Job Description

Job Title: SeniorSolutionsArchitect

About SLC
Student Loans Company (SLC) is a non-profit making Government-owned organisation set up in 1989 to provide loans and grants to students in universities and colleges in the UK. We are responsiblefor student support delivery in the UK.
Company Mission
We enable our customers to invest in their futures by delivering secure, accurate and efficient assessment, payment and repayment services.
Company Vision
Our vision is to be valued as a digital, customer-focused, centre of excellence.
Job Details
Overview of team:
The Architecture team sits within the Information Technology Services (ITS) directorate. Its primary purpose is to define, govern and assure the implementation of SLC’s Technical Architecture.
The team contributes directly to the delivery of SLCs Corporate Objectivesby defining and governing a single Business led Enterprise Architecture Roadmap; and as curator of the Architecture Roadmap. It manages robust governance, processes and controls, and utilises flexible and responsive sourcing models as appropriate.
Being responsible for setting the company's strategic technical direction, the highly productive, skilled and engaged Architecture team operates on industry standards and best practices. Its aim being to deliver a modern, scalable, secure, resilient and safe multi-tiered architectural platform.

Grade:5

Reporting to:

Lead Architect
Budget Responsibility:
None

Line Management Responsibility:

Line management of Grades 3 and 4 as dictated by team structure.
Job Purpose:
  • To support the Student Loans Company’s vision and mission by:
  • Defining the Architecture and design of applications in support of projects within a wider change programme
  • Supporting the definition of application and technology roadmaps
  • Assisting in the definition of the company’s technical vision and strategy, driving its adoption throughout SLC
  • To provide technical leadership to colleagues
Key responsibilities:
Technical
  • Responsible for architectural design and documentation within identified areas of a multi-tiered architectural platform
  • To create and refine Architectures and designs for application solutions that address customer needs, which are consistent with the Company’s vision and values, and are in line with SLC’s Architectural principles
  • To be an active member of technical forums and design clinics, working collaboratively to optimise your own and other’s designs
  • To contribute to the definition and maintenance of the SLC Enterprise Architecture ensuring it reflects the current and future application and technology state
  • To assist with the planning, estimation and prioritisation of Architectural effort
  • Participate in the development/review of Technical Architectural goals, principles, practices, and standards
Strategic Development & Innovation
  • To assist in the definition of the company’s technical vision, strategy and roadmaps
  • To promote innovation by leading and/or participating in research and development activities using new technologies, tools and techniques; carrying out realistic trials of new technologies in order to demonstrate their applicability in an SLC context
Stakeholder Relations
  • To work collaboratively with customers, business and technical colleagues in the creation of Architecture and designs in support of individual projects within the context of a wider programme of work
  • To communicate the Architectural designs to multiple audiences at all levels, including senior executives and board level
  • To support programme level decision-making and prioritisation of work, ensuring that sound architectural design is a key influencing factor
  • To assist with the planning, estimation and prioritisation of new policies and proposals
  • As subject matter expert, participate in and to lead discovery/inception workshops in order to facilitate the understanding of customer needs and facilitate the production of technical designs
Leadership
  • To represent the team and company professionally in all engagements
  • To act as an ambassador for SLC and to promote SLC’s architecture vision to internal and external stakeholders, and other organisations both inside and outside government
  • To provide leadership for Technical colleagues, supporting them in their personal development and career aspirations
Governance/Assurance
  • To undertake design assurance on key projects ensuring that changes to the architecture take account of relevant goals, principles, practices, strategies, roadmaps, policies, standards while assessing the impact that the changes will have on other projects
  • To provide and lead document review activities
Continuous Improvement
  • To gather and analyse feedback on the SLC Enterprise Architecture framework and continuously improve the meta-models, processes and tools, taking into account industry best practice
  • To lead and/or participate in post implementation reviews to assess the extent to which expected business and technical benefits were realised, and to record successes and suggest improvements to the architecture, design and delivery processes
Recruitment
  • To contribute to the team’s Recruitment activities and processes

Knowledge, Skills and Experience:

Education / Qualifications
  • Degree level education or equivalent
Technical experience
  • Strong generalist experience in a wide range of the following areas:
-Awareness of enterprise architecture frameworks
-Contributing to business cases to support future projects
-Working with software delivery partners in a multi-vendor environment, including pre-Contract engagement, preparation of invitations to tender and tender evaluation
-Agile and Waterfall project delivery methodologies
-Evolutionary architecture and emergent design
-Lean methods
  • Strong specialist experience in four of the following areas:
-Knowledge of continuous integration tools and techniques
-Experience of telephony and IVR systems, IVR analytics tools, CRM implementations, Document management solutions
-Cloud Services
-Enterprise integration patterns and tooling.
-Design and/or development of applications in a multi-tiered environment using the Java language and related technologies
-Design and/or development of applications in an Oracle 12c database environment and related technologies – Oracle Forms, PL/SQL
-Design of data stores using SQL and/or NoSQL database technologies – Oracle, MongoDB
-Web services design and/or development – SOAP / REST
-Design and/or development of applications that use asynchronous messaging systems for integration
-CI/CD techniques
Other skills / qualities / experience
  • Experience in providing estimates/sizing
  • Excellent written communication skills including technical writing
  • Excellent verbal communication skills including presenting to small and large groups
  • Ability to self-start and to work autonomously as well as in a team

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