Solutions Architect

Job Description

IHS Markit Global IT provide services across a broad range of technical disciplines and leverages investment in world class technologies in support of IHS Markits products and clients. Solutions Engineering is responsible for defining, planning and delivering infrastructure solutions. Through our experience we support all IHS Markits products on a global basis offering a breadth of "right sized" IT solutions in terms of availability, speed, capacity, security, efficiency, scalability and manageability. Position Summary Candidates for this position will work as member of the Commercial Product Delivery & Support team and will be responsible for establishing and maintaining a comprehensive understanding of IHS Markits major application platforms and the component systems on which they depend. The candidate will focus on end-to-end performance of platform component systems and will work across the Infrastructure and Information Security organizations to identify ways in which the availability and resiliency of these applications can be enhanced. He/she will assist these organizations in establishing operational practices for managing overall performance and availability through the comprehensive and consistent monitoring, event correlation, release management, security management, capacity management, and disaster recovery. He/she will work closely with members of the Product Design & Development (PD&D) organization, advocating design decisions that will reduce the complexity and technical debt of IHS Markits existing systems and to improve the resiliency and supportability of future systems. He/she will influence the infrastructure design needed to host those applications through his/her knowledge of deployment and operational best practices. Success in this position will require a broad knowledge of the principles of engineering architecture and design including technologies such as web hosting, database solutions, virtualization, networking, storage, security, and desktop environments. The candidate must be a team player able to collaborate effectively with colleagues globally. The candidate must possess soft skills including a positive attitude, strong work ethic, excellent verbal and written communications, people skills, creative and abstract thinking, negotiations, results-driven project management, business acumen, and the ability to lead and influence others. In addition to those items listed below, the ideal candidate will have prior exposure to Public Cloud (Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure) and DevOps tools and procedures. Duties & Accountabilities Participate as part of a project team in developing, implementing and supporting infrastructure technologies for the business. Provide technical support and problem resolution on complex and moderately complex issues in one or more of the following areas: servers, networking, storage, data centers or desktop environments. Provide customer-facing support service to internal colleagues as required. Manage small to medium-sized projects or portions of large projects and assist in resolving issues and planning for new applications and services. Identify and recommend opportunities to improve and enhance communication services to internal and external customers. Establish delivery timelines for small to medium-sized programs or portions of a program; manage assigned segment of program within budget and time constraints. Monitor and report to management on program status, identify issues that may impede attainment of goals, recommend and implement corrective measures. Provide technical direction and training to more junior Technical Services personnel. Perform other duties as required. Specific Job Duties Work directly with project managers and development managers in the context of a project team to design, implement, and troubleshoot the infrastructure required to support new applications or to scale existing applications. Develop the guidelines and procedures necessary to troubleshoot the performance of an application prior to go-live. Act as a third-tier escalation point for applications and infrastructure systems. Collaborate with Product Design & Development, Service Management, Solution Delivery and Operational Support to resolve technical or procedural issues and suggest alternatives. Consult with Senior Management, Service Management, Solution Delivery and Operational Support on the development of new infrastructure processes and procedures. Partner with Product Design & Development and Operational Support on the evaluation and standardization of new technologies. Act as liaison between Product Design & Development, Solution Delivery and Operational Support to clarify implementation concerns and technical direction. Drive the adoption of new technologies, infrastructure processes and procedures, and approved best practices and standards within the organization. Provide technical direction, mentoring and training to Technical Engineers. Perform other duties as assigned. Education & Experience Bachelors in Computer Science, related field, or equivalent experience. Proven experience supporting IT industry best practices. Knowledge of application infrastructure design patterns and support methodologies. 8+ years of enterprise-level Information Technology experience. 6+ years supporting 24x7 production environments. Technical Skills Deep experience with one or more of the following: Microsoft Office Microsoft Visio Microsoft Windows Server Red Hat Linux Active Directory and LDAP Virtualization technologies (VMware vSphere 5 preferred) Big IP F5 load-balancer (LTM, GTM and AAM modules) AVI load-balancer Networking technologies (TCP/IP v4, v6, and basic network troubleshooting skills) Storage technologies (CIFS, NFS, mounts, shares, ACLs) Experience with one or more of the following is highly desirable: VMC (VMware running on AWS) Amazon Web Services Azure Web Servers - IIS, Apache, Tomcat Application Servers - JBoss, Oracle Middleware, IBM WebSphere Oracle - Including RMAN, DataGuard, Flashback Microsoft SQL Server PL/SQL shell scripting and query optimization Python Ansible Puppet Jenkins GitHub Docker Kubernetes Windows PowerShell Microsoft .NET Framework MySQL and Sybase ESRI ArcGIS Professional certifications are highly desirable but not required. Personal Impact Must be able to manage own schedule with the flexibility needed to support colleagues. Strong interpersonal skills - must be able to work effectively as part of a project/program team, set expectations, and foster team cooperation. Strong analytical and solutions design and architecture skills. Strong influencing skills. Good presentation skills. Strong analytical and problem-solving skills. Strong budgeting and financial control skills. Able to work independently with minimal supervision. Ability to successfully lead a project team. Takes responsibility for their own actions and the actions of their team. Displays energy, drive, and stamina. Able to prog