Solutions Architect

Job Description

Job Purpose:The job holder will ensure that technical solutions adhere to both IT strategic direction and policy and provide technical consultancy and support to major organizational initiatives, enabling the com to make technically sound decisions regarding its ITstrategy.Responsibilities::Collaborates with other domain experts whilst retaining accountability of the solution architecture.Promotes and champions technical architecture strategy through strong communication.Establish cadence of interaction throughout the architecture team, IT department, project teams and the IB in general to ensure alignment.Develop and implement standardized approach to solution architecture:Enforcing standards, working practices and procedures to drive solution architecture work in a uniform manner.Monitoring, guidance and regular workshops held within the team to ensure alignment is maintained and deliverables and processes are constantly improving and evolving in line with organizational changes.Support SDLC in place in the application development team and the solution design and project management processes in place within the project office.Provide thought leadership and subject matter expertise on architecture innovation:Keeps up to date on industry trends and technology development where it relates to educational software and its use by other examination boards and other educational institutions.Research and recommend new technical opportunities.Provide updates to the broader team.Develop effective outsourcing and/or offshoring solutions to complement the technical architecture strategy:Identify providers as per procurement guidelines.Interface and coordinate tasks with internal and external technical resources as well as to collaborate with cross-function project teams to provision estimates, develop overall implementation solution plan.Work with suppliers and business partners to understand the technical merits and short & long-term strategic fit of potential products and services aligned with the companies technical strategy.Develop Request for Proposal (RFP) based on requirements gathered from internal customers.Project Execution:

• Oversee aspects of project life cycle from initial kick-off through requirements analysis, design and implementation phases for projects.
• Interface and coordinate tasks with internal and external technical resources to ensure all requirements are met.
• Helps project team recognize and mitigate any risk to existing business processes or to the solutions overall success.
• May be involved in training to make sure the solution will be supported and maintained appropriately after implementation is complete.

Experience:

• Extensive experience of IT work with IT-related degree or equivalent experience
• A proven track record of the successful execution of strategic plans throughout organizations
• Experience with MS Azure especially Power BI, Azure Data Factory, Azure SQL, Machine Learning, Service Bus
• Knowledge of the use of Azure DevOps/VSTS for source control and automated CI/CD pipeline
• A deep, broad technical background in IT architecture and a sound knowledge of web technologies, architecture patterns, design Patterns, SOLID principles, and Domain Driven Design (DDD), enterprise architecture frameworks and delivering technical strategyroadmaps, Object-Oriented Development (OOD/OOP) and Service Oriented Architectures (SOA)
• Extensive experience of Enterprise Data Warehousing including Data Vault, OLTP
• Experience of and affinity for event-driven, microservices, and serverless architectures
• Applied knowledge of Design Patterns, SOLID principles, and Domain Driven Design (DDD)
• Extensive experience working with systems analysis and modelling techniques such as service oriented and object-oriented analysis, UML and Archimate
• A sound understanding of the principles of Enterprise Architecture
• A proven track record in delivering quality solution architecture design using industry standard approaches and tools
• Experience of delivering major software projects in all aspects of the development lifecycle
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to chair meetings and deliver presentations
• Excellent negotiating and influencing skills
• Good awareness of trends and directions in technology
• Ability to effectively prioritise and execute tasks in a high-pressure environment
• Flexible approach and willingness to work within a global team regardless of location
• Experience with the C# and .NET framework
• Comfortable with one or more ORMs, preferably Entity Framework (EF Core)