Solution Architect – Modernization

Solution Architect – Legacy Modernization

OVERVIEW:
Our client in the Aviation Industry is seeking to establish the function of architecture to be at the core of all technology initiatives. The Solution Architect is the link between the business and technology. They build and maintain strong relationships with the business units, helping them maximize their use of technology and ensuring that solutions implemented meet their needs. They capture the business requirements in the form of executable architectures. Those architectures are then passed on to the technical implementation teams. The Solution Architect provides governance for technology initiatives in the company: guiding the selection of technology products during the RFP process, maintaining oversight over technology vendors to make sure that they align to the client’s standards, creating and maintaining technology standards, and providing oversight throughout the SDLC.
FUNCTION:
The Solution Architect will provide essential technology leadership. They are the critical link, joining the business strategy and requirements, the technology strategy and the systems that get deployed into the client’s technology landscape. They are closely tied to the business units, maintaining an understanding of the business processes, functions and capabilities. They are an advisor to the business, helping them to identify where technology can be optimally leveraged and also helping them to understand how to understand how to use their existing technology optimally. They translate this business understanding into solid technical solutions that meet the business requirements while aligning to architecture strategy and standards, as well as the existing technology landscape, and emphasise simplicity, stability and continuous improvement. Multiple Solution Architects are necessary to support the various business units and will be selected for their acumen in the selected area. Specifically, architects will be hired for knowledge of finance, HR and airline operations systems.
The solution architect also contributes to the maintenance of an evolving target state enterprise, and establishing frameworks and processes to ensure that developed solutions are simple, robust, and follow best practices. Through the delivery lifecycle they ensure that solutions conform to the defined architectures through full-lifecycle support and governance, fostering consistency through the effective use of reference architectures, standards, and reusable patterns.
Duties and Responsibilities

• Ensure, through the use of modeling, documentation and education, that the architecture is accurately and directly linked to business models and processes
• Translate high-level concepts and requirements into intuitive, highly functional, and visually impactful digital products across existing and emerging technology platforms
• Develop an in-depth understanding of the business processes, assets, responsibilities, regulatory requirements and functional interdependencies. 
• Participate in the business case analysis, evaluation and development of long-term strategic and operational plans  to ensure that architecture objectives are consistent with the client’s long-term business objectives
• Provide architectural expertise and guidance to help business stakeholders optimize their use of technology
• Provide expert advice to key Business and Technology stakeholders on the effectiveness and completeness of product roadmaps, business and technology strategies and alignment with cross-organization strategies and roadmaps
• Builds collaborative relationships with business and technical stakeholders to foster good relations, gain support, realize project outcomes, and represent the needs of customers, stakeholders, operations, and maintenance
• Work with business leaders to create architectures that align business and data needs  with strategic architecture and technology goals and the Target State Architecture
• Apply architecture oversight and governance across all phases of the solution lifecycle
• Create, and ensure application of, architecture and technology standards
• Ensure that architectural solutions have end-to-end integrity, with implications well understood and risks mitigated
• Understand technology landscape and how it supports the business
• Define solutions that meet, and can demonstrate that they meet the business needs and requirements
• Develop architectural blueprints and roadmaps to support the long-term vision of the organization.
• Ensure that architectural blueprints can provide a guidance for implementation teams that is clear in scope, unambiguous and provides full coverage of the solution across all technology domains
• Ensure that solutions consider technical and business risk, but also qualitative elements such as cost, implementation time and resources
• Interface with domain architects to ensure adherence to their standards and solicit direction for deeper domain-specific issues
• Bridge the gap between business and technology and communicates architecture-related concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences across the organization’s business functions
• Create solution documents that can be used to communicate universally with all stakeholders, across business, technology and project management teams, maintaining a common understanding of the solutions being implemented and any technical decisions that need to be made
• Assesses the business/technical feasibility of vendor designs and advises on the impact to current and future systems
• Collaborate actively with project managers/scrum masters, on Jira ticket prioritization, platform release planning, roadmap and schedule management. 
• Provide input to RFPs and evaluate Third-Party Product/Services to ensure that they align with Porter’s business and architecture strategy,  as well as architecture and technical standards 
• Manage the technical decision process to assess the business impact and ensure alignment with the solution architecture, enterprise architecture, and organizational standards
• Provide guidance to technical & delivery teams throughout the development and delivery lifecycle
• Monitor and review ongoing projects to ensure architectural integrity and alignment with organizational standards
• Identify and address technical debt, scalability issues, and architectural bottlenecks
• Proactively identify opportunities for improvement and innovation within existing systems and processes
• Ensure that solutions leave room for, and encourage innovation
• Inform various stakeholders about any issues with the current technical solutions being implemented

