Senior Solutions Architect - NR Consulting LLC

Job title: Senior Solutions Architect
Job Location: New Haven, CT/Hybrid
Job type: 12-month contract

Overview
The Sr. Solutions Architect is responsible for designing business solutions and capabilities in alignment with enterprise architecture standards and strategic direction for the organizations external facing presence, Marketing, Sales & Distribution, Customer Service, Online Membership, and Charity services.

The Solution Architect will be responsible for leading the solution design and implementation for complex systems, platforms and would interact with key business stakeholders, design teams, development and QA teams on a variety of projects in a highly collaborative, fast-paced environment. The ideal candidate will have strong technical aptitude & business acumen in the insurer sector; and will effectively drive technology change by creating, communicating and improving the key requirements, principles and models that describe the enterprises future state and enable its evolution.

This role also requires collaboration with cross functional teams within the Enterprise Solutions Delivery department, ensuring that outcomes comply with the Enterprise Architectural vision, quality, and security standards. The Sr. Solutions Architect is a member of a cross functional team that collaborates with business customers to define the capabilities and solutions.

The Sr. Solutions Architect will define how those capabilities will be built, and will support timely delivery of those capabilities and solutions including participating in planning and requirements definition in collaboration with business owners and product managers to ensure that the time and effort of the Solutions Delivery teams is producing the greatest value and is in alignment with the overall strategy.

Core Responsibilities

• Technical Solution Design

• Designs enterprise solutions and capabilities that are scalable, adaptable, and in synchrony with the ever-changing business needs in alignment with the architecture strategy, policies, standards and procedures.
• Promotes shared infrastructure and applications to reduce costs and improve information flow. Contributes to a reduction in IT complexity, enforcement of discipline and standardization of IT planning activities, consolidation of data and applications, and better interoperability of the systems. Facilitates the reuse of ideas, components, services, and proven patterns across various solutions.
• Understands business requirements as they pertain to digital technologies (including digital marketing, strategy, content, application modernization, DevOps / Agile processes, API / microservices architecture and digital workspace).
• Leads the design of innovative enterprise solutions, working closely with Programmer Analysts, QA, and other stakeholders to get high-quality products and features through the agile software project lifecycle. Provides hands-on software development and project management, cross-functional coordination, and inter/intra team communications to ensure program success and delivery throughput.
• Documents and communicates architectural requirements for solutions and capabilities.
• Maintains architectural documentation of solutions built and supported by the cross functional Solutions Delivery teams.
• Collaborates closely with business customers, product management personnel, and development team members to design and deliver business solutions.
• Supports the articulation and communication of the IT Strategy.
• Collaborates with the Enterprise Architecture and Enterprise Infrastructure Services to assess technology lifecycles and determines how individual technologies or standards will change, be versioned or transitioned out.
• Collaborates with other architects at organization (Data, Infrastructure etc.) to ensure integrity of assigned domain.
• Collaborates with Application Domain Leads to manage the application portfolio and roadmaps.
• Practices risk management, engages key risk stakeholders, and effectively escalates issues that create business, technical, operational, and project risk.
• Provides metrics for key performance indicator measurement in support the planning process, organizational objectives, and the strategic vision.
• Creates and maintains a consistent Web site architectural structure across the organizations Web applications.
• Collaborates with Web developers in the development and integration of graphical and multimedia components into Web sites and other Web applications.
• Collaborates with User Experience (UX) team to ensure that the user is at the center of all solution design decisions.
• Creates and develops transaction-based e-commerce solutions for business-to-business and business-to-consumer applications where required.
• Models, simulates or prototypes the behavior of proposed systems components to enable approval by stakeholders.
• Proven capabilities to identify, investigate and resolve variety of architecture issues including scalability, integration, extendibility, and performance. Ability to drive and lead solution development from conception through deployment.
• Knowledge of solution architecture patterns, processes, and governance. Ability to Review and approve functional & non-functional development and create implementation guidelines for designed and developers.
• Ability to articulate and collaborate solution requirements using interviews, document analysis, stakeholder surveys, business cases, use cases, user stories, business analysis, task, and workflow analysis.

