Solutions Architect Head

Job Summary:

The Solutions Architect leads and supports enterprise architecture (EA) activities that guide the development and management of a portfolio of solutions, such as projects, products, systems (including applications, technologies, processes, and information), shared infrastructure services, and shared application services. This role has a deep understanding of business goals, objective and business outcomes, business capabilities, value-streams, and business processes. The Solutions Architect will also perform the necessary leadership, analysis and design tasks related to supporting the development of technology solutions to ensure that solutions meet business needs and align with architectural governance and standards. The role creates deliverables for managing the organization's portfolio of "to be" and "as is" solutions to enable and drive targeted business outcomes.

General Responsibilities:
Solutions Architecture Planning, Design, Analysis & Delivery

• Understands business drivers and business capabilities (future and current state), as well as end-to-end processes, to determine enterprise system designs and change requirements to drive the organization's targeted business outcomes.
• Defines the principles, guidelines, standards, and solution patterns to ensure that solution decisions are aligned with the enterprise's future-state architecture vision.
• Creates architectural designs to guide and contextualize solution development across products, services, projects and systems (including applications, technologies, processes and information).
• Creates reference architectures focused on detailed design principles, decision points, detailed APIs, major systems and dependencies between business and IT.
• Conducts evaluation, design, and analysis for the implementation of a solutions architecture across a group of specific business applications or technologies based on enterprise business strategy, business capabilities, value-streams, business requirements and enterprise standards.
• Manages and develops the architecture for a broader scope of projects or products, working closely with application architects that manage and design architecture for a single project or product or initiative.
• Performs an analysis of the current technology environment to detect critical deficiencies, legacy and technical debt, and recommends solutions for improvement. In addition, analyzes the technology industry and market trends to determine their potential impact on the enterprise, as well as on the enterprise infrastructure architecture.
• Monitors the current-state solution portfolio to identify deficiencies through aging of the technologies used by the application, or misalignment with business requirements.
• Designs and directs the governance activities associated with ensuring solutions architecture assurance and compliance.
• Guides infrastructure investment decisions based on analysis and evaluation to drive targeted business outcomes.
• Facilitates the evaluation and selection of software product standards and services, as well as the design of standard and custom software configurations.
• Develops a roadmap for the evolution of the enterprise application portfolio from future to current state (as defined by the solutions architecture).
• Provides deliverables like standard definitions, reference models, and architecture designs to help the architecture review board (ARB) assess the impact of new and ongoing investment on the business and IT landscape.
• Works in close collaboration with relevant stakeholders to drive enterprise architecture initiatives.
• Works closely with product owners and EA peers to enable solution agility, scalability, and resiliency to support required product needs throughout product lifecycle.
• Works with the business in deriving from the overall roadmap the technology based regulatory budget forecasts and works with various groups in the preparation and submission of relevant requirements to the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC).
• Works closely with the project management group to ensure that the execution of plans corresponds with what is being promised throughout the project or product lifecycle.
• Works closely with the product owners and product managers to ensure a robust architectural runway that can support future business requirements throughout the product lifecycle.
• Provides consulting support to application architects within agile teams to ensure that the project or product is aligned with the overall enterprise architecture. o Consults with application and infrastructure development projects and products to fit systems or infrastructure to architecture and identify when it is necessary to modify projects to accommodate the solutions architecture.
• Acts as a consultant on a broad range of technologies, platforms, and vendor offerings to drive targeted business outcomes.

Solutions Architecture Governance

• Performs and manages the solutions architecture design compliance review and audit across the lifecycle of a project from RFP development up to project implementation to ensure compliance to approved architecture and technology standards.
• Manages Technology Standards from its development, periodic review, trend monitoring and scanning, POC and evaluation, periodic release, and creation of programs and projects to implement the changes (invest, maintain, contain, disinvest).
• Develops and establishes standards for releasing and processing RFIs and RFPs. o Supports product managers in EOL (end of life) product decisions to maintain, refresh or retire products, services or systems (including applications, technologies, processes and information).
• Supports a community of practice (CoP), guiding and helping agile teams, product owners, and application architects to align with the overall enterprise architecture governance and assurance.

Technical Competencies:

• Enterprise and Business Architecture
• Applications & Platform Management
• Core Network Design
• Software Design
• IT Planning
• Change Management
• Transition Planning & Management

Qualifications:

• Graduate of Computer Science, Information Technology, Business, or its equivalent
• Relevant certification is a plus but not required (i.e., program/technology-specific certifications)
• At least 5 years of relevant experience as a technical SME and with experience in a tech lead/technical management capacity
• Experience in a relevant industry (i.e., utilities or energy sector) and familiarity with relevant regulatory requirements and industry standards is a plus but not required
• Excellent analytical, planning, organizational and technical and skills
• Strong collaboration skills; Ability to work with developers in an in-and-out outsourced environment
• Excellent business communication skills and with ability to articulate complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders
• Possesses the following technical knowledge/skills/abilities:
• Exposure to multiple, diverse technologies, platforms, and processing environments
• Hands-on experience as full-stack developer (for grid platforms) / Salesforce (for customer platforms) / cloud and on-prem development and implementation (for enterprise platforms)
• Knowledge of various backend development languages like Java, Go and Python o Knowledge of various database technologies like MS SQL, MySQL, MongoDB and
• Oracle o Knowledge of various frontend web development languages like JavaScript, HTML and CSS
• Knowledge of various aspects of an enterprise technology architecture like business, information, data, network and security
• Knowledge of information principles and processes o Knowledge of financial models and budgeting
• Understanding and knowledge of system development life cycle methodologies (such as waterfall, spiral, agile software development, rapid prototyping, incremental, synchronize and stabilize, and DevOps)
• Understanding and knowledge of IT service management (ITSM) and Information
• Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) o Knowledge and understanding of different modeling languages (such as UML and
• ArchiMate) o Understanding and knowledge of IT standards and controls o Excellent understanding of application development methodologies and infrastructure and network architecture
• Good understanding of strategic and new and emerging technology trends, and the practical application of existing, new and emerging technologies to new and evolving business and operating models
• Good understanding of product management, agile principles and development methodologies and capability of supporting agile teams by providing advice and guidance on opportunities, impact and risks, taking account of technical and architectural debt o Experience in developing architecture blueprints, strategies and roadmaps

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