Solution ARchitect

Job description

Position Summary:

The solution architect is a “thought-leader” and a “change agent” with strategic and tactical responsibilities.

A Solution Architect 

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is responsible for delivering solution designs and architectures for key global initiatives using COTS, MOTS and custom developed applications hosted in a variety of environments considering re-use, scalability and reliability.

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Oversees and sometimes leads the successful implementation of these designs and architectures by managing expectations and risks, ensuring appropriate organizational structures, principles, tools and responsibilities are in place

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Evaluates solutions to ensure that they are in alignment with the broader organization's mission, strategy / objectives, capabilities and processes using industry recognized architectural models and roadmaps

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Creates reliable solution plans that include cost estimates and optimized delivery approaches by working with the business and multi-disciplinary teams, enforcing governance and compliance activities for the solution

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Acts as a bridge between technical and business audiences during solution planning, development and deployment

Works with the business to understand and solve complex problems, by presenting various solution options and technical concepts in a comprehensible manner.

 

Essential Functions of the Job:

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A solution Architect provides architecture leadership & subject matter expertise to client engagements focusing on complex & innovative products and reusable assets

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Prior to kicking off a project as part of a product life cycle the solution architect develops solution plans intended to support business investment decisions which means they must hold the appropriate balance between costs, risks and quality of the product

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The solution architect creates innovative and practical designs that account for the end-to-end technical solution of a system, in line with the business strategy and objectives and within the context of EY’s technology environment.

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For that, he/she works closely and continuously with the business/client to focus on meeting business/client requirements and incorporating broader aspects such as overall product costs/revenue, data privacy & sovereignty, business continuity, information security, integration with other systems, etc.

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He/she is key in identifying, defining and implementing reusable assets and standards. He/she is also responsible for adherence to these standards and consumption of reusable assets across products and portfolios

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He/she ensures relevant technical strategies, policies, standards and practices are applied correctly across Technology programs/projects and products.

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He/she also contributes to the development of architecture governance structures, methodologies and compliance activities

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He/she works with vendors to assess vendor products, understand vendor’s delivery models and assist in implementing them at EY.

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A solution architect can work across multiple projects with varied stakeholders. He/she sets architectural direction, builds consensus, mediates conflicts providing technical leadership and advisory services to the business. He/she anticipates needs and potential objections and helps to create an environment which solicits positive contributions from all participants: Solution and Technical Architects, engineering teams, product manager, project managers, product analysts, test and project teams, Information Security and Operations…

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He/she has excellent interpersonal communication and organizational skills that are required to operate as a leading member of global, distributed teams that deliver quality services and solutions.

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He/she cultivates lasting relationships across business, IT and vendors / industry analysts to maintain insight into the broader enterprise as well as industry trends.

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He/she recognizes industry technology trends and emerging technologies, understands how they apply to EY and can drive their adoption into our organization.

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He/she evangelizes and encourages importance of technical quality, emerging technologies, sharing & experimentation across the org through mentoring, hackathons, communities etc.

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He/She drives an ongoing communication plan to educate stakeholders on the purpose and benefits of solution architecture

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He/She guides others in resolving complex issues in solution architecture and solves complex, escalated aspects of a project

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He/She monitors the progress and the quality of the project and reviews and develops due diligence to confirm the developed solution complies with architectural design

Analytical and Decision-Making Responsibilities:

A Solution Architect:

·  Converts business and technical requirements into technology solutions
·  Considers the art of the possible, compares various architectural options based on feasibility and impact, and proposes actionable plans
·  Assesses and manage multiple technical challenges simultaneously
·  Ensures architectural deliverables meet schedules and estimates
·  Applies judgment when implementing application development/engineering methodologies, processes, and practices, to meet all project requirements; including product design, information security, code maintainability and reliability
·  Anticipates project issues and risks before they occur, and work with teammates to identify and implement solutions or mitigations with relevant stakeholders
·  Should possess good product instinct and excellent project management skills to push projects over the finish line with sound planning and persistent execution
·  Demonstrates strong analytical and technical problem-solving skills
·  Can analyze and operate at various levels of abstraction
·  Can balance what is strategically right with what is practically realistic by balancing the risk to the project, product or to the firm.

