Job Description

Job Title: Solutions Architect – Infrastructure & Security

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 responsible for 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 Objectives by 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: 4

Reporting to:

Lead Architect (or alternate as directed by Organisational Structure)
Budget Responsibility:
None

Line Management Responsibility:

None
Job Purpose:
·  To support the Student Loans Company’s vision and mission by:
o  Defining the Architecture and design of Infrastructure & Security services in support of projects within a wider change programme
o  Supporting the definition of technology roadmaps
·  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 assist with creating and refining Architectures and designs for infrastructure & security services that address solution 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
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

Knowledge, Skills and Experience:

Education / Qualifications
·  Degree level education or equivalent
Technical experience
·  Strong generalist experience in a wide range of the following areas:
General Infrastructure & Security Architecture
-  Infrastructure design (across storage, compute, networking, virtualisation, orchestration and deployment)
-  Cloud technologies (across IaaS/PaaS/SaaS and the variants of these technologies)
-  System and network security, with a particular focus on the intersection of security, development, deployment and infrastructure
Infrastructure and security Architecture supporting development teams
-  Software development (or significant exposure to development practices from a DevOps perspective)
-  Modern CI/CD approaches and toolsets
-  Infrastructure as code and associated mechanisms/tools to facilitate consistent infrastructure deployment (chef/puppet/Ansible etc.)
On-premises/hybrid Infrastructure and Security Architecture
-  Unix/Linux deployment, management and administration
-  On-premises and hybrid virtualisation approaches
-  Compute hardware platforms (Cisco UCS, HP c-Class/Synergy, IBM Power Series, Oracle SPARC systems)
-  Microsoft data centre tech (Active Directory, Windows Server etc.)
-  Modern industry standard networking (Cisco based Campus LAN & datacenter deployments; PaloAlto, Checkpoint, Cisco ASA Firewalling; Load balancing/ADC appliances, F5, Baracuda)
-  Storage and backup toolsets and techniques (block SAN storage, file & object stores, archival and backup mechanisms)
-  Security toolsets and security control enforcement techniques and tools (IDS/IPS; SIEM; PAM; IAM; NAC; AV; DLP etc.)
Broader architectural experience
-  Awareness of enterprise architecture frameworks
-  Contributing to business cases to support future projects
-  Working with 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
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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