Director of Solutions Architecture

At Journal Technologies, we believe our technology can be a force for good in the world ensuring the proper and efficient functioning of some of the most foundational aspects of society - the courts and justice system. 

We create and implement enterprise software that supports the administration of justice, currently in the United States, Canada, and Australia. While our eSeries product suite enables governments and their employees to deliver continued foundational court processes, our R&D focuses on leveraging emerging possibilities with technology to improve access and efficiency. 

Headquartered in Los Angeles, Journal Technologies is a long-time, wholly-owned subsidiary of Daily Journal Corporation (NASDAQ: DJCO). We also have a major office in Logan, Utah, a team in Melbourne, Australia, an office in Victoria, Canada and a growing number of remote staff across North America.

Under our next generation of leadership, we're implementing a new vision for the company that prioritizes building an extraordinary workplace with empowered people at the heart of our business. Great people want to collaborate with great people, and we are actively looking for smart, motivated people who care deeply about the work they do.  

Director of Solutions Architecture

Journal Technologies is seeking an experienced technical and justice-domain leader to establish and lead the Configuration Center of Excellence (CCoE).

The CCoE will define how Journal Technologies designs, configures, validates, and maintains customer solutions across the eSeries platform. The Director will establish configuration architecture, standards, technical governance, implementation patterns, training, and quality controls that improve system performance, reduce implementation risk, and create greater consistency across customer implementations.

This position requires extensive hands-on knowledge of software applications and a strong understanding of how justice agencies operate. The Director must understand both the technical capabilities of the platform and the business processes the platform supports, including case initiation, case processing, calendaring, hearings, financials, document management, disposition, reporting, interfaces, and downstream justice-partner exchanges.

The Director will serve as a senior technical authority for configuration practices across Journal Technologies and will work closely with Professional Services, Product Management, Engineering, Support, Cloud Operations, and the PMO.

The CCoE will support lifecycle and implementation teams by providing standards, architecture, technical leadership, training, and escalation support. Lifecycle teams remain accountable for delivery.

Core Responsibilities

Configuration Architecture and Standards

• Establish and lead Journal Technologies’ Configuration Center of Excellence.
• Define configuration architecture, engineering standards, and implementation methodologies for eSeries.
• Establish clear standards for business rules, workflows, events, conditions, validations, system properties, forms, templates, financial configuration, security, interfaces, and other configurable platform components.
• Define appropriate use of configuration, scripting, integration, and product functionality.
• Establish patterns that prevent unnecessary customization and configuration technical debt.
• Develop reference configurations, reusable patterns, templates, and implementation accelerators.
• Establish configuration naming, documentation, versioning, promotion, and change-management standards.
• Define standards for configuration performance, maintainability, supportability, and upgrade compatibility.

Technical Governance and Quality

• The Director owns JTI’s enterprise configuration standards. CCoE standards apply across Professional Services and lifecycle teams unless an exception is approved through the established governance process. The Director has authority to require technical review and remediation of material configuration risks and to escalate unresolved readiness concerns before production deployment. Lifecycle leaders retain accountability for project delivery, customer commitments, staffing, schedules and budgets.
• Establish technical review processes for complex or high-risk configuration.
• Define configuration quality gates for implementation milestones, testing, production readiness, and go-live.
• Establish standards for reviewing business rules, queries, integrations, workflows, and other configuration that can affect application performance or system stability.
• Develop methods for identifying configuration related performance and scalability risks before Production deployment.
• Partner with Cloud Operations, Engineering, and Support to analyze configuration-related incidents and convert lessons learned into improved standards.
• Establish measurable configuration quality and adoption metrics.
• Experience working within Agile teams or formal training in Scrum or Agile methodologies is considered a strong asset.

eSeries Technical Leadership

• Serve as a senior technical authority for eSeries configuration across the various business units. 
• Provide guidance to implementation teams on complex configuration and solution design decisions.
• Assist teams with difficult configuration, performance, integration, and implementation issues.
• Identify configurations that should use existing product capabilities instead of custom development.
• Identify recurring customer requirements that should become standard product capabilities.
• Maintain reference architectures for common court and justice-system implementation patterns.
• Ensure configuration approaches account for application architecture, database performance, integration requirements, security, cloud deployment, and operational support. The above statements describe the general nature and level of work being performed in this job function. They are not intended to be an exhaustive list of all duties; additional responsibilities may be assigned. 

Justice Domain Leadership

• Ensure configuration standards reflect the operational requirements of courts and justice agencies.
• Apply knowledge of justice system models when developing implementation standards.
• Help implementation teams understand the business and operational consequences of configuration decisions.
• Establish reusable implementation patterns for common processes and justice-system integrations.

