Principle Architect

Job Description

Canada Life UK looks after the retirement, investment and protection needs of individuals, families and companies. We help to build better futures for our customers, our intermediaries and our employees by operating as a modern, agile and welcoming organisation. Part of our parent company Great-West Lifeco, Canada Life UK has operated in the United Kingdom since 1903. We have hundreds of respected and supported employees committed to doing the right thing for our customers and colleagues. Canada Life UK is transforming to create a more customer-focused business by providing our customers with expertise on financial and tax planning, offering home finance and annuities propositions, and providing collective fund solutions to third party customers. About you You are a Principal or Enterprise Architect with extensive experience of web, mobile, data and integration technologies. You thrive on driving business transformation by applying these technologies, delivering exciting new capabilities for customers and staff. You understand that achieving these goals involves developing innovative solutions to complex business and technology problems. You enjoy working with a diverse range of technologies and understand the need to consider the human as well as technical aspectsof the choices we make. You love learning and keep up to date with contemporary architecture styles and patterns, and youve made mistakes before in applying architecture choices and learnt valuable lessons which youre looking forward to applying in a new environment. Job summary You will report directly to our Head of Architecture. Working with our business and technology teams, youll work to understand our customers, our business, our technology and bring this together into a coherent technology strategy. Youll collaborate acrossthe organisation to develop roadmaps to achieve this strategy, and youll actively support teams to deliver on these roadmaps over time. Youll make pragmatic, smart choices that allow us to deliver value at every step of the way, and youll act as an evangelist and advocate of our strategy, helping to build excitement and momentum as we deliver. What youll do

• Work with Business Analysts, Architects, Senior IT and Business Managers to understand the businesss strategy and information technology needs. Proposes solutions to meet the strategy.
• Identify opportunities to enable business change through the application of technology.
• Producing strategies for technology that meets business needs.
• Assesses the architectural impact and implications of business or technology changes that are being contemplated and make recommendations.
• Assess future initiatives, providing insight on feasibility and probable technology directions.
• Support the annual budget process by estimating technology and project delivery costs and effort.
• Create the vision that guides the creation of the solution from inception through delivery
• Ensure that all aspects of the solutions align to technology roadmaps.
• Assess new technology coming into the company.
• Review the project architectures for projects delivering within their business area and supports the architectures at CLUK TDA or any other governing body.
• Ensure architectural compliance to development, security or Infrastructure standards across their Business Area
• Partner with delivery teams and project sponsors to ensure projects delivered to the agreed quality.
• Provide input to the creation of the project deliverables across the business domain.
• Provide mentorship and coaching to other architects
• Able to produce and review estimates, ensuring that they represent a deliverable and commercially-viable solution.
• Works with the procurement team and vendors to co-ordinate the selection and implementation of products, if applicable

Who you are

• Extensive professional experience as an Enterprise Architect (Technology Domain) with exposure to the Data, Application and Business Domains
• Capable of making and guiding effective choices, explaining clearly how the conclusion was reached. The ability to understand and resolve technical disputes across varying levels of complexity and risk.
• Able to work with business and technology stakeholders to translate business problems into technical designs. Creates an optimal design through an iterative process, aligning the user need with the system requirements and organisational objectives.
• Able to look beyond the immediate technical problem and identify the wider implications. Zooming out in multiple dimensions - knowing relevant historical context and future impact, understanding how current work fits in broader contexts and strategies,and looking for deeper underlying problems and opportunities.
• Understands technical governance and is able to participate in or deliver the assurance of a service. This capability becomes increasingly critical at senior role levels.
• Capable of producing strategy for technology that meets business needs. Able to create, refine and evaluate patterns, standards, policies, roadmaps and vision statements. Senior roles tend to be more proactive as they set the strategy. Junior roles tendto be more reactive, responding to the strategy.

Skills

Experience of Digital Experience Platforms.

Knowledge and experience of multiple integration and API enablement technologies.

Knowledge of Customer Data Platforms and their deployment within enterprises.

Experience of Architecting Web and Mobile Apps.

Experience in Microservices and Miniservices.

Experience on Cloud Data solutions in the context of Digital Service.

Experience of Telecom Domain Systems.

Experience in designing and deploying solutions in cloud-native enterprise applications in public, private and hybrid cloud models.

People Management - Extensive leadership and management skills, ability to influence others through strong collaboration while maintaining effective relationships.

Excellent interpersonal and communication skills with ability to negotiate and resolve conflicting priorities and able to work effectively at all levels

Self-directed, proactive, works on own initiative with a best practice approach.

Excellent facilitation skills, high energy and resilience with a focus on relationship management and driving successful outcomes

Strong logical and critical thinking skills, has the ability to simplify and resolve complex human and technology problems

Degree level qualification in computer science or equivalent useful but not required<