Solutions Architect

Job Description

Our Solution Architects are required to be generalists in the field of Information Technology; have the ability to translate technical subjects to business and senior stakeholders and have the ability to engage and work with technical SME domain owners; such as network; security; compute (Public/Private); automation and storage. Our Solution Architect s primary focus is to deliver an end to end solution against the scope defined within a specific change activity. They are required to gather and translate a set of business requirements and develop solution visions complete with high-level business case; IT system specifications and ensure the delivery of this solution is met through predefined set of implementation tasks. Our Solution Architect s will leverage a standard set of enterprise wide artefacts such as Design Patterns; Standards and follow guiding Design Principles ensuring the develop end to end solution architectures are delivering GBS strategic intent and ensures we leverage any pre-defined services within our service catalogue.Essential Duties and responsibilitiesStrategy and Architecture: Uses appropriate tools; including logical models of components and interfaces; to contribute to the development of systems architectures in specific business or functional areas. Produces detailed component specifications and translates these into detailed designs for implementation using selected products. Within a business change programme; assists in the preparation of technical plans and cooperates with business assurance and project staff to ensure that appropriate technical resources are made available. Provides advice on technical aspects of system development and integration (including requests for changes; deviations from specifications; etc.) and ensures that relevant technical strategies; policies; standards and practices (including security) are applied correctly. Applies ethical and robust techniques in the transformation of data from one format/medium to another; in line with organisational policies and procedures and being sensitive to risks around the use of information. Promotes and ensures use of appropriate techniques; methodologies and tools.Change and Transformation: Investigates operational needs and problems; and opportunities; contributing to the recommendation of improvements in automated and non-automated components of new or changed processes and organisation. Assists in defining acceptance tests for these recommendations. Uses established techniques as directed to identify current problems and elicit; specify and document business functional; data and non-functional requirements for simple subject areas with clearly-defined boundaries. Assists in more complex requirements activities and with the processes for establishing agreed baselines for change and managing the assessment and application of requested changes to those requirements.Development and implementation: Defines solution development projects which support the organisations objectives and plans. Ensures that senior management is both aware of and able to provide the required resources. Contributes effectively to improving solution development processes within the organisation justified by measurable business benefits. Facilitates availability and optimum utilisation of resources; especially in Agile projects. Monitors and reports on the progress of development projects; ensuring that projects are carried out in accordance with agreed standards; methods and procedures (including secure software development). Applies secure development improvement practices. Recommends/designs structures and tools for systems which meet business needs and takes into account target environment; performance security requirements and existing systems. Delivers technical visualisation of proposed applications for approval by customer and execution by system developers. Translates logical designs into physical designs; and produces detailed design documentation. Maps work to user specification and removes errors and deviations from specification to achieve user-friendly processes. Leads a team; providing expert technical knowledge in the systems testing of platform-specific versions of the software products; on varying platforms. Provides specialist guidance information to support; systems testing and quality assurance functions to assist in improving procedures. Specifies and designs complex hardware components/ systems. Selects appropriate design standards; methods and tools; consistent with agreed enterprise policies; and ensures they are applied effectively. Reviews others designs to ensure selection of appropriate technology; efficient use of resources; and effective integration of multiple systems and technology. Contributes to policy for selection of components. Evaluates and undertakes impact analysis on major design options and assesses and manages associated risks. Ensures that hardware designs balance functional; service quality; security; systems management and sustainability requirements. Takes responsibility for installation projects; providing effective team leadership; including information flow to and from the customer during project work. Develops and implements quality plans and method statements. Monitors the effectiveness of installations and ensures that appropriate recommendations for change are made.Delivery and Operation: Contributes to the availability management process and its operation and performs defined availability management tasks. Analyses service and component availability; reliability; maintainability and serviceability. Ensures that services and components meet and continue to meet all of their agreed performance targets and service levels. Implements arrangements for disaster recovery and documents recovery procedures. Conducts testing of recovery procedures.Relationships and engagement: The identification; analysis; management and monitoring of relationships with and between stakeholders. (Stakeholders are individuals; groups; or organisations who may affect; be affected by; or perceive themselves to be affected by decisions; activities and outcomes related to products; services or changes to products and services). The clarification of mutual needs and commitments through consultation and consideration of impacts. For example; the coordination of all promotional activities to one or more clients to achieve satisfaction for the client and an acceptable return for the supplier; assistance to the client to ensure that maximum benefit is gained from products and services supplied.Other Duties Performs other duties as assigned by managementJob Qualifications & EXPERIENCEEducation: Preferred: Bachelors degree in Computer Science; Management Information Systems; or a related fieldExperience: More than 10 years IT Experience More than 5 years experience within an Architecture Role At least 2 years leadership experience Recent experience within Architecture; Design and implementation of complex; highly available and highly scalable solutions Must posses DR Experience More than 4 years experience with migrating datacenters workloads towards Azure. Cloud Computing Server/Datacenter virtualization Storage Information Security Network Enterprise wide Architectural governance; architecture decisions; exceptions; standards etc Developing complex business cases.Other Knowledge; Skills; Abilities or Certifications: Architecture Certification: TOGAF; ARCHIMATE; ZACHMAN; etc MCSD: Azure Solutions ArchitectAzure Certified Solution ArchitectureSoft Skills Required: Excellent analytical and problem-solving abilities Excellent communication and presentation skills Project management skills: financial/budget management; scheduling and resource management,

Keyskills :
team leadershipservice qualitydesign patternsbusiness casedetail designmanagement information systemsproblem solvinguser storiesimpact analysis