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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for AEM Architect

💰 $ - $

AEMAdobe Experience ManagerWCMCMSDigital ExperienceCloud

🎯 Role Definition

As an AEM Architect you will be the technical lead for Adobe Experience Manager implementations across marketing and product channels. You will design end-to-end AEM solutions—covering AEM Sites, Assets, Dispatcher, Sling, OSGi, JCR, integrations with third-party systems and headless delivery—drive architecture decisions, enforce best practices, and mentor development teams to deliver high-performing, secure, scalable digital experiences. This role requires hands-on coding experience, proven architecture and migration expertise (including AEM 6.x to AEM as a Cloud Service), DevOps automation know-how, and strong stakeholder communication to align business goals with technical execution.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Senior AEM Developer
  • Technical Lead (Java/Spring/OSGi)
  • Solutions Architect (WCM/CMS)

Advancement To:

  • Lead Architect / Principal Architect (Digital Experience)
  • Head of Engineering / Director of Platforms
  • Chief Technology Officer (for smaller organizations)

Lateral Moves:

  • Experience Platform Architect (CMS + DAM + Personalization)
  • Cloud Architect (GCP / AWS / Azure focusing on SaaS PaaS)
  • Integration Architect / API Architect

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Define, document and advocate the end-to-end AEM architecture and technical roadmap that aligns with business objectives, including AEM Sites, AEM Assets, Dispatcher configurations, Sling models, OSGi services and JCR repository design.
  • Lead migration strategy and execution planning for upgrading from on-premises or classic AEM versions to AEM as a Cloud Service, including code refactoring, sandbox testing and rollback plans.
  • Design and implement scalable AEM topology and infrastructure patterns (author/publish clusters, dispatcher, CDN, load balancing) to ensure resilience, high availability and global performance.
  • Specify and validate integration architectures between AEM and third-party systems such as CRM, Marketing Automation (Adobe Campaign/Marketo), DAMs, PIMs, Analytics (Adobe Analytics), and custom REST/GraphQL APIs.
  • Create detailed component, template and content model designs (Content Fragments, Experience Fragments, Editable Templates) to enable multi-site and multilingual content reuse and editorial workflows.
  • Deliver secure architecture patterns and guidelines for authentication, authorization, and session management in AEM, integrating with identity providers (SAML, OAuth, OpenID Connect) and ensuring adherence to security standards.
  • Drive performance tuning and capacity planning across AEM stack (GC tuning, JVM settings, dispatcher caching rules, CDN configuration, query optimization) and provide measurable SLAs and KPIs.
  • Architect headless and hybrid headless solutions using AEM as a Content Services (GraphQL/REST) for SPAs and mobile channels, including SSR/SSG considerations for performance and SEO.
  • Design CI/CD pipelines and DevOps automation for AEM (Cloud Manager, Jenkins, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps) including build optimization, automated testing, and deployment strategies for AEM as a Cloud Service.
  • Define code quality, development standards and governance (Sling Models, HTL/JS Use-API rules, OSGi modularization, unit/integration test coverage) and enforce through code reviews and static analysis tools.
  • Lead discovery, requirements gathering and mapping sessions with business and editorial teams to translate content and personalization needs into concrete AEM technical solutions.
  • Architect and implement Digital Asset Management workflows, renditions, metadata models and automated ingest processes within AEM Assets to support omni-channel publishing and creative operations.
  • Establish operational runbooks, monitoring, alerting and observability for AEM platform health (metrics/logs/traces) and integrate with enterprise monitoring (Splunk, New Relic, Datadog) and incident management processes.
  • Mentor and provide hands-on technical leadership to AEM development teams, distributing architecture patterns, conducting knowledge transfer workshops and resolving complex implementation issues.
  • Design multi-tenancy, multisite and cloud tenancy patterns to support global rollout, brand isolation, and content governance across geographic and business unit boundaries.
  • Lead POC and technology evaluation for third-party modules, marketplace packages and cloud services that complement AEM capabilities (personalization engines, search, recommendation services).
  • Create and maintain architecture artifacts (diagrams, runbooks, decision records, reference implementations) to ensure repeatable, auditable delivery processes.
  • Coordinate with infrastructure and network teams to design secure, performant connectivity for AEM (CDN, firewalls, WAF, private networking, peering) and data residency compliance.
  • Drive accessibility, internationalization and SEO best practices across AEM implementations (semantic HTML in HTL, correct canonicalization, sitemap generation, hreflang) to improve organic search and compliance.
  • Manage technical risks, prepare migration and upgrade impact assessments, and produce cost/benefit analyses and effort estimates for executive stakeholders.
  • Establish automated testing strategies (unit, integration, regression, UI tests) for AEM components and content delivery, including test data management and environment parity.
  • Collaborate with UX, product management, and content teams to design editorial experiences and authoring interfaces that balance flexibility and governance.
  • Oversee dispatcher and caching strategy for dynamic and personalized content, ensuring cache invalidation rules, surrogate keys, and cache-control policies are implemented correctly.

