Cloud Solutions Architect

The Insurance Technology Cloud Solution Architect is a senior role, and the successful candidate will work In a small group of Architects focuses on the best practices to design and operate the platform of our SaaS solutions and offerings.

The Cloud Solution Architect will report to the Platform and SaaS Principal Architect and will work alongside lead system architects assigned to each our product families and security architects. The Cloud Solution Architect will be responsible for the design of our common platform components and standards and will work closely with DevSecOps and Site Reliability Engineers to automate our environment deployments and CI/CD pipelines. The successful candidate will also work alongside our Principal Test Engineer and one or more Principal Software Engineers to contribute to delivering best practice across all of our Product Families.

The primary responsibility of the Principal Architect will be this common platform which we think of as composed of core foundational services, environment automation and CI/CD pipelines, and strategic business platform services.

The “core foundational services” are the services required for us to scale cost-effectively to deliver SaaS to thousands of insurance organizations.Examples include but aren’t limited to Identity and Access Management, Container Orchestration, Deployment, Infrastructure as Code, API Management, Service Monitoring and Alerting, and Security.

The environment automation and pipeline architecture will require working with our DevSecOps leaders and architects on the current state and developing a common approach to automate our SSDLC. This will require close collaboration with our Delivery teams and Security Architects.

This is a position designed to facilitate the organization’s continued growth in order to accelerate the delivery of new capabilities within existing products and to create further innovative solutions using the latest advances in technology.

It is equally important to us that this role has both a strong foundation in development and cloud solutioning. You will have experience as a System or Solutions Architect or equivalent and have worked as a software engineer working across a wide range of technologies to deliver complex commercial applications. You will also have worked as a Cloud Solution or Enterprise Architect to deliver SaaS architectures and from the ground up. You will have experience in successfully delivering increasingly complex products and solutions whilst working with a large team of stakeholders. You will have a complex products and solutions whilst working with a large team of stakeholders. You will have a successful track record over several years guiding and mentoring multi-disciplinary teams, squads and product families of software professionals including engineers and development managers in terms of systems design and architectural best practice.

A sound technical background is essential to be successful in this role however this opportunity will also encompass some management dimensions such as stakeholder management, team engagement, recruitment, as well as continuous process and efficiency improvement.

Key to the role is having a strategic bias grounded in solid and deep technical understanding, where you will propose and effectively implement key engineering and technology architectures in partnership with a mature Product Management and Engineering Management teams.

This is an excellent opportunity for someone looking to use their knowledge and experience to help architect and build the next generation of software, solve difficult problems, work with a highly skilled teams and across multiple, highly successful, global product families to make a real difference in the way we develop great software.

As the Cloud Solution Architect, you will:

• Develop the solutions for the common SaaS platform according to the requirements and business need. This will include the core (technical) foundation components, environment automation and CI/CD pipelines, and strategic (business) components.
• Work with Engineering teams to assess existing architectures and define solution roadmaps that converge to leverage the SaaS platform.
• Work with Delivery Teams and Security Architects as owners of the SSDLC, Secure Software Development Lifecycle, to successfully implement the SSDLC as part of the shared SaaS platform.
• Be responsible for scalability and performance. Responsible for adherence to security & data privacy standards and best practice.
• Work with various Technology Architects to ensure services aspects of the above are adequately covered, and ensures design for easy deployment, operation and supportability. Bring your experiences and best practices in the Cloud within enterprise grade solutions
• Work alongside our Principal Test Engineer and one or more Principal Software Engineers to contribute to delivering best practice across all of our Product Families.
• Facilitate a culture of cost-effective continuous improvement and lead initiatives to optimise efficiency and accelerate project execution.
• Encourage and engage in collaboration and the sharing of knowledge and software components with other Willis Towers Watson development centres, take part in numerous cross collaborative innovative projects both locally and globally.

The essential skills/experience relevant for this position are:

• Experience as a cloud solution architect:
  • Experience and certification in architecting enterprise solutions in Azure, with AWS or GCP highly regarded.
  • Highly experienced with Cloud and SaaS technologies with a strong understanding of enterprise and infrastructure technologies.
  • Defining architecture strategies, roadmaps and backlogs
  • Designing and delivering highly automated scalable and reliable platforms for SaaS solutions.
• Experience as a system architect:
  • Defining architecture strategies, roadmaps and backlogs
  • Designing and delivering high-performance and scalable data-driven enterprise, web and SaaS applications from a development, deployment and maintenance perspective
  • Evolving existing enterprise or desktop solutions towards next-generation technologies and architectures
  • Overseeing technical implementations undertaken by multiple scrum teams, comfortable being hands-on and close to the code as required.
  • Experience using TOGAF or similar architecture frameworks and methodologies
• Additional experience in the software development industry.
  • Prior work with Independent Software Vendors, understanding their unique challenges and requirements.
  • Experience working across a diverse portfolio of software products.
  • Experience working with / building an internal developer platform.
• Practical experience with the full software development lifecycle in a commercial/production environment: requirements capture and analysis, estimation, architecture and design, implementation, unit and system-level testing, installation and deployment, maintenance.
• Understanding of tools and principles related to continuous integration and deployment, DevOps, version control, build and test infrastructure, pipelines, infrastructure as code, defect and backlog management etc.
• Excellent practical appreciation and understanding of software engineering principles and design characteristics enabling the implementation of software, which is highly performant, scalable, easily maintainable, extensible and easy to test and debug.
  
• Experience with a wide range of Agile and Lean program management.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, ability to adjust interaction and messaging to different levels across different disciplines (engineering, product, actuarial).
• Strong academic qualifications. Likely to have a first or upper-second class degree or equivalent in a numerate subject (sciences, engineering, mathematics) which matches the qualification profile of the team the successful candidate will be leading.
• Strong work ethic: proactive, tenacious, organized, collaborative, open minded, supportive, outcome oriented.
• Appreciation of current and emerging technologies along with their potential benefits and limitations.

(ICT_TECH TD_2024_82R)