• Collaborative Team Environment Participation

• Provides deep, subject matter expert knowledge for domain technologies.
• Cross team collaboration and relationship building, including: creating consensus and buy-in, negotiating and resolving conflicts when necessary with minimal escalation.
• Provides a broad, systems-thinking perspective to the solutions delivery teams.
• Participates in planning at the department and team levels.
• Provide architectural oversight and direction to multiple scrum teams as applicable.
• Takes responsibility for delivering on commitments to teams: their own team and those with whom they collaborate.
• Plans directly with business customers ensuring that the solution needed by the organization is the solution that is delivered.
• Participates in continuous improvement activities with their own team as well as the teams whom which they collaborate.
• Promotes continuous delivery pipeline and DevOps capabilities.
• Defines subsystems and their interfaces, allocates responsibilities to subsystems, understands solution deployment, and communicates requirements for interactions with solution context.
• Capable of supporting developers during feature implementation by explaining solution design details and solving issues. Maintain up to date domain architecture specification.
• Ability to articulate and collaborate solution requirements using interviews, document analysis, stakeholder surveys, business cases, use cases, user stories, business analysis, task, and workflow analysis.

• Business Relationship Management

• Gracefully responds to emerging business needs and changes in priority.
• Cultivates relationships with business stakeholders, product managers, stakeholders and users of the systems they design and support.
• Maintains in-depth knowledge of the business processes they support.
• Collaborates with business partners on generating and analyzing innovative ideas and technologies across the business.
• Develops and maintains current and future state solution architectures.

• Information System & Technology Architecture

• Actively participates in the Architecture community of practice.
• Designs and oversees implementation of business solutions.
• Maintains in-depth knowledge of the organization's technologies and architectures.
• Actively uses the shared infrastructure and application roadmap to reduce costs and improve how information flows.
• Conducts research into current and emerging Web technologies and issues in support of Web development efforts.
• Develop project deliverables, proof-of-concepts, and pilot new technologies.
• Tracks and evaluates new standards, technologies and trends in Web architecture, development, design, and delivery.

• Architecture Process & Governance

• Adheres to the architectural governance process.
• Adheres to Enterprise technology standards and policies in solution designs and recommendations.
• Executes the Enterprise Architecture Governance processes.
• Executes the IT strategy as defined by the IT Leadership and Enterprise Architecture Team.
• Actively participates in architecture review sessions with the Enterprise Architecture team.
• Enforces and adheres to IT standards, policies and Enterprise architectural plans.
• Ensures that project documentation captures significant architectural decisions.
• Expertise with all facet of the solution architecture including UI/UX, APIs, ERP, CRM, Distributed Caching, Mobile Application, Application Portfolio Management, Databases & Storage, Security, and Cloud & Infrastructure Components (SaaS, IaaS, and IaaS). Any vendor specific Cloud certification is a plus.
• Ability to articulate and collaborate solution requirements using interviews, document analysis, stakeholder surveys, business cases, use cases, user stories, business analysis, task, and workflow analysis.
• Participates in defining and measuring SLAs and recommends improvement opportunities or provides alternate solutions or approaches.

Skill Qualifications
Required:
Expertise with a broad base of digital web and mobile products, technologies, platforms, patterns, frameworks, and methodologies.
Experience with single sign-on systems, role-based access management systems, and PII data security best practices.
Expertise with typical multi-tier architectures: web servers, caching, application servers, load balancers, and storage.
Experience developing and refining best practices for implementation and maintenance of e-Commerce, CRM, web, social media, and web analytic assets.
Experience with general security technologies, processes, and concepts.
Experience with architectural framework (TOGAF, Zachman, FEA, or a hybrid of multiple frameworks).
Experience within SaaS, IaaS, PaaS, and other cloud environments.
Experience with User Centered Design practices.
Experience in Content Management systems (TeamSite knowledge a plus).
Experience user facing web application development and measurement.
Experience with environments containing multiple, diverse technologies and processing environments.
Command of sound software design principles and patterns is required.
Excellent communication, presentation, influencing, and reasoning skills.
Ability to clearly communicate complex concepts with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Strong leadership, interpersonal skills and ability to work cross-functionally.
Strong business judgment and decision-making skills. Ability to identify, prioritize, and articulate highest impact initiatives.
Experience working/leading projects executed using Waterfall and Agile Methodologies.
Ability to learn and adjust quickly to a dynamic and changing environment.
Competency in Microsoft applications including Word, PowerPoint, Visio, and Outlook.
Knowledge of ITSM standards and processes.
Effectively participates in teams and moves the team toward completion of goals.
Ability to effectively resolve conflicts.

Preferred:
Microsoft Dynamics experience.
Business intelligence/analytics experience is a plus.
Familiarity with Marketing and Advertising is desirable.

Education and Experience Qualifications
Required:
Bachelors degree in computer science, information systems, computer engineering, system analysis, or a related field, or equivalent work experience.
10 or more years of IT and business/industry work experience including architecture design and deployment, systems lifecycle management, and infrastructure planning and operations.

Preferred:
Certification in any one of the EA frameworks is a plus.