Solutions Architect

<b>ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES</b><br><br> <b>BASIC PURPOSE OF THE ROLE</b><br><br> Responsible maintaining a set of standards for provision of IT solutions and in collaboration with others ensures that existing and new solutions meet quality criteria and guidelines defined. <br><br> <b>KEY RESPONSIBILITIES</b><br><br><ul><li>Liaise with other Client stakeholders to align and agree on Architecture standards. </li><li>Designs, maintains and enhances solution architectural blueprints and integration designs (typically through creating standards and guidelines) in support of business requirements for new services.   </li><li>Responsible for ensuring that Architect standards are defined and effectively communicated across the IT organisation. </li><li>Identify improvement opportunities with existing solutions and work with others to incorporate these improvements into ongoing roadmaps. </li><li>Contribute to the identification of what emerging technologies should be incorporated into technology offerings and services to successfully deliver overall IT strategy. </li><li>Contributes to prioritisation of change activities to protect, maintain or enhance IT service delivery in the longer term </li><li>Provide technical governance for deployment and adaption of solutions. Providing feedback and working with stakeholders and external parties to reach consensus to allow timely delivery of outcomes. </li><li>Drive the adoption of commodity solutions and drive delivery from off the shelf cloud-based offerings where possible. </li><li>Facilitate identification and evaluation of technological risks, including sustainability of solutions, ensuring mitigation plans are in place and escalate these risks where required. </li><li>Provide a leading role in defining Business Continuity plans and ensuring that technology solutions are sufficiently robust to manage risk to an acceptable level. </li><li>Proactively work with project delivery teams to ensures solutions designed at project/ programme level are aligned with architecture standards and principles. </li><li>Provides support to others within the IT function, especially during the design phases of change activities. </li><li>Maintains a detailed understanding of the primary IT architecture in use at Client - architecture, inter-operability and configuration </li><li>Ensures that security requirements are embedded into solution designs and performance assessments against Client best practice. </li><li>Contribute to the identification of service improvement related activities and help develop plans to realise these improvements. </li><li>Help drive digital innovation by leveraging innovative new technologies and approaches to renovate, extend, and transform the existing core technology base and IT estate. </li><li>Contribute to appraisal activities to ensure adopted solutions are technically acceptable. </li></ul><b>QUALIFICATIONS, EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS</b><br><br> <b>QUALIFICATIONS/TRAINING</b><br><br> Essential<br><br><ul><li>BSc/MSc in computer science, information systems, business administration or related field or/ equivalent work experience  </li></ul>Preferred<br><br><ul><li>TOGAF 9 qualification or similar </li></ul><b>EXPERIENCE/KNOWLEDGE/SKILLS</b><br><br> Essential<br><br><ul><li>Solid understanding of IT technologies and service provision for an Oil & Gas environment </li><li>Skilled at influencing, guiding and facilitating stakeholders and peers with decision making.  </li><li>Ability to propose and estimate the financial impact of solution architecture alternatives </li><li>Good understanding of application development methodologies and infrastructure and network architecture </li><li>Ability to understand the long-term (