Secondary Functions

  • Provide guidance on content governance, taxonomy and metadata models to improve discoverability and reusability across AEM-managed properties.
  • Support product owners and release managers with sprint planning, architecture spikes, and technical debt prioritization for AEM platform improvements.
  • Maintain relationships with Adobe support, solution partners and third-party vendors to troubleshoot, patch and optimize AEM environments.
  • Help define licensing, capacity and upgrade roadmaps and advise procurement and finance teams on AEM-related cost implications.
  • Conduct regular architecture reviews and security assessments to ensure compliance with enterprise policies and industry standards.
  • Contribute to company-wide digital platform strategy by evaluating new capabilities in the Adobe Experience Cloud ecosystem and recommending adoption paths.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Deep expertise in Adobe Experience Manager (AEM Sites and AEM Assets) across versions 6.x and AEM as a Cloud Service, including Cloud Manager and Sling/OSGi architecture.
  • Strong Java development skills and experience building OSGi services, Sling Models, Servlets, JCR API and custom workflows in AEM.
  • Hands-on experience with HTL (Sightly), client-side libraries, JavaScript frameworks (React/Angular/Vue) for SPA integrations and server-side rendering strategies.
  • Proficiency designing and configuring Dispatcher, caching, CDN (Akamai, Cloudfront), and web server rules for performance, security and cache invalidation.
  • Experience with headless delivery patterns (Content Fragments/GraphQL/REST) and building content APIs for SPAs and mobile apps.
  • Strong understanding of CI/CD and DevOps for AEM: Cloud Manager, Jenkins, GitLab CI, Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, and pipeline automation.
  • Experience upgrading and migrating AEM instances (including migration tools, CRX2Oak, migration of custom code and content model changes).
  • Familiarity with Adobe Experience Cloud integrations: Adobe Analytics, Target, Launch/Launch by Adobe (or Adobe Tag Manager), Campaign and third-party MarTech systems.
  • Knowledge of enterprise integration patterns, RESTful services, GraphQL, OAuth, SAML, and identity federation with enterprise IAM solutions.
  • Expertise in performance tuning, JVM optimization, repository scaling, and troubleshooting complex production issues using APM and log analysis tools.
  • Practical knowledge of security best practices: secure coding for AEM components, dispatcher hardening, WAF rules, and vulnerability remediation.
  • Experience with metadata modeling, DAM workflows, rendition management, and automated asset ingestion strategies in AEM Assets.
  • Solid skills in SQL/noSQL, search technologies (Solr, Elasticsearch), and CMS search configuration and tuning relevant to AEM implementations.
  • Familiarity with accessibility (WCAG), i18n/l10n strategies, SEO principles and implementing them within AEM authoring and delivery pipelines.
  • Experience with Agile delivery models, sprint planning, backlog grooming and working closely with product owners and business stakeholders.

Soft Skills

  • Strong communication and stakeholder management, able to explain complex architecture decisions to non-technical executives and business owners.
  • Leadership and mentoring: experience guiding teams, conducting code reviews, and fostering technical growth and best practices.
  • Analytical problem-solving and systems thinking: break down large platform challenges into pragmatic, prioritized technical solutions.
  • Collaboration and cross-functional facilitation: work effectively with UX, product, QA, security and infrastructure teams to deliver cohesive solutions.
  • Customer-focused mindset with attention to editorial experience, usability and content author workflows.
  • Adaptability and continuous learning: stay current with Adobe Experience Cloud updates, cloud-native patterns and industry trends.
  • Time management and delivery focus: balance strategic roadmap work with hands-on delivery and incident response.
  • Negotiation and influence: articulate trade-offs and align stakeholders on architecture decisions, timelines and budgets.
  • Documentation and teaching: produce clear architecture artifacts, runbooks and training materials to scale knowledge across the organization.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, or related technical field. Equivalent demonstrable experience also accepted.

Preferred Education:

  • Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field, or relevant professional certifications (Adobe Certified Expert - AEM Architect, Adobe Certified Professional).
  • Certifications in cloud platforms (AWS/Azure/GCP), DevOps, or security are a plus.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Software Engineering
  • Information Systems
  • Web Engineering
  • Digital Media / Human-Computer Interaction (helpful for UX collaboration)

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 6+ years in web content management and Java-based platform architecture; 3+ years specifically as an AEM Architect or Technical Lead on large-scale AEM implementations.

Preferred:

  • 8+ years total experience with at least 4 years focused on AEM (Sites and Assets) implementations, migrations or upgrades.
  • Proven track record delivering enterprise, multi-site, multilingual AEM platforms at scale, including AEM as a Cloud Service migration experience.
  • Experience working in distributed teams and global rollouts, with direct accountability for architecture, technical direction, and operational readiness.
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