Solutions Architect

Our client is at the forefront of providing data within their specialist sector, they are a growing company that loves technology and operates at the heart of the UK sector.

**Job Summary**

The Solutions Architect is a key role within the delivery team, working across several development projects to ensure that solutions are defined and developed based on architecture standards and technologies.

The Solutions Architect requires the ability to bridge the gap between business requirements and implementation of technology solutions. You will have an agile mindset willing to push the boundaries of current conventional thinking for architecture design,you will have experience of developing proof of concepts and mindful of market drivers, first mover advantage and not be constrained against existing systems, infrastructure or ways of working.

You will also translate the business strategy into concrete solutions and design and execute a set of solution blueprints that support that strategy. You will evaluate all technology options assess impact on the wider business or customer processes workingwith both business and IT stakeholders.

We are after someone who can work with our senior management and business development leads to conceive and deliver forward looking solutions, proof of concepts, mínimal viable product and not be afraid to move quickly and have the courage to fail fast (notall the time).

**Responsibilities**

The focus of the Solutions Architect’s role will be to work in conjunction with senior stakeholders and Senior management team to ensure the firms services are evolved according to architectural strategy:

- Analyse the existing solution landscape, creating maintaining a road-map for each solution, identifying technical debt and to provide recommendations for improvements
- Own the representation of both current and future state of technology products
- Liaise and manage the architecture deliverables from 3rd parties
- Produce high level, conceptual design documentation and where appropriate create a solution architecture and running prototypes and proof of concept solution
- Leading the architecture, including mentoring team members and managing resource allocation into projects/products
- Working collaboratively with Senior Management on solutions road-maps and the development of new products and services with a technical design authority framework
- Keep abreast of technology trends and advancement capturing relevant content to influence systems design decisions
- Other key areas will be to manage and enhancements to the architecture of existing systems to ensure they remain performant and cost efficient.

**Skills & Knowledge**
- The Solutions Architect should come from a technical delivery or development background
- Be quick learner able to pick up both technical and business concepts quickly
- Demonstrable track record of architecture regarding secure, national network/IT services in a cloud environment using open source technologies
- Hands-on experience of up to date solutions and tools in the AWS cloud environment
- Track record of building and running an architecture function including a technical design authority
- Working knowledge of modern security techniques and solutions
- Technical assessment of 3rd party technical solutions
- Systems integration solutions
- Track record of maintaining coherent technical designs across multiple internal and external service providers and implementations
- Ability to explain technical designs, issues and recommendations to non-technical stakeholders
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills
- Well organised, structured approach to work
- Ability to quickly assimilate and understand technical details and new technologies
- Provide resource and architecture estimates for solutions

**Highly desirable skills**
- Knowledge and understanding of data analytics platforms
- Knowledge and event driven, service-oriented architectures
- Expertise in integration technologies such as JBoss Fuse etc
- Experience of designing flexible and extensible technology services based on Open Standards and industry best practice
- Knowledge and understanding of multi-channel software platforms
- Expertise on modern software delivery and maintenance techniques including SAFE and DevOps