Product and Engineering Partnership

• Establish a structured feedback loop between implementation teams, Product Management, and Engineering.
• Identify recurring implementation challenges caused by product gaps or configuration complexity.
• Recommend product changes that reduce implementation effort and eliminate unnecessary custom configuration.
• Work with Product Management to distinguish customer-specific requirements from capabilities that should become part of the standard product.
• Provide field-based technical input into product architecture and roadmap discussions.
• Evaluate new product capabilities and determine how configuration standards and implementation practices should change as the platforms evolve.

Technical Community and Capability

• Lead the JTI Technical Lead Community across Implementation Specialists, Data Integration Developers, Solution Leads, and other technical delivery roles.
• Establish competency expectations for technical implementation roles.
• Develop structured technical onboarding and continuing education for eSeries.
• Establish configuration certification or proficiency programs.
• Conduct technical workshops, architecture reviews, configuration reviews, and mentoring sessions.
• Build and maintain configuration playbooks, reference implementations, examples, and technical documentation.
• Develop senior technical resources who can act as configuration authorities within lifecycle teams.

Continuous Improvement

• Analyze implementation, Support, Production, and upgrade issues to identify recurring configuration problems.
• Measure adoption of CCoE standards and identify areas requiring additional training or governance.
• Reduce configuration complexity and technical debt across implementations.
• Develop automation and tooling for configuration analysis, validation, migration, comparison, and quality assurance.
• Use implementation experience to improve JTI’s implementation methodology and product capabilities.

Required Qualifications

• Extensive hands-on experience implementing, configuring, supporting, integrated web-based software applications.
• Deep understanding of the software architecture, including business rules, workflows, conditions, validations, system properties, forms, templates, API integrations, security, and related configuration components.
• Significant experience designing and troubleshooting complex configurations.
• Demonstrated ability to translate business requirements into scalable and supportable application configurations.
• Experience diagnosing configuration-related application performance and stability issues.
• Strong understanding of relational databases, database queries, transactions, application performance, and enterprise application architecture.
• Strong working knowledge of SQL, REST APIs, web services and enterprise application architecture, with demonstrated ability to understand and evaluate Java, Groovy and Velocity-based platform components.
• Experience leading technical teams, technical communities, architecture initiatives, or enterprise implementation standards.
• Demonstrated ability to mentor technical staff and communicate complex technical concepts to technical and non-technical audiences.
• 10+ years of enterprise justice-system software implementation, configuration, architecture, or technical delivery experience, including significant experience with Journal Technologies products.

Preferred Qualifications

• Extensive hands-on experience implementing, configuring, supporting, Journal Technologies eSeries applications.
• Deep understanding of the eSeries configuration architecture, including business rules, workflows, conditions, validations, system properties, forms, templates, integrations, security, and related configuration components.
• Extensive experience working within the justice industry, with a strong understanding of how the various justice agencies interact.
• Experience with justice system integrations, data exchanges, and interface architecture.
• Experience implementing multiple jurisdictions.
• Experience with large-scale implementations and Production go-lives.
• Experience with justice-based data conversion and justice-system interfaces.
• Knowledge of NIEM and other justice information exchange standards.
• Experience with cloud-hosted enterprise applications and SaaS delivery models.
• Experience developing configuration governance, technical standards, or implementation methodologies.
• Experience working directly with Product Management and Engineering to convert implementation requirements into product capabilities.
• 10+ years of enterprise justice-system software implementation, configuration, architecture, or technical delivery experience, including significant experience with Journal Technologies products.

The above statements describe the general nature and level of work being performed in this job function. They are not intended to be an exhaustive list of all duties; additional responsibilities may be assigned. 

At this time, we are only able to consider candidates who are Canadian or U.S. citizens or permanent residents due to employment authorization requirements. We are unable to provide visa sponsorship or work authorization support for this position. 

Why Journal Technologies? 

Visit www.journaltech.com/careers for more information, but highlights include:  

• Competitive compensation * The salary range posted for this position reflects a good-faith estimate of the base salary we reasonably expect to offer a successful candidate upon hire. Final compensation will be based on job-related factors, including qualifications, experience, geographic location, and internal compensation considerations.
• Quality medical, dental and vision coverage. 
• Competitive paid time off as well as paid holiday time. 
• 401(k) retirement (US) and GRRSP (CDN) programs. 
• Annual professional development funds - $1,500 USD annual per employee. 
• Book subscriptions with an extensive library in each office for personal and professional growth. 
• Flexible working hours which you can coordinate with your supervisor. 
• Ability for employees to work from a remote location (e.g., home) or office. 
• Personal meetings with direct managers approximately every four to six weeks to discuss career growth and advancement opportunities as well as other issues important to the employees. 
• Travel opportunities between Journal Technology offices and with clients. 

We provide technology that matters in the world, and we're a stable employer comprised of quality people, with a commitment to investing in our people.