Platform Solution Architect (AWS)

When you join Kainos, you get to think beyond limitations to make an immediate and positive impact – like transforming digital services for millions of citizens or helping Fortune 500 companies get live and thrive on Workday.You’ll be part of a people-first culture that is growing around the world. We’re a creative, committed, and diverse group of individuals who succeed as a team.At Kainos your ideas are heard and valued and you’ll leave a legacy that you can feel proud of. Join us and discover how our people write our story.

Main purpose of the role & responsibilities in the business:
As a Platform Solution Architect (Manager) in Kainos, you’ll be responsible for leading multi-skilled agile teams to design and deliver high quality solutions on public cloud which delight our customers. As a technical leader in Kainos, you’ll work with customer architects and talented colleagues to design, automate, build and support modern digital service platforms. You’ll estimate effort and advise on the impact of technical decisions surrounding technology choices. You’ll lead with the creation of policy and standards, provide assurance across Kainos delivery projects and share knowledge with/mentor those around you. You’ll continually be learning about new technologies and looking to the future for how we adopt them for customer benefit.
Your key responsibilities will include:
• Championing a DevOps culture - You’ll lead colleagues in engineering, testing, consulting, product management and security capabilities to design solutions of the highest quality which meet all non-functional requirements – you’ll do all that it takes to ensure Kainos delivery projects are successful.
• Championing technology for positive impact – You’ll keep appraised of the latest technologies/tools and champion their use for benefit both within and outside of Kainos.
• Developing Kainos as a business – You contribute to technology strategy and help Kainos to identify, qualify and win new opportunities.
• Providing Leadership – You’ll provide technical leadership – typically across projects - which may sometimes require you to be hands-on and on others to take difficult, but necessary decisions.
• Being opinionated – As a respected leader, you’ll offer your opinions and critique with a view to improve the quality of our solutions. You won’t wait to be asked, you’ll proactively share knowledge through internal Kainos forums and more widely in industry.
• Being a role model – You’ll support your colleagues and reconcile the needs of the individual with the needs of the team, you will embody the Kainos values. You’ll be the person people look up to – people trust your decisions because they are transparent and justified. You’ll be passionate and committed to ensuring Kainos projects are successful.
• Putting people first & developing others – You’ll manage, coach and develop a small number of senior staff, with a focus on managing employee performance and assisting in their career development.
MINIMUM (ESSENTIAL) REQUIREMENTS
• Excellent verbal and written communications skills, with the ability to simply and clearly communicate technical concepts to a non-technical audience.
• Excellent prioritisation and time management skills, with the ability to work across a number of major projects simultaneously.
• We all work in teams here in Kainos – a proven ability of strong team leadership skills across teams and fostering a DevOps culture.
• We are passionate about developing people – a demonstrated ability in managing, coaching and developing senior members of your team and wider community.
• Demonstrable personal ownership of:
o Delivering all aspects of modern digital service platforms in production environments
o Prioritizing non-functional concerns for customers and incorporating them into the platform design
o Making effective – and sometimes difficult - decisions within fast-moving delivery environments and owning the outcomes
• Significant expertise in:
o Using multiple public cloud platforms (AWS and Azure) to build solutions across a variety of problem domains and integrating native SaaS and PaaS offerings into your solution.
o Understanding of whole solution architecture concepts.
o Utilizing the latest Continuous Delivery techniques for releasing operationally ready software to production.
• Demonstrable experience in:
o Using the latest container orchestration platforms including Kubernetes.
o Applying cloud Native tooling and approaches.
o Pro-actively developing business within an account with sales and account managers.
o Proven experience being accountable for all sizes of technology delivery challenges, e.g. project, multi-team programme.
o Developing and contributing to businesses cases promoting public cloud adoption.
DESIRABLE
• Third level – or equivalent - qualification in a related discipline.
• Obtained certification with a public cloud provider (AWS/Azure).
• Obtained certification with another respected professional body (CNCF).
• Actively shares their thoughts and views on technology both internally and externally.
• Use of automation tooling and proficient in one of the following: Powershell, Bash, Python, Ruby, Go, Groovy.