Solution Architect

The Solution Architects are part of the Architecture practice within the CTO organisation which reports into the Chief Technology Officer.  Solution Architects take primary responsibility for the design and end-to-end solutions for change delivered through project, programme, value stream, and innovation initiatives, and aligned to the Enterprise Principles, Roadmaps and Vision. They champion technology standards, standard patterns, and best practices. They feed their depth of knowledge and expertise into the enterprise roadmaps, and lead and take part in governance forums to develop and ensure the on-going conformity to the enterprise roadmap and Admiral’s technology standards.

The Solution Architects also provide the value streams with technology consultancy and design support grounded in subject-matter expertise and experience. They work with the Lead Solution Architects, Senior and Staff Engineers, and Heads of Tech to ensure roadmap alignment, and ensure optimal use of enterprise assets.

Main Duties:

• Together with Lead Solution Architects, provide strong technical solutions for value streams, own those solutions from ideation to delivery, and ensure that business value can be realised through the correct implementation of the solutions.
• Lead and contribute to governance forums, ensuring solutions adhere to established standards and patterns, identifying and controlling divergences, and escalating where necessary.
• Build productive relationships with technical and business stakeholders to maintain alignment of technology and business strategies.
• Contribute to and help maintain a detailed understanding of the architecture for the value stream.
• Produce documentation of a high-quality and to a detailed level, ensuring that all decision points, building blocks, principles, rationale, roadmaps, and all interdependencies are understood, documented, and communicated across value streams.
• Contribute to the architecture repository using the Admiral architecture modelling tools and language.
• Write, or contributes to, articles, and papers and speak at conferences, user groups, or specialist subject groups on topics involved in Architecture. Play a leading role in special interest groups concerned with specialist field.
• Promote Architecture within Admiral and closely associated organisations.
• Support innovation by research, create and communicate reports, strategies and industry insights about emerging technologies, products, services, methods and techniques and their potential impacts, threats, and opportunities.
• Keep the Head of Solution Architecture and the CTO management team informed and escalate where appropriate.

Skills & Experience

Essential:

• Recognised expertise in Architecture, the technology involved, current developments, the most commonly available products, and the application of Architecture within a technical or business environment. 
• Take innovative approaches to problem solving and/or devising inventive and creative solutions.
• Stakeholder management, ability to communicate at all levels to ensure business and technical objectives are met.
• Keep organisational objectives and strategies in mind and ensuring courses of action are aligned with the strategic context.
• Understand commercial considerations and ensure solutions reflect them when making decisions or recommending actions.
• Proactive approach, anticipating opportunities for improvement or development and taking appropriate action(s).

Desirable:

• Possess knowledge of Financial Services IT Architecture & Strategy.
• Previous experience operating in a heavily regulated environment including external regulated consumer products and service offerings.
• Current and emerging standards associated with IT practice nationally and internationally, published by authorities such as IEEE, IEC, BSI, ISO.
• Principles, methods, techniques and tools for the preparation and monitoring of budgets to manage costs and ensure cost-effectiveness and value for money.

Benefits and Work-Life Balance

At Admiral, we are proud to be a diverse business where we put our people and customers first. We have great benefits to ensure employees have a great work-life balance; it's one of the reasons we’re consistently voted one of the Sunday Times Best Big Companies to work for in the UK. We want you to have an element of freedom to define a working lifestyle that supports this, so accommodate flexible hours wherever possible.

All colleagues will receive 33 days holiday (including banks holidays) when they join us, and this will increase with length of service, up to a maximum of 38 days (including banks holidays). You also have the option to buy or sell up to five days of annual leave in addition to your allocation.

You can also view some of our other key benefits here.

#LI-KG1