VP Solutions Architect

Job Description

Purpose of the role

To design, develop, and implement solutions to complex business problems, collaborating with stakeholders to understand their needs and requirements, and design and implement solutions that meet those needs and create solutions that balance technology risks against business delivery, driving consistency. 

Accountabilities

• Design and development of solutions as products that can evolve, meeting business requirements that align with modern software engineering practices and automated delivery tooling. This includes identification and implementation of the technologies and platforms.
• Targeted design activities that apply an appropriate workload placement strategy and maximise the benefit of cloud capabilities such as elasticity, serverless, containerisation etc.
• Best practice designs incorporating security principles (such as defence in depth and reduction of blast radius) that meet the Bank’s resiliency expectations.
• Solutions that appropriately balance risks and controls to deliver the agreed business and technology value.
• Adoption of standardised solutions where they fit. If no standard solutions fit, feed into their ongoing evolution where appropriate.
• Fault finding and performance issues support to operational support teams, leveraging available tooling.
• Solution design impact assessment in terms of risk, capacity and cost impact, inc. estimation of project change and ongoing run costs.
• Development of the requisite architecture inputs required to comply with the banks governance processes, including design artefacts required for architecture, privacy, security and records management governance processes.

Vice President Expectations

• Advise key stakeholders, including functional leadership teams and senior management on functional and cross functional areas of impact and alignment.
• Manage and mitigate risks through assessment, in support of the control and governance agenda.
• Demonstrate leadership and accountability for managing risk and strengthening controls in relation to the work your team does.
• Demonstrate comprehensive understanding of the organisation functions to contribute to achieving the goals of the business.
• Collaborate with other areas of work, for business aligned support areas to keep up to speed with business activity and the business strategies.
• Create solutions based on sophisticated analytical thought comparing and selecting complex alternatives. In-depth analysis with interpretative thinking will be required to define problems and develop innovative solutions.
• Adopt and include the outcomes of extensive research in problem solving processes.
• Seek out, build and maintain trusting relationships and partnerships with internal and external stakeholders in order to accomplish key business objectives, using influencing and negotiating skills to achieve outcomes.

All colleagues will be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Values of Respect, Integrity, Service, Excellence and Stewardship – our moral compass, helping us do what we believe is right. They will also be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Mindset – to Empower, Challenge and Drive – the operating manual for how we behave.

Embark upon a transformative journey as a Solutions Architect. At Barclays, we don’t just embrace change – we drive it. As a Solutions Architect you will design, develop, and implement solutions to complex business problems, collaborating with stakeholders to understand their needs and requirements, and design and implement solutions that meet those needs and create solutions that balance technology risks against business delivery, driving consistency.

To be a successful Solutions Architect, you should have experience with:

• Proven experience in designing and/or building highly scalable and highly resilient global scale financial systems in a highly regulated environment. Proven experience with track record of delivery of solutions and roadmaps while supporting small, medium, and large complex business and technical projects of strategic significance, end to end execution, with internal and external stakeholder management.

• Experience in owning end-to-end technical and application architecture current and target states, roadmaps for few business units, having worked with relevant business and technical component teams that need to contribute. Experience of working in DevOps operating model and associated tools e.g. JIRA, Jenkins etc. Technical expertise in Java or any other programming languages, Data platforms and BI – visualization and reporting platforms, modern architecture patterns e.g.  Domain Driven, Event Based, Data lakes, API (e.g. Microservices, Service Mesh, GraphQL/REST etc.), Cloud capabilities and hands-on experience in architecting cloud solutions and cloud/on-prem integrations with vended solutions (including infrastructure setup).

• Exposure to Service Orientated Architecture design principles, service definition and web services implementation including exposure of API components to external consumers. Excellent understanding of integration and implementation issues and their architectural implications, and of best practice architectural and design methods. Knowledge of technologies (including infrastructure technologies) that are used by financial service providers and used in banking organizations.

• Proven ability to multi-task, handle solutions related to multiple projects and stakeholders simultaneously, with attention to detail and quality of work in a high paced environment and being able to co-ordinate, manage competing priorities against stringent and demanding timelines. Ability to manage upwards and downwards, can negotiate and solicit engagement at all levels of the organisation, and have solid experience of working with senior stakeholders (typically D, MD level). Certified with Solution architect and enterprise architect trainings and certifications such as TOGAF, BCS accreditation or any relevant industry technology certifications.

Additional relevant skills given below are highly valued (Desired):

• Experience in banking applications and infrastructure, with broad and solid understanding of the concepts and roles behind service delivery and systems support. Experience in Finance line function or GRC frameworks preferred but not essential.

• Understanding of different project methodologies, project lifecycles, major phases, dependencies and milestones within a project, and the required documentation needs. Experience in planning, estimating, staffing, organising, and working on multiple projects. Has monitored and dealt with critical paths and risks areas.

You may be assessed on key critical skills relevant for success in role, such as risk and controls, change and transformation, business acumen, strategic thinking and digital and technology, as well as job-specific technical skills.

This role is based in Pune.