Solutions Architect
Recruiter
Schroders
Listed on
5th August 2019
Location
London
Type
Permanent
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Departmental OverviewDistribution Technology is part of Asset Management Technology within the Global Technology and Change department at Schroders, responsible for creating and supporting applications for use by our Sales and Client Servicing teams.
Our technology footprint includes applications and systems - split between vendor and in-house developed - all designed with the common objective of being digitally and data driven. Not only do we rapidly respond to the demands of the external environment and those of our Sales and Client Service teams, the Distribution Technology team is strategically positioned to deliver innovative solutions.
We embrace agile principles into all aspects of the software development lifecycle, developing and delivering iteratively, with regular inspect and adapts. Our business partners have embraced these practices, resulting in close collaboration with business representatives at all levels of the organisation. This close relationship allows both technology and business partners to work together to creatively solve problems to strengthen the exceptional client service which Schroders has become known for.
Our existing internal applications are primarily developed on a C#/.Net stack with technologies such as SQL Server and React, and a host of supporting technology and frameworks. Azure is beginning to play a significant part in our application development and we envisage most future work as using Azure Platform as a Service, wherever possible.
Externally we have a large ecosystem based around Salesforce and here too we are looking to adopt the latest innovations including Salesforce Lightning and the Gearset toolbox.
All application development teams are DevOps enabled using tools such as Azure DevOps and Octopus and own their own delivery pipeline. Testing is critical to our development lifecycle and we advocate TDD and BDD approaches.
Role Description As Solution Architect, you will be at the heart of our technical delivery capability, working across engineering teams, IT management, product owners and senior stakeholders.
In this role, you will: • Work with developers and business analysts to provide well-designed software solutions to business problems • Help drive our cloud-first, distributed application development strategy • Ensure solutions are delivered to high engineering standards, considering application security, supportability and verifiability as first-class application requirements • Gain a good high-level understanding of business processes, data and applications across your technical domain and represent these to other architects and interested parties • Sit on the Distribution Technology management team and assist management in technical decision making • Explain technical decisions and architectural initiatives, and their rationale, to senior management, product owners and other non-technical stakeholders • Act as an advocate for Enterprise Architecture to delivery teams while also influencing Enterprise Architecture decisions, processes and technical toolset choices • Act as an advocate for engineering staff to management, Enterprise Architecture, and the broader organisation • Foster collaboration between teams and across the organisation • Assist teams in the creation of governance artefacts such as conceptual application diagrams, business process diagrams and implementation documentation • Be responsible for ensuring all architecture governance practices are adhered to, and all review gates are completed accurately and at the appropriate time
General and Technical skills • Excellent communication skills • Excellent technical leadership, mentoring and collaboration skills • Strong understanding of enterprise architectural patterns and practices • Strong understanding of distributed application architectural approaches and considerations such as event driven architectures, CQRS, Event Sourcing and eventual consistency • Good understanding of cloud based architecture, and designing cloud native applications • Good understanding of Domain Driven Design at both the business modelling level, and implementation levels • Good understanding and capable of modelling different aspects of a solution using industry standards (e.g. BPMN 2 for business modelling, UML for Class Modelling, …) • Good understanding of agile development methodologies • Understand the value of commitments to delivery made by the Agile team • Strong knowledge and keen interest in the latest software development industry trends
Personal Attributes • Capable of remaining positive when under pressure • Strong strategic thinking and analytical skills, combined with ability to derive and implement required tactical measures • Friendly, approachable and collaborative team player who enjoys working with people from across the firm • Continuous improvement mind-set, challenges the status quo and seeks self-improvement • Problem solver, comfortable taking the initiative in challenging and ambiguous circumstances • Excellent communication skills in written and spoken English
