IFS Solution Architect

Attalon is a leading technology partner to the global aerospace and defense industry, specializing in the physics of light and heat. With over 500 employees in the U.S., Attalon engineers critical optical, laser, and coating technologies that enable systems to see farther, target faster, and survive the harshest environments. From high-energy directed laser systems to satellite optics and hypersonic thermal protection, Attalon equips the warfighter with the advantage of precision.

We are seeking an experienced IFS Solution Architect to serve as the strategic custodian of our enterprise IFS architecture across Apps 10 and IFS Cloud.

This role owns solution design authority, governs platform change through the CAB, maintains the IFS roadmap and CUI pipeline, ensures regulatory alignment (CMMC, ITAR, DCAA), and leads the IFS Centre of Excellence (CoE).

The CoE includes functional leads and future SMEs who maintain their operational reporting lines but hold dotted-line accountability for standards, governance, and platform maturity.

This is a senior leadership role with broad influence across enterprise technology decisions, ERP-enabled transformation, and regulated operations, and is critical in ensuring a stable, scalable, secure, and future-ready IFS platform that supports business growth and regulatory requirements. This role is a remote position with occasional travel (as required)

Key Responsibilities

Enterprise Scope & Impact

Own the long-term architectural direction for the enterprise-wide IFS platform, ensuring it supports multi-site operations, regulated business environments, and future organizational growth.

Shape and influence ERP-enabled transformation initiatives by providing architectural leadership, risk insight, and strategic alignment to business and technology objectives.

Serve as a key contributor in enabling the successful delivery of agreed IT Value Creation Plans (VCPs) related to IFS, translating business value targets into executable architectural strategies and ensuring feasibility, compliance, and sustained operational benefit.

Drive maturity of the IFS Centre of Excellence (CoE), developing functional leads and SMEs into a high-performance capability that promotes consistent solution design, knowledge management, and ongoing platform evolution.

Partner with senior leaders across IT, Operations, Finance, and Compliance to ensure ERP strategy, roadmap decisions, and enterprise investment align with long-term value creation and regulatory requirements.

Evaluate and influence major architectural investment decisions, including commercial commitments, Cloud roadmap adoption, integration strategy, and cross-platform dependencies.

Own architectural risk management for the IFS landscape, ensuring proactive identification and mitigation of systemic or regulatory risks

IFS Architecture – Primary Responsibilities

Own and maintain the enterprise IFS architecture across Apps 10 and IFS Cloud.

Act as design authority for configurations, customizations, integrations, reports, and data model extensions.

Define architectural principles, integration standards, and design patterns to ensure consistency and upgradeability.

Ensure solutions are secure, scalable, and aligned with long-term roadmap and regulatory needs.

Governance & CAB Management

Govern and chair the IFS Change Advisory Board (CAB).

Review and approve design proposals and technical changes across functional and technical teams.

Manage architectural approvals, escalate risks, and ensure robust dependency and release governance.

IFS Centre of Excellence Leadership

Lead the IFS CoE as the central forum for platform governance, standards, and best practices.

Provide dotted-line leadership to functional leads and SMEs supporting IFS Cloud and BAU operations.

Define CoE operating rhythms, documentation requirements, training standards, and maturity goals.

Implement and govern ClickLearn for process documentation, training content, and guided learning.

Ensure knowledge assets are accurate, maintained, version-controlled, and aligned with approved business processes.

Promote consistent design decisions and shared accountability for the ERP platform.

Roadmap & CUI Pipeline Management

Own the multi-year IFS platform roadmap, including Cloud evolution, major releases, and structural improvements.

Govern and prioritize the Continuous Improvement Update (CUI) pipeline.

Work with business stakeholders to evaluate and sequence roadmap initiatives.

Serve as primary liaison to the IFS account manager for licensing, renewals, commercial alignment, integrations, and future product capabilities.

Ensure license entitlements and commercial agreements align with architectural strategy.

Regulatory & Security Alignment

Architect solutions that meet CMMC, ITAR, DCAA, and other regulatory frameworks.

Partner with InfoSec and Compliance teams to ensure secure design, traceability, audit readiness, and segregation-of-duties standards.

Govern access models, permissions, and security controls across the IFS landscape.

Delivery Oversight & Collaboration

Provide architectural guidance to IFS developers, functional consultants, SMEs, and third-party partners.

Validate design concepts before development to ensure alignment with standards and patterns.

Support the IFS Cloud implementation through solution design participation, integration oversight, testing direction, and quality assurance.

Align business processes and functional designs with architectural principles.

Platform Health & Lifecycle Management

Define and govern environment strategy across DEV/TEST/UAT/STAGE/PROD, including refresh cycles and release cadence.

Ensure system performance, stability, scalability, and availability.

Govern performance testing standards, load testing practices, and environment benchmarking.

Oversee permission model governance, SoD alignment, and periodic security review.

Lead platform optimization initiatives, tuning activities, and lifecycle improvements.

Collaborate with the Infrastructure team on environment sizing, capacity planning, performance requirements, and alignment between Cloud architecture and underlying infrastructure components.

Ways of Working

Work cross-functionally with business stakeholders, project teams, functional leads, and vendors.

Participate in change control, release management, and production deployment.

Maintain structured architectural documentation, decision logs, and design standards.

Escalate architectural risks, constraints, and compliance gaps promptly.

Required Experience

Extensive experience architecting IFS Apps 10 and/or IFS Cloud.

Prior experience as design authority or solution architect in ERP transformation programs.

Deep knowledge of IFS technical layers including projections, APIs, IFS Connect, Aurena, lobbies, and data models.

Strong expertise in integration patterns (REST, SOAP, middleware, event-based).

Experience contributing to or leading ERP Centres of Excellence.

Familiarity with CMMC, ITAR, DCAA, and regulated industries (A&D, manufacturing).

Strong Oracle/SQL/PLSQL capability.

Excellent communication and stakeholder influence skills.