Solution Application Architect

Job Description

• Works with architects, business relationship managers, project managers and project sponsors to provide enterprise applications to specific business problems and issues across many domains
• Provide technical and architectural leadership in developing and transforming 's IT solution products cutting across technologies and deployment models.
• Create product and technology solution designs aligned with target state architectural vision and modernization efforts to meet business goals.
• Provide architectural guidance and governance to IT teams to build scalable and maintainable applications, adhere to Enterprise Architecture technology roadmaps, and minimize technical debt
• Participate in product development activities such as architecture, design, prototyping, implementation and review. Takes full responsibility for the balance between functional requirements, service quality and systems management requirements for online products
• Manage the portfolio of applications' target design, policies and standards, working proactively to maintain a stable, viable architecture and ensure consistency of design across projects
• Evaluates design approaches, makes architectural recommendations, and implements improvements. Identifies technology gaps, risks and issues in the current systems and develops remediation strategies and roadmaps to align to target state architecture
• Leads application system design review activities (as part of Architectural Review Board) to ensure the application architecture is scalable and consistent with overall architectural vision and design principles. Drives adoption of and adherence to relevant policies, standards, strategies and architectures. This will include reviews of IT technical standards for use in solutioning.
• Reviews current changes to and proposed new solutions for compliance with 's obligations (including legislation, regulatory, contractual and agreed standards/policies) and adherence to overall EA strategy. Prepares and presents project documentation for the architecture review board (ARB).
• Develop design patterns and/or reusable software components that enable software and data integration teams to develop high-quality solutions.
• Lead and coordinate the application, data and technical discussions relative to future architecture direction across different business unit owners or product portfolios.
• Analyze technology environment for adherence to agreed upon technology standards
• Actively maintains recognized expert level knowledge in major cloud hosting vendor (e.g. AWS, Azure) infrastructure components
• Takes responsibility for understanding client requirements, collecting data, delivering analysis and problem resolution
• Develop and define software technology roadmaps in collaboration with senior engineering, product management, peer architecture groups, and service leaders.
• Communicate technology strategy in a simple, effective and understandable manner to business leaders and engineers.
• Mentor and develop engineers and help them grow technically on emerging technology trends

Basic Qualifications

Education:

• Bachelor's degree required in Computer Science, Information Systems, or related field.

Experience:

• 5+ years of working in multiple IT functional areas
• 5+ years of experience in engineering and software architecture design.
• 2+ years of experience in designing hybrid solutions using SaaS/PaaS solutions and public cloud platforms (e.g. AWS, Azure).

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities (KSA's):

• Strong experience in designing and developing solution architectures in a hybrid cloud environment involving SaaS vendor solutions and on-prem data centers
• Strong experience participating in the software development lifecycle leveraging the latest methodologies and industry applicable technologies
• Excellent communicator and negotiator with exceptional written, verbal, presentation, and interpersonal skills and ability to communicate with all level of staff to determine system requirements, processes and data flows.
• Deep analytical skills in designing a solution requiring understanding of how different parts of work together. Ability to move between various business layers with ease.
• Strong organizational and leadership skills
• Experience in designing of service-oriented architectures (SOA) including microservices and self-contained systems
• Ability to work in a collaborative and fast paced agile environment to evangelize best practices and clean architectures
• Ability to communicate technical concepts to technical and non-technical audiences
• Proven record of delivering technology solutions within agreed upon time frames for high-profile web applications

Preferred Qualifications

Experience:

• 2+ years of ITIL based service management
• 2+ years of agile software development frameworks (e.g. Scrum, Kanban)
• 2+ years of enterprise architectural frameworks (e.g. TOGAF, FEA, Zachman)

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities (KSA's):

• Experience in developing Microservices architecture
• Experience in Architecture Refactoring and Modernization
• Experience or knowledge of Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery
• Knowledge of low-code platforms such as Pega Systems
• Knowledge of enterprise architecture repositories such as Bizz Design or ArchiMate
• Knowledge of ITIL, TOGAF is a plus
• Experience in project management is advantageous