Solutions Architect

Overview

As a Solutions Architect, you will leverage your consulting and professional services background to deliver innovative solutions that meet our client’s needs. You will excel in stakeholder management, be adept at communicating with both technical and non-technical parties and build robust client relationships. Your skills in expectation management, negotiation, and influence are vital for project success. Crucially, you will translate business requirements into effective technical solutions.

Responsibilities

• Have expertise in solution architecture and at least one IT Architecture domain (Business, Application, Information, Technology, Security).
• Lead software / product evaluation and selection according to Software Requirement Process requirements.
• Use Enterprise Architecture (EA) and Solution Architecture (SA) Tools such as Sparx Enterprise Architect and LeanIX.
• Write and present clear technical proposals with objectives, costs, and benefits.
• Design large or complex systems with enterprise integration patterns, interface design, messaging models, APIs and Loose Coupling architectures.
• Define and develop Agile Architecture within a Product Team and an Agile Release Train.
• Collaborate with the Enterprise Architecture Team on Architecture Runways for Sprints and Enabler Epics.
• Review other system designs for technology selection, resource efficiency, and system integration.
• Develop solution design within frameworks and tooling and get approval from the Architecture Review Board.
• Evaluate and analyze major design options and manage risks.
• Support the Application Architecture manager in setting the principles, standards, and technology strategy to align with the business strategy.
• Follow UK Architecture principles, guidelines and reference architectures in your high-level designs and feasibility papers.
• Ensure that the system design balances functional, service quality and systems management options.
• Be a part of and contribute to the architecture community of practice.
• Ability to design integrated digital solutions.

Qualifications

• BS/MS degree in Computer Science, Engineering or a related subject.
• TOGAF.
• CISSP or Cyber Essentials an advantage.
• Cloud certifications an advantage.

Essential skills

• Good Client-facing and communication skills.
• Proven capability to clearly and persuasively present complex information to senior stakeholders (Including C-Suite).
• People management skills - introducing and building ways in which people can learn from each other, encouraging mentoring and the transfer of knowledge by designing and delivering learning interventions.
• Team work and emotional intelligence.
• Good self-management – continuous performance is both an objective and a mind-set.
• High value on openness and transparency.
• Atlassian toolset.
• Familiarity with the Enterprise Architecture Repository (LeanIX), Planning IT and Sparx Enterprise Architect.
• Cloud platforms & Infrastructure.
• APIs and Loosely Coupled architectures.
• API Management tools including IBM API Connect and AWS API Gateway.
• Understanding of Canonical messaging, Corporate Information modelling and general data modelling techniques (3NF, Star schema, Extended Star Schema, Data Vault and relational database design).
• Understanding and application of different development styles, eg agile (XP, TDD, SCRUM), iterative, spiral, waterfall.
• Service Orchestration and Message oriented middleware solutions and/or integration platforms, including AMQP, AWS SQS, IBM DataPower and Microsoft Azure Service Bus.
• Web services – JSON, SOAP/XML/WS.
• DevOps Toolchains – Concourse, Microsoft Azure DevOps, Ansible, TeamCity etc.
• Understanding of networking protocols – transport (TCP/IP) and application (HTTP) level.
• BI and Data Warehousing Techniques including Informatica and SAP Business Objects.

Experience

• Experience of leading a team.

Benefits

• Collaborative working environment – we stand shoulder to shoulder with our clients and our peers through good times and challenges.
• We empower all passionate technology loving professionals by allowing them to expand their skills and take part in inspiring projects.
• Expleo Academy - enables you to acquire and develop the right skills by delivering a suite of accredited training courses.
• Competitive company benefits.
• Always working as one team, our people are not afraid to think big and challenge the status quo.