Solution Architect

At Aviva, we are looking to transform the way in which we engage with our customers. Digital and Cloud technology is key, and agile methodologies are at the heart of our strategy. So, we’re now looking for a Senior Solution Architect to join us. Someone to be responsible for the end-to-end solution designs that drive this vision forward. This person will be a key part of a wider global architecture practice and will be passionate about driving, improving and promoting the process and delivery of architecture (and its value) across the organisation.

Aviva has now introduced “smart-working”, and the person in this role can be based anywhere in the UK, as long as they are comfortable regularly travelling to one of our offices weekly.

We’re looking for someone who:

• Is passionate about defining the end-to-end solutions for IT change programmes which support our customers
• Can build end-to-end designs that are fit for purpose from a functional, non-functional, service, and security point of view.
• Can deliver solutions that move our overall architecture forwards, in line with Aviva’s IT Strategy
• Can drive improvement in design quality
• Will provide technical direction and support to our business and technology stakeholders in delivering change

The role’s duties & responsibilities:

• Crafting solutions and design for projects to meet Aviva’s standards for technology, ensuring they meet our ambitions for availability, security, resilience and performance
• Providing coaching, mentoring and training to less experienced Solution Architects as required
• Providing leadership on key designs to ensure the long-term strategic goals of Aviva IT are met as well as short term project needs
• Performing early triage and shaping of IT initiatives to support investment decisions and initial delivery planning
• Ensuring design artefacts are produced to support service, security, architecture and engineering
• Supervising the integrity of end-to-end solutions, including transition states used to achieve target state

Skills & experience we're looking for:

• Passionate about technology and how to exploit it for the benefit of our customers!
• Deep technical experience - this may be broad with the ability to apply it across a variety of customer and business scenarios, or strong domain specialisms to maximise the benefits of technology in key areas
• Financial acumen to support development of business cases and to inform key design decisions
• Excellent design and architecture skills
• A track record of strong business partner and relationship management at all levels
• A “technical leader” to support, develop and lead others
• Experience of agile delivery methods
• Experience in cloud technologies is desirable (esp. Amazon Web Services)