprise architecture capability across the program and the broader C5MI delivery organization.
- Advises program and government leadership on solution trade-offs, sequencing options, and the technical implications of scope and schedule decisions.
- Ability to travel up to 50% to client sites, varying based on client program schedules.
- Adheres to all certified processes as part of our commitment to maintaining the highest standards of quality and information security, which includes actively participating in quality assurance activities and ensuring the protection of sensitive information in accordance with our security policies.
- Performs other related tasks as assigned by direct supervisor.
Essential People Leader Functions:
- People Management & Performance Accountability: Sets performance expectations; provides ongoing coaching, feedback, and recognition; conducts goal-setting, evaluations, and development planning; and addresses performance, conduct, and attendance issues in a timely, compliant manner.
- Employee Development & Capability Building: Develops employees through coaching, mentoring, training, and stretch assignments; identifies skill gaps and development needs; and supports succession planning and talent pipeline readiness within scope.
- Engagement, Culture & Team Effectiveness: Fosters an inclusive, respectful, high-performing environment; promotes accountability and collaboration; and reinforces company values, behavioral expectations, and professional standards.
- Workforce Planning & Resource Oversight: Plans, assigns, and prioritizes work to meet delivery, quality, and timeline goals; manages workloads and staffing within approved parameters; and escalates resource risks or constraints as needed.
- Policy, Compliance & Risk Management: Applies company policies and employment practices consistently; partners with HR on employee relations matters; and identifies and mitigates people, delivery, and compliance risks.
- Communication & Stakeholder Alignment: Communicates expectations, decisions, and changes clearly; aligns team or organizational objectives with business priorities; and collaborates effectively across matrixed, cross-functional, or client environments.
C5MI Expectations of all Employees:
- Adheres to all C5MI Policies and Procedures.
- Always conducts self in a manner consistent with C5MIs’ Core Values.
- Maintains a positive and respectful attitude with all contacts.
- Consistently reports to work on time and prepared to perform the duties of the position.
- Meets productivity standards and performs duties as workload necessitates.
- Maintains the privacy of all company proprietary information.
- Treats vendors, customers, and team members with respect and dignity.
- Able to safely perform the essential functions of the job with or without reasonable accommodation.
Minimum Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s degree in a related field (Master’s degree a plus); 10-15 years of professional experience and 5-8 years of people leadership experience with a Bachelor’s degree, or 14-18 years of professional experience and 8-11 years of people leadership experience without a degree. People leadership experience must include experience managing other people leaders.
- 10+ years of SAP experience, including 5+ years in a solution architect, enterprise architect, or lead architect capacity.
- Minimum of two full lifecycle SAP implementations with direct responsibility for solution architecture or lead design authority; greenfield SAP S/4HANA experience strongly preferred.
- Deep expertise in SAP S/4HANA Finance, including the universal journal, general ledger, asset accounting, controlling, and public sector funds management.
- Demonstrated experience establishing and chairing architecture governance, including architecture review boards, design standards, and formal design decision records.
- Experience desi