Appian Architect

Must be a US Citizen who can acquire a Public Trust. This is a remote position.

Statement of Work:
The Contractor shall provide the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) with an automation services platform capable of interacting with VA and third-party services to automate processing Veterans benefits for all Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) business lines, other VA entities (including Veterans Health Administration (VHA), National Cemetery Administration (NCA) and Board of Veteran Appeals (BVA)) and other federal agencies as approved by VBA. VBA’s efforts to automate benefits processing is a complex multi-year effort which requires the automation platform to be configurable to meet the needs as additional benefit automations are developed. The Contractor shall aid in eliciting and documenting requirements as VBA develops additional automation plans. The platform must replicate the services currently provided by the Mail Automation Services (MAS) and Additional Presumptive Capacity Automation Services (APCAS) task orders while being able to extend capabilities well beyond these previous contract vehicles. VBA envisions the Benefits Transformation Platform proceeding iteratively with increasingly automated processes (“automations”) being delivered in parallel.

The Benefits Transformation Platform shall be flexible enough to incorporate emerging technologies or connecting with existing systems when needed. The automation platform is required to integrate with multiple VA and non-VA systems through back ends and user interfaces. VBA expects to transform its IT architecture during the life of this contract to make greater use of APIs and other data services. The Benefits Transformation Platform shall be capable of creating or migrating to these services when directed by VBA.

The Contractor’s Benefits Transformation Platform shall utilize a wide range of technologies to meet VBA’s automation needs while using unattended automation.
These technologies include at minimum:

• Optical character recognition (OCR)
• Intelligent character recognition (ICR)
• Form extraction
• Artificial intelligence (AI)
• Natural language processing (NLP)
• Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)
• Robotic processing automation (RPA)
• Neural network models
• Machine learning
• Medical annotation

The platform will send and receive structured and unstructured information to perform automations which may include images, data, voice, and text.

Task Description:
Requirement for contractor services to automate its triage and handling of mail associated with Veterans benefits and to automate its FOIA processing.

Required skills/Level of Experience:

• Certified Level 2 Appian Developer
• 3+ Years of experience as a hands-on Appian Developer in a senior/lead role for production applications 1+ years of experience developing Appian Plugins
• 1 Year of experience managing an on-premises Appian Production Environment
• 2+ years of experience in configuring, debugging, and systems integration including configuring user interfaces, reports, underlying logic, and interface components as a developer.
• 2+ years of experience with relational databases and SQL scripting.
• 3+ years of experience in all phases of software development for large-scale business critical applications following Agile methodologies.
• 2+ years of experience in the design and implementation of SOAP and REST APIs

Nice to have skills:

• 2+ years of recent work experience on a software development project in a Federal government setting. Experience defining and documenting architecture for technology implementations leveraging different architectural views.
• 1 Year of Experience with Java
• Experience with Appian for Kubernetes
• Application Performance Optimization
• NoSQL databases
• Cloud Resource Management
• Excellent analytical and technical skills.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Exceptional interpersonal skills, including teamwork and facilitation