Behavioural Competencies
Concern for Safety: Identifying hazardous or potentially hazardous situations and taking appropriate action to maintain a safe environment for self and others.
Teamwork: Working collaboratively with others to achieve organizational goals.
Passenger/Customer Service: Providing service excellence to internal and/or external customers (passengers).
Initiative: Dealing with situations and issues proactively and persistently, seizing opportunities that arise.
Results Focus: Focusing efforts on achieving high quality results consistent with the organization’s standards.
Fostering Communication: Listening and communicating openly, honestly, and respectfully with different audiences, promoting dialogue and building consensus.
Exemplifying Integrity: Treating others fairly, honestly, and respectfully, furthering the integrity of the organization and its relationships of trust with team members and the broader community.
Inspiring Others: Energizing and inspiring others to strive for excellence and commit to common goals and purposes, creating a sense of self-efficacy, resilience, and persistence in followers.
People Leadership: Assuming a leadership role in helping others achieve excellent results.
Leading Change: Recognizing the need for change, being open to new ideas and methods, and championing transformational change within the organization and beyond.
Qualifications
Experience

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field.
• At least 5 years of experience as a Solution Architect or similar role, with a strong understanding of software architecture principles and best practices.
• Proven ability to identify and evaluate the risk in order to eliminate or mitigate it in both systems under development and systems in the existing landscape
• Knowledge of software development process and a deep understanding of the technical aspects of projects to identify risks, propose immediate solutions and provide guidance for the solutions being implemented
• Ability to communicate with all stakeholders such as software engineers, management, clients and vendors, including the ability to convey technical language to other stakeholders often in non-technical terms, as well as being conversant across technology domains to provide the necessary direction to the technical implementation teams.
• Ability to provide technical advice to business stakeholders, helping them to optimise their use of technology, evaluate their business needs, and to effectively translate those needs to the technical teams
• Has a strong focus on delivery with the ability to understand and prioritise critical milestones for delivery and ensure that timelines and commitments are met.
• Has a broad knowledge encompassing all technology and architecture domains, including application, integration, infrastructure, data and business.
• Has a high degree of comfort with ambiguity and time spent outside of comfort zone acquiring new skills
• Ability to communicate effectively in multiple modalities, including written and oral, as well as architectural modeling skills to unambiguously describe solutions
• Has effective interpersonal skills and collaborative style to work effectively in a team environment
• Experience with establishing and maintaining architectural governance
• Experience developing and/or maintaining an enterprise reference architecture and standards
• Experienced in multiple software delivery methodologies (waterfall, Agile & continuous delivery)
• Experience providing direction and management of an enterprise technology landscape, including continuous improvement and alignment to current and evolving best practices
• Experience and understanding of development in languages such as  .NET, J2EE/Java, SQL, Perl, etc.
• Experience with integration platforms and architectures including micro services, message-driven patterns, event-based architectures, SaaS integrations, etc.
• Experience with ETL/ELT platforms and architecture
• Experience with web middleware such a application and portal servers
• Experience with cloud infrastructure architecture, IaaS and PaaS models
• Experience with Enterprise Data Architecture, data modeling, data management
• Experience with security architecture and architecture patterns

Education

• Bachelor’s or Master’s Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering or Software Architecture or related degree is required
• Competence with Archimate is an asset
• Competence with TOGAF is an asset
• Certification in relevant technologies or architecture frameworks (e.g. AWS Certified Solutions Architect) is an asset