I'm on the lookout for a Generalist Senior Solution Architect to come and join a growing architecture team at a global edtech organisation. The ground is not well trodden with a light architectural review board, so not a massive amount of red tape.
Salary: Up to £90,000 + Bonus
Location: Once/Twice a week in London
The Role
The business is on a journey of transformation as they look to provide best in class business systems (ERPs, CRMs, etc) to transform processes, whilst also providing modern digital experiences for their customers. They're looking for Solution Architects who will sit at the heart of this, helping to create the solution and technical designs that will ultimately enable the delivery of these capabilities. You'll work closely with their business and technical teams, communicating your visions clearly, understanding business and customer need, and ultimately designing solutions that are fit for purpose, whilst also keeping an eye on the bigger picture.
You'll possess broad range of skills and experiences in systems architecture, data architecture, information security, compliance, SDLC and cloud computing. You'll be agnostic to underlying technologies - with a preference for driving fit-for-purpose solutions for the business and our customers. You'll be an excellent communicator - whether that's for technical concepts with their diverse distributed team or making technical concepts accessible to Director level stakeholders. You will be an influencer by nature, with a hands-on approach and a passion to continuously improve our ways of working.
Most importantly, you'll be a self-starter, passionate about your practice, focused on unlocking early value/evolving your approach with a firm belief in creating measurable business value. You will lead through influence and collaboration with business, product, and technical teams.
Key Responsibilities
- Provide Architectural leadership to specific projects and domains across the businesses. Ensure all stakeholders understand the solution design and that technical decisions are effectively and clearly communicated both within IT and to Business stakeholders.
- Work across the Group IT to align and standardise architecture design principles - using collaborative techniques to drive consensus, ensure common understanding and create alignment across technology teams.
- Work closely with product, engineering, and delivery teams to educate, collaborate and ensure technology products and solutions conform to architecture principles and standards.
- Participate in a Design Authority as a key core member to ensure that relevant designs meet with the overarching goals.
- Encourage best practices within the teams, ensuring continuous development pipelines and automation are enabled where appropriate as early as possible.
- Serve as an arbitrator and decision point for technical discussions within the team.
- Be able to develop clear and accessible designs and documentation that convey challenging ideas and designs at a glance.
- Work with Quality Teams to ensure clear, modern strategies and approaches are in place, and that deliverables consistently meet quality expectations.
- Undertake solution evaluation to find best-in-class products or components that represent a good fit for the Enterprise Technology landscape.
- Be able to work with a broad range of stakeholders, across Operations, Legal and Compliance teams. You'll use modern approaches such as Privacy-by-design to ensure key regulatory and compliance requirements are addressed in your solutions.
Your Experience
- Substantial experience working as a solution architect at enterprise scale with exposure to eCommerce business models and systems.
- Experience of design and architecture in both Agile and Waterfall environments
- Demonstrated experience working across a broad spectrum of different technologies, platforms, and approaches, with a clear understanding of modern architectural approaches and how best to apply these.
- Experience working across a variety of key enterprise components, including CMS, CRM, Billing, Payments, General Ledgers, and Business Intelligence
- Experience supporting business leaders though large projects and in guiding business owners in their decision making.
- Comfortable and confident working with both new and legacy technologies, with demonstrable experience in bridging the gap.
- Experience in cross-functional teams, specifically:
- Proven ability to work at a strategic level for solution design and development.
- Working with Product Owners / Key Stakeholders to understand requirements, epics, and key risks.
- Strong understanding of data protection and security implications
- Experience with large scale transformation programme
- Understanding of architectural frameworks (e.g.: TOGAF) and a range of IT development methodologies.
- Experience maximising the value of offshore teams through driving clear focus and common understanding of solutions and technical strategies.
