Opening for Enterprise Technical Architect :: Contract :: Remote Role

Job Description

This role supports the Client Journey, with an initial focus on Onboarding, consisting of the end-to-end experience for the client. The desired experience of the Client Journey encompasses the processes that are performed, as well as a thorough connection to the systems that support the work. There is a need for a technical architect to help develop technology architecture blueprints for the Architecture Review Board.

Role Summary

The technical architect acts as the dedicated architect for the Client Journey book of work. The technical architect holistically leads solution architecture activities that guide the development and management of technical, data, and infrastructure solutions for end-to-end client journey. These solutions enable the organization’s future-state business capabilities and drive the organization’s targeted business outcomes. Technologies include software, infrastructure, cloud, mobile, AI, edge computing and immersive experiences technologies.

Technical architects provide the leadership, facilitation, analysis, and design tasks required for the development of technical and infrastructure architecture. Technical architects create deliverables that help develop target-state guidance (standards, guidelines, individual parts, platforms, and configurations) for evolving the technical infrastructure across the enterprise to enable business strategy and deliver targeted business outcomes. They enable and orchestrate the delivery of targeted business outcomes through facilitating and making technical decisions.

Responsibilities

The technical architect will demonstrate competencies across three key dimensions:

Deliver Future-State Solution Architecture

• Reports straight line or dotted line to the enterprise or chief enterprise architect.
• Works with Enterprise Architecture (EA) peers (e.g., enterprise, business, information, solutions, and security architects) to analyze enterprise business context (business strategy and trends), as well as adopting EA design guidance (such as principle, patterns and reference architectures) to derive the future-state solution architecture. This includes defining the non-functional requirements, principles and models that guide technology and design decisions for the solutions.
• Leads the analysis of the current technology environment to detect critical deficiencies, legacy, and technical debt, and recommends solutions for improvement. In addition, leads the analysis of technology industry and market trends to determine their potential impact on the enterprise as well as on the enterprise technology architecture.
• Coaches, mentors, and collaborates with technical subject matter experts to develop technology architecture that enables and drives new business capabilities and operating models.
• Drives digital innovation by leveraging innovative technologies and approaches to renovate, extend and transform the existing core technology base and IT estate.
• Defines high-level migration plans to address the gaps between the future and current state, typically coordinated with the IT budgeting or other capital planning processes.
  
  

Analyzes and Evaluates Technology

• Understands the strategic, EA driven technical goals and how to implement them in the client journey program
• Guides project deliverables to ensure project meets the architectural and business requirements whilst reducing technical debt and increasing alignment to architectural vision
• Acts as a consultant and advisor to the project team, opining on how the project direction can be best aligned to current and trending technology initiatives.
• Ensures that the project team is aligned to the EA principles and architectural governance process.
  
  

Leads and Collaborates to Deliver Business Outcomes

• Oversees, or consults on, technology implementation and modification activities (e.g., projects and products), particularly for new or shared infrastructure solutions.
• Consults on application or infrastructure development projects to harmonize systems or infrastructure with the enterprise technology architecture and identify when it is necessary to modify the technology architecture to accommodate immediate or future project needs.
• Works closely with the product managers, product owners and EA peers (e.g., enterprise, business, information, security, and solutions architects) to enable infrastructure agility, scalability, and resilience to support required product needs throughout product life cycles.
• Collaborates with business constituents, EA team members, project teams and staff in various IT functional areas as needed to fulfill the responsibilities described above.
• Documents necessary for enterprise technology architecture design and analysis work, including project postmortem documentation and metric collection.
  
  

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, information technology, system analysis or a related study, or equivalent experience
• Minimum five years of design and implementation experience in IT, with a deep knowledge in a minimum of two of the following (or similar) technical disciplines: infrastructure and network design, application development, application programming interfaces (APIs), middleware, servers and storage, database management and operations, clustering technologies, virtualization, cloud technologies and Active Directory and protocols
• Exposure to multiple, diverse technical configurations, technologies, and processing environments
• Understanding of product management, agile principles and development methodologies and capability to support agile teams by providing advice and guidance on opportunities, impact, and risks, taking account of technical and architectural debt.
  
  

Skills

• Excellent people skills in areas such as teamwork, facilitation, and negotiation
• Strong leadership skills
• Good understanding of design principles and common design patterns
• Excellent problem solving and troubleshooting skills in a technical context.
• Excellent people skills in areas such as teamwork, facilitation, and negotiation
• Strong leadership skills
• Excellent analytical and technical skills
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Excellent planning and organizational skills
• Knowledge of many, if not most, components of an enterprise technology architecture
• Knowledge of IT service management (ITSM) and Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL)
• Knowledge of different modeling languages (such as UML and ArchiMate)
• Knowledge of IT standards and controls
• Understanding of information principles and processes
• Understanding of financial models and budgeting
• Understanding of network and security architecture
• Understanding of system development life cycle methodologies (e.g., waterfall, spiral, agile software development, rapid prototyping, incremental, synchronize and stabilize, and DevOps)
• Relevant vendor or industry certifications
  
  

Competencies

• Organizationally savvy, with understanding of the political climate of the enterprise and how to navigate obstacles and politics.
• Ability to understand the long-term (“big picture”) and short-term perspectives of situations and how they relate to achieving targeted business outcomes.
• Ability to estimate the financial impact of technology alternatives.
• Ability to apply multiple technical solutions to enable future-state business capabilities that, in turn, drive targeted business outcomes.
• Ability to quickly comprehend the functions and capabilities of existing, new, and emerging technologies that enable and drive new business designs and models.
• Demonstrated ability to work well with others and be viewed as a leader by colleagues.
  
  

Characteristics

• Trusted and respected as a thought leader who can influence and persuade business and IT leaders and IT development teams.
• Technology neutral: remains unbiased toward any specific technology or vendor choice and is more interested in results than personal preferences.
• Displays intellectual curiosity and integrity.
• Motivated and driven by achieving long-term business outcomes.
• Ability to balance the long-term (big picture) and short-term implications of individual decisions.