Principal Solutions Architect

Lead the definition and governance of new corporate and portfolio IT standards, guidelines, and practices by analysing and understanding the potential impact of competing technologies, assessing their strategic significance, defining their strategic role and scope, roadmap, relationship to existing standards, and periodically reviewing our entire IT estate in the context of those standards.

Scout market and track technology advancements and new business innovations, determine how they relate to our IT strategy, existing standards, platforms, and patterns, and lead the work to amend existing assets or create new assets to reflect changes in the technology landscape. Showcase business value by executing Proof of Concepts by engaging relevant IT teams.

Lead the solution architecture development for new initiatives, vendor solution acquisitions, and enhancement of existing systems, taking full responsibility for the quality of the architecture, including integration architecture by aligning to agile architecture development practices. Drive architecture decisions and be accountable for their implications in regard to solution costs, delivery schedules, application complexity, technical debt, and overall solution performance.

Provide expert advice and lead solution design reviews for projects on technical and architectural standards, guiding them on the need to raise exception requests, develop new or amended standards, and on the appropriate use of architectural standards and patterns.

Provide architecture and technology leadership to development teams by playing the lead architect/driver role in Teams of Teams or Agile/ Release Trains. In addition, be accountable for the overall architecture, solution discoveries, and strategic incubations by coordinating with peer architects and engineering teams.

Manage, direct, inspire, and coach the work and capability of Solutions Architect and Senior Engineering resources as required, and engage in and lead a much wider virtual team of senior managers, technical and subject matter experts, and business managers.

Own, manage, and maintain the architecture roadmap and runways of complex/large projects, technical products, environments, and/or platforms. Act as a product owner and be accountable for proactively identifying, prioritizing, and overseeing the development of technical enablers, technical debts, quality improvements, and application modernization activities.