Technical Solution Architect recruitment

Role:

This team will form part of the wider Group Head Office (GHO) IT team and its primary role will be to provide IT leadership, direction and governance to other areas of GHO IT in the definition of appropriate project designs and solutions to ensure convergence with the Strategic IT Architecture.

• To develop, maintain and disseminate elements of the Strategic IT Architecture (applications, data infrastructure) taking into account business strategy, industry direction, technology innovation and input from other areas of GHO IT.

• To communicate the Strategic IT Architecture to stakeholders.

• To provide IT leadership, direction and governance to other areas of GHO IT in the definition of appropriate project designs and solutions to ensure convergence with the Strategic IT Architecture.

• To work closely with the relevant IT Business Managers in providing IT leadership and guidance to business areas in their strategic planning and project development lifecycle.

• To highlight new opportunities to business and IT areas through research of innovative technologies, investigation of new supplier offerings and on-going management of strategic suppliers.

• To interface with business and IT areas to influence and shape the development of capabilities across the UK to meet the strategic business goals.

• The Architect takes responsibility for managing and delivering a number of domains of the IT Architecture, e.g. Workflow, Customer Desktop. (The overall Architecture can be split into several areas, e.g. Applications, Infrastructure and Data, each of which is split into a number of domains.)

Accountabilities:

• To assist with the definition of an integrated technology strategy, including IT architecture, governance and standards, for GHO IT that is consistent with the overall business strategy.

• To run the Programme design authority board that supports both the Application Delivery and Infrastructure Delivery teams to design and deliver project IT architectures that support the business requirements and ensure convergence with the overall technology strategy.

• To assess projects and initiatives for ‘fit’ against the Strategic IT Architecture, work to resolve non-conformance with the programme / portfolio team and where necessary escalate.

• To liaise and interface with Business Transformation to ensure that the Strategic IT Architecture supports business requirements and future strategy.

• To maintain knowledge of industry standards and technology suppliers in order to understand their product development strategy and apply this to the Strategic IT Architecture (i.e. application, infrastructure and data architectures) in addition to cascading this information to the rest of GHO IT.

• To prepare and deliver briefings and presentations for the GHO IT executive management teams.

Desired Knowledge:

• Ideally an Architect who has been working on a large Solvency II programme dealing with actuaries ideally with exposure to Algo risk tool.

• Broad knowledge of the financial services industry and key regulatory requirements together with an understanding of business processes.

• Knowledge and understanding of business strategy / planning, financial analysis, marketing and operational processes.

• Strong inter-personal skills, demonstrating a variety of influencing styles to enable effective completion of tasks both individually and within groups. Builds sustainable relationships with colleagues and key individuals in the business.

• Shows a desire to take the initiative, moving issues forward with clarity. Demonstrates an ability to think ‘outside the box’ while defining solutions in a workable form.

• Ability to take complex, multi-faceted problems and work with them through to simple solutions recognising synergies and options.

Experience and Background:

• Extensive IT understanding across the breath of IT.

• Applied understanding of systems architecture, application architecture or data architecture.

• Evidenced practice of in the development and maintenance of IT architecture and IT strategy.