Solutions Architect

• This is an exciting opportunity to join one of the largest global investment management firms. The company is currently on a digital transformation journey and require a talented individual to take responsibility for a number of end-to-end technology solutions to deliver strategic business outcomes.
• As a Solution Architect you will be joining a motivated team of professionals working to architect solutions for entire breath of the firm, including Portfolio Managers, Analysts, Quants, Marketing, Compliance and Operations. You will gain exposure to a variety of partners at all levels, from Senior Technology leaders to Senior Business partners.
• The candidate will be required to put forward roadmaps and designs for an all-encompassing vision for target state technology solutions for the initiatives, and work with several engineering teams spanning multiple technologies to ensure its implementation.
• The candidate must be able to identify and resolve issues that are creating inefficiencies or hindering progress proactively.

Responsibilities:

Design Ownership

• Producing and owning the end-to-end design of the solution spanning multiple software components (evidencing at all points how the design answers the requirements – clear traceability)
• Working with engineering teams to ensure detailed component-level design responds to the end-to-end design
• Working with the Senior Architects to ensure that data and functional architectures adhere to the high-level architecture principles and support target state vision for the enterprise
• Working with the IT Infrastructure implementation team to make sure that planned infrastructure adequately supports the software components of the solution

Requirements

• Working closely with Business stakeholders, Product Managers/Owners and Business Analysts to help translate desired business outcomes into robust system requirements, both functional and non-functional

Development & Testing:

• Facilitate and participate in detailed design reviews and ensure that all components of the solution are aligned to the target state vision
• Working with the testing team to support the definition and implementation of the testing strategy for the initiative

Software Delivery

• Working with component developers to elicit, validate and refine estimates for developing the software components
• Planning and coordination of deployment activities across multiple technology platforms
• Overall accountability for delivering technology change is shared with IT project managers

Qualifications:

• 7-10 years’ experience in Finance - Investment Management sector.
• Substantial experience in software/application development with progressively increasing responsibilities and long-term engagements with employers
• Experience working on investment management front office systems including portfolio management systems, OMS & trading platforms
• Understanding of IBOR & ABOR fundamentals
• Experience of the Charles River (CRIMS) product and interfaces
• Track record of designing and delivering solution architecture for data-intensive initiatives spanning multiple technologies, delivered over the course of 2-3 years, and budgeted above $5m
• Experience of large transformational projects with multi-year system migration planning
• Experience implementing and integrating 3rd party packages as part of technology solutions
• Experience with Agile delivery methodologies; working knowledge of the SAFe framework would be a plus
• Practical understanding and experience of Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD)

Specialist knowledge/skills:

• Excellent understanding and practical experience of defining, designing and implementing Microservices in an enterprise environment
• Excellent understanding and practical experience of cloud technologies, including PaaS, container platforms (Docker and Kubernetes), Serverless, etc. Experience with Red Hat Openshift and AWS of significant benefit
• Knowledge of enterprise messaging technologies with experience of Kafka
• Knowledge of UX/UI design and technologies
• In addition, it would be a plus to have exposure to:
  • Big Data technology stacks, such as native AWS and/or Cloudera CDH/CDP
  • Data management and data quality tools

Competence/Characteristics:

• Self-starter
• Visual thinker able to communicate effectively with diagrams
• Good facilitation skills, ability to broker an agreement on a contentious issue
• Proactive, ‘can learn’/‘can do’ attitude
• Team & business focused
• Good attention to detail
• Intellectual honesty

Experience level: Mid-senior

Experience required: 10 Years

Education level: Bachelor’s degree

Job function: Information Technology

Industry: Financial Services