Solutions Architect
City of London, England, United Kingdom
Role: Solutions Architect
Location: London (Hybrid)
Remuneration: circa £90,000 plus bonus and benefits
Tenure: 12-month fixed term (to go to permanent thereafter)
The Company
Our client is the premier trade organisation representing firms across finance, banking, markets, and payments in the UK. Their diverse membership includes national and international entities, serving a broad spectrum of customers from individuals to corporates, charities to government bodies. With a focus on customer-centricity, they champion the interests of their members' clientele, ensuring access to essential financial products and services for their day-to-day operations.
Job Purpose
As a Solutions Architect (SA) within the IT department, you'll forge strong relationships with business SMEs to drive successful outcomes. You'll lead technology design activities, evaluating our current setup and suggesting future enhancements.
Your key tasks include:
Leading technical initiatives such as ERP system evaluation and migrating to MS Office 365.
Ensuring optimal returns from our technology stack.
Prioritizing the expansion of our Financial Crime platform on AWS to meet industry regulations by October 2024.
You'll collaborate with internal teams, third-party vendors, and external partners to improve the platform and mitigate project risks. Your role also involves maintaining seamless communication among stakeholders and ensuring alignment with organisational changes.
Duties & Responsibilities
Responsible for the technical delivery of the Financial Crime platform expansion at all stages, including driving delivery of key milestones and providing status reporting into the programme
Responsible for developing business and implementation plans as detailed, along with stakeholders
Experience of running complex, cross-sector projects via a structured methodology, including planning, producing project artefacts and responsibility for budgetary management of external vendors, where required
Manage dependencies across multiple groups of stakeholders including external stakeholders from the financial services industry
Drive key discussions with stakeholders and analyse the current landscape for opportunities to articulate and implement creative solutions.
Monitor delivery and ensure milestones are met. Find effective strategies to remove blocks and delays where necessary
Have experience in the design and development of PoCs
Be able to deliver projects from inception to completion often working with a broad mix of individuals and companies with diverse skill sets
Possess outstanding attention to detail and understand the need for high quality documentation
Collaborate with various companies (vendors, operators and others) to provide technical recommendations and specifications for wider industry adoption
Experienced in the Agile methodology and processes with a hands-on approach to assist with the design and prototyping for product backlog and road-mapped features
Be able to work towards tight deadlines, being personally resilient and able to balance, at times, the pressure of a demanding workload and complex client needs.
Qualifications
Education to degree-level or equivalent
Formal project management methodology qualifications, such as PRINCE2 or Agile
Qualifications such as the Azure Solutions Architect Expert, AWS Certified Solutions Architect, Azure Security Engineer Associate or equivalent from other Cloud Service Providers
Experience in dealing with IT Transformation projects
Skills & Competencies
In-depth knowledge of Cloud computing and Cloud-specific patterns, with a track record of developing and designing cloud environments
Technical skills covering some of the following:
Networking (DNS, TCP/IP, HTTP, CDN, and VPC)
Containerization and DevOps Tools
Security
Artificial Intelligence, including ML, RPA and Natural Language Processing
Commercial experience with Event Driven Architectures
Ability to architect applications in AWS/Azure using a wide array of AWS/Azure native components and services in collaboration with third-party commercial tools
Architecting the digital strategic vision in collaboration with internal teams and third parties, ensuring clear links back to the organisational vision and strategy
Developing enterprise-level roadmaps for clients, including the creation of enterprise standards, relevant business models, and technology standards
Expert in ensuring all digital initiatives align with the strategic vision
Promote and own continuous improvement for cost reduction, application / member appropriate security and efficiency
Designing end-to-end solutions using a set of robust architecture principles
Build rapport quickly, creating positive and productive relationships with both internal and external stakeholders
Have excellent communication and presentation skills, and actively enjoy shaping requirements and communicating technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders
Advantageous: knowledge of Fraud and Scams and Financial Services