Supervision Responsibilities:

A Solution Architect:

·  Can lead a diverse group of project stakeholders and members towards successful delivery of a project.
·  Provides formal and informal coaching on-the-job to grow team members to their full potential. Mentors junior members of the team and reviews their work acting as a best practice / quality resource
·  Able to delegate when appropriate but leads by example when required
·  Receives general direction from the Solution Architecture Leadership Team. Works with architecture leaders and peers, business stakeholders/clients, product owners, project managers, product managers, engineers, product analysts and business stakeholders to drive a project’s progress and ensure success
·  Due to our global organization and global operating model there may be cross border reporting lines (your manager may be based in another country).
·  The role is primarily an individual contributor in a Solution Architecture team.
·  Knowledge and Skills Requirements:
·  A Solution Architect:
·  Has an advanced understanding of solution architecture.
·  Can adopt and relate new technologies to the set of problems we face at EY while adhering to security and other EY standards
·  Can communicate solutions, ideas, suggestions to a variety of (business) stakeholders effectively and comprehensibly
·  Possesses strategic business acumen and understanding of organizational strategy
·  Deep understanding of Application, Infrastructure and security architecture and non-functional aspects like Performance, Scalability, Reliability, Availability,… all the so-called “capabilities” of a system
·  Understanding of latest cloud computing and data technologies, business drivers, emerging computing trends, and deployment options.
·  Expert in defining, designing and developing distributed and scalable products and services, including reusable domain-specific microservices on multi-platform /hybrid clouds (such as Microsoft Azure, AWS, Google Cloud Rackspace, VMware, or OpenStack)
·  Able to navigate the EY organization to facilitate work beyond the immediate technical team

Experience with Agile & Dev Sec Ops methodologies;

·  Excellent project management, collaboration, interpersonal and communication skills
·  Broad understanding of EY Technology, including service offerings, technical standards and policies, technical and business strategies as well as organizational structure
·  Strong collaborator – willingness to share ideas, documentation and leading practices
·  Conceptual and analytical thinker – ability to extract, analyze, and document complex business and technical requirements/strategies

Job Requirements:

Education:

·  Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent in Engineering, Computer Science, IT, Mathematics, Economics

Experience:

·  Minimum of 10 years overall IT industry experience
·  Minimum of 3 years in a solution or technical architect role using service and hosting solutions such as private/public cloud IaaS, PaaS and SaaS platforms
·  Experience in architecting and designing technical solutions for Microsoft-centric solutions based on industry standards using (Azure) IaaS, PaaS and SaaS capabilities.
·  Possesses deep knowledge on solution architecture spanning across all aspects of each system and how it can be applied in a business context
·  Experience with any claims-based authentication (SAML/OAuth/OIDC), MFA, JIT, and/or RBAC / Ping etc.
·  Knowledge of cloud security controls including tenant isolation, encryption at rest, encryption in transit, key management, vulnerability assessments, application firewalls, SIEM, etc.
·  Experience with mission critical technology components with DR capabilities
·  Experience with multi-geography, multi-tier service design and management
·  Extensive experience in financial management, solution plan development and product cost estimation
·  Solid business acumen, management and marketing communication skills
·  Significant experience in presenting ideas, products, concept papers to varied audiences.
·  Experience coaching and mentoring others
·  Proven experience in delivering effective solution architecture strategies
·  Experience supporting peer teams and their responsibilities; such as infrastructure, operations, engineering, info-security

Other Requirements

·  As this is a role with global focus and responsibilities, you may be required to work outside of the normal working hours in your time zone to partner with other IT Services staff globally. 
·  This role may also include travel, both domestic and international.
·  Desired Qualifications
·  Configuration management and automation tools such as Azure DevOps, Ansible, Puppet, Chef, Salt, etc.
·  Software development full lifecycle methodologies, patterns, frameworks, libraries and tools
·  One or more programming and scripting languages such as JavaScript, PowerShell, Bash, SQL, .NET, Java, Python, PHP, Ruby, PERL, C++, etc.
·  Relational, graph and/or unstructured data technologies such as SQL Server, Azure SQL, Cosmos, Azure Data Lake, HD Insights, Hadoop, Neo4j etc.
·  Data movement and transformation technologies such as Alteryx etc.
·  Visualization tools such as Power BI or Tableau
·  Analytics tools including Azure Stream Analytics, SQL Analytics, Data Lake Analytics.
·  AI and Machine Learning tools such as Azure ML etc.
·  Delivery using common methodologies especially SAFe Agile but also Waterfall, Iterative etc.
·  Certifications e.g. Microsoft, TOGAF, AWS Cloud Certified, Pivotal, CISSIP, Zachman, ITIL, Cisco, (ISC)2, CEH, SAFe, PMI, and SAP etc.
·  Extensive experience in project management
·  Experience in architecting mobile applications that are either independent applications or supplementary addons (to intranet or extranet)
·  Experience in architecting Data Analytics solutions