Your key responsibilities:
Oversee & host triage calls to process, resolve and prioritize Solution Architect (SA) intake and demand requests
Provide architecture leadership & subject matter expertise to client engagements focusing on complex & innovative products and reusable assets
Develop solution plans, prior to kicking off a project as part of a product life cycle, intended to support business investment decisions which means they must hold the appropriate balance between costs, risks and quality of the product
Create innovative and practical designs that account for the end-to-end technical solution of a system, in line with the business strategy and objectives and within the context of EY’s technology environment.
Work closely and continuously with the business/client to focus on meeting business/client requirements and incorporating broader aspects such as overall product costs/revenue, data privacy & sovereignty, business continuity, information security, integration with other systems, etc.
Identify, define and implementing reusable assets and standards. The solution architect is also responsible for adherence to these standards and consumption of reusable assets across products and portfolios
Ensure relevant technical strategies, policies, standards and practices are applied correctly across Technology programs/projects and products.
Contribute to the development of architecture governance structures, methodologies and compliance activities
Work with the vendors to assess vendor products, understand vendor’s delivery models and assist in implementing them at EY.
Ability to work across multiple projects with varied stakeholders. A Solution Architect sets architectural direction, builds consensus, mediates conflicts providing technical leadership and advisory services to the business. He/she anticipates needs and potential objections and helps to create an environment which solicits positive contributions from all participants: Solution and Technical Architects, engineering teams, product manager, project managers, product analysts, test and project teams, Information Security and Operations.
Demonstrate excellent interpersonal communication and organizational skills that are required to operate as a leading member of global, distributed teams that deliver quality services and solutions.
Cultivate lasting relationships across business, IT and vendors / industry analysts to maintain insight into the broader enterprise as well as industry trends.
Recognizes industry technology trends and emerging technologies, understands how they apply to EY and can drive their adoption into our organization.
Evangelizes and encourages the importance of technical quality, emerging technologies, sharing & experimentation across the org through mentoring, hackathons, communities etc.
Drives an ongoing communication plan to educate stakeholders on the purpose and benefits of solution architecture
Guide others in resolving complex issues in solution architecture and solves complex, escalated aspects of a project
Monitor lhe progress and the quality of the project and reviews and develops due diligence to confirm the developed solution complies with architectural design
Obtain pricing approvals for proposed solution plans with the respective approving authorities
Work closely with the Operations team to ensure Support requirements from the Business is incorporated into the Support model as part of the solution planning
Develop and maintain senior level relationships with CT Leadership and Strategic business partners/technology providers
Work closely with the Platform Design & Product Engineering teams to understand the current and future state roadmap for the Platform Services and Offerings
Be an active liaison with the Service Line (SL) Product Managers to ensure SL demand pipeline is developed and prioritized consistently to support the business vision and growth strategies
Provide feedback to the Platform and Product engineering teams to ensure new features and capabilities are added to the platform backlog, based on the demand pipeline and prioritization
Coordinate with Resource Planners to ensure appropriate resources, required to fulfil propose solution plans, are available
Implement continuous process improvement measures and processes in order to improve upon SA demand management process delivery, value and quality
Nurtures relationships with the EY Global Procurement teams, Monitors business trends and product availability to pay the best price for software and services without sacrificing quality or delivery times
Maintain end-to-end accountability for customer satisfaction and overall delivery excellence
Support the CT strategy and Security standards across the portfolio, recommend standard methodologies, processes & tools
Lead, direct and coach impacted stakeholders to consistently apply the SA demand intake processes and procedures
Ensures team follows standard methodologies, processes and tools & respond to customer questions, concerns, &/or inquiries within defined service level agreements (SLAs)
Coach and mentor team members with regards to current performance and future development; motivate team to achieve challenging objectives while fostering a high degree of team satisfaction
Skills And Attributes For Success
To qualify for the role, you must have
Strong client service and leadership abilities to influence outcomes and enable decision making solutions, ideas, and recommendations to executive stakeholders
Abilily 1o determine stralegic direction not just tactical
Project management and business analysis skills including facilitation, process documentation, scope management, cost management and requirements ga1hering
Expertise in a metrics-driven environment where progress is demonstrated through improving metric
Advanced experience dealing with statement of work and assessing vendor contracts. Evaluates contracts and vendors, makes final decisions regarding suppliers. May serve as a mediator during disputes between vendors and Client Technology staff.
Demonstrates ability to identify and recommend processes improvements
Effective communication; capable of creating clear, concise, and impactful messages describing technical concepts to bolh technical and non-technical people
Exceptional business acumen and proven negotiation skills
Understanding of Iates1 cloud computing and data technologies, business drivers, emerging computing trends and deployment options. How they can be used in different scenarios.
Knowledge on Product Management frameworks and governance
Management skills to manage one or more large, complex programs/projects simultaneously
Exceptional teamwork skills across matrixed client, supplier and geographically dispersed virtual teams
Supervisory skills: Provides formal and informal coaching on-the-job to grow team members to their full potential
Delivers results through others, leveraging the ability to lead through influence
Advanced understanding of solution architecture.
Abilily to adopt and relate new technologies to the set of problems we face at EY while adhering to security and other EY standards
Abilily to communicate solu1ions, ideas, suggestions to a variety of (business) stakeholders effectively and comprehensibly
Strategic business acumen and understanding of organizational strategy
Deep understanding of Application, Infrastructure and security architecture and non-functional aspects like Performance, Scalability, Reliability, Availability, all the so- called “capabililies” of a system
Good understanding of latest cloud computing and data technologies, business drivers, emerging computing trends, and deployment options.
Expert-level skills in defining, designing and developing distributed and scalable products and services, including reusable domain-specific microservices on multi-platform
/hybrid clouds (such as Microsoft Azure, AWS, Google Cloud Rackspace, VMware, or OpenStack)
Ability to navigate the EY organization to facilitate work beyond the immediale 1echnical team
Experience with Agile & DevSecops methodologies;
Excellent project management, collaboration, interpersonal and communication skills
A broad understanding of EY Technology, including service offerings, technical standards and policies, technical and business strategies as well as organizational structure
Strong collaboration abilities — willingness to share ideas, documentation and leading practices
Conceptual and analytical skills — ability to extract, analyze, and document complex business and technical requirements/strategies
Ideally, you should also have
Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent in Engineering, Computer Science, IT, Mathematics, Economics
A minimum of 12+ years overall IT industry experience
A minimum of 5+ years in a solution or technical architect role using service and hosting solutions such as private/public cloud IaaS, PaaS and SaaS platforms
Experience in architec1ing and designing technical solutions for Microsoft-centric solutions based on industry standards using (Azure) IaaS, PaaS and SaaS capabilities.
Experience with any claims-based authentication (SAML/0Auth/OIDC), MFA, JIT, and/or RBAC / Ping etc.
Knowledge of cloud security controls including tenant isolation, encryption at rest, encryp1ion in transit, key management, vulnerability assessments, application firewalls, SIEM, etc.
Managed the end-to-end lifecycles of a project in solution architect capacity
Experience with mission critical technology components with DR capabilities
Experience with multi-geography, multi-tier service design and management
Extensive experience in financial management, solution plan development and product cost estimation
Solid business acumen, management and marketing communication skills
same as above
