Job: Senior Solutions Architect

The Role

The Senior Solution Architect is responsible for designing and implementing scalable systems that meet the business requirements and helping ensure the same are delivered within the agreed timescales and budgets.  As such, you must be a highly experienced solution architect, able to gather detailed requirements from users, produce functional requirements documentation, whilst working with development resources to ensure that requirements are achievable.  Re-engineering business processes is also highly desirable.

An understanding of business needs is essential but with the ability to understand related technical issues to design appropriate solutions.  The ability to translate business language into technical language as the go between from the end users to the developers is crucial.

You will need to be able to challenge requirements through detailed analysis and questioning and deep dives, to ensure a thorough understanding of the problem to be solved, in order to determine the correct solutions.

This is a hands-on role where you will be expected to carry out requirements workshops, work closely with users, review test scripts and assist with functional and user acceptance testing and train users.

You must be able to manage users at all levels, ensure expectations are realistic and help to identify, understand and implement steps to mitigate risks to projects and find the right balance between the ideal world and the real business needs.

You will be working with the in-house development resources, contractors and 3^rd party suppliers, including offshore resource.  You may also need to collaborate with the in-house shared service centre team who provide the IT infrastructure.  You will be a key point of contact within the team for senior management, stakeholders and key users.

You may also be involved in reviewing supplier proposals and evaluating 3^rd party solutions, including and supplier selection and negotiation from time to time.

You will initially be working on the company’s business transformation programme which focuses on data automation.  This is a significant investment for the company’s business and the scope of work includes automating a large array of disparate data sources to turn it into readily available, easily digestible information for the companys’ clients.

Team Department/Profile

Technology is at the heart of our business.  Every business function within company, depends on reliable systems to manage existing client relationships efficiently and effectively and to help win new business. We are creating leading edge systems to manage and make sense of the ever increasing volumes of data, to optimise and improve ROI audience targeted media buying, as well as improve internal efficiencies.

The role sits within the Data Sciences practice.  You will work closely with the other company practices and teams across the business, with some client facing involvement from time to time.

This is a fun, friendly and dynamic environment to work in, but the ability to work under pressure, work on multiple projects at the same time and to tight deadlines is essential.  You must be self-motivated and able to work easily and collaboratively with others.  An understanding of the media industry and data is highly desirable but not essential.

Experience Required

The following skills are essential for this role:

• At least 5 years of experience in business analysis roles, with a focus on web based, data driven and BI applications
• Working with end users and stakeholders to accurately capture requirements and manage expectations
• Working knowledge of Agile methodologies, including daily scrums, sprint planning and release control
• Documenting functional requirement specifications
• Drawing up cost and timeline proposals for solutions
• Good understanding of ETL, data ingestion, cleansing, harmonisation and data governance
• Good understanding of BI layer
• Liaising with developers, web designers, project managers and testers, including both in-house and offshore resources, to ensure everyone has a clear understanding of the requirements
• Knowledge of media buying systems, competitive data providers, ad-servers, DSPs, web analytics tools, content verification tools, etc
• Reviewing project plans to validate everything is correctly identified
• Reviewing test scripts to validate they correctly reflect the required application functionality and performance criteria
• Understanding of good UI/user experience principles
• Conducting systems training to end users
• Competent in MS Project, Visio, Excel, Word, JIRA and TFS
• General understanding of SQL databases, design and ability to write SQL queries
• General understanding of web application development
• Must be an articulate, strong, confident communicator, able to work under pressure, juggle multiple projects and manage demanding challenges
• Any experience of working in the media industry

Highly desirable, but not essential skills are:

• Evaluating 3^rd party solutions and supplier proposals
• Experience of analysing business processes and re-engineering to introduce efficiencies

If you feel you are an ideal candidate for this opportunity, please apply now with you latest CV!