Job Reference: R0016995

To support its breadth, diversity and complexity along with its desire for sustainable and profitable growth our business requires first-class IT solutions and services.

This role exists to partner with senior IT & business stakeholders, understand their needs, layout future state and transition roadmaps then design robust, pragmatic and efficient IT solutions to address those needs.

Duties and accountabilities

Collaborates with IT Business Leads and Business Stakeholders to develop, maintain and curate the IT Roadmaps across multiple domains.
Contributes to IT Architectural bodies (Design Authority and Architecture Review Board) ensuring all solutions adhere to Markel EA standards, principles, security, operational and regulatory requirements.
Provides technology thought leadership and guidance to IT Business Leads and Business teams
Conducts Business Capability assessments and maps these to current and future state IT solutions
Captures and analyses specific business requirements and creates appropriate solution designs ensuring all functional and non-functional requirements are properly satisfied. These include Conceptual Architecture, HLD and LLD artefacts.
Works as part of multiple delivery teams / scrums to ensure projects are delivered to a high standard of quality within the agreed time, scope and cost measures.
Develops and shapes investment business cases in conjunction with colleagues across Markel
Builds relationships with architects across Markel globally (Data/Infrastructure/Security/Integration); participates in Enterprise Architecture activities
Seeks opportunities to simplify, automate, rationalise and improve the efficiency of our IT solutions
Creates application upgrade, migration and retirement strategies that align to our plan whilst ensuring dependencies, risks are identified and mitigated accordingly.
Communicates architecture solutions to both technical and non-technical audiences ensuring the communication style used is appropriate for the intended audience.
Coach and mentor project delivery teams and other colleagues as required to ensure successful business outcomes – act as a domain expert escalation point when necessary
Engage with the wider IT teams to foster innovation, deliver proof of concept solutions and acceptance of new technologies
Keeps abreast of technology trends identifying opportunities for commercial benefit

Skills, knowledge and experience

The successful candidate must have:

A proven track record as a Senior IT Architect in large and complex Enterprises
Demonstrable experience designing IT solution architectures with corresponding technology phase transitions and migration plans where necessary.
A pragmatic, resilient and highly driven personality who always seeks to “get the job done”
Outstanding business engagement & communications skills
Credibility articulating complex technology concepts and solutions to non-technical audiences
Experience negotiating and contributing to contracts for the provision of IT systems and services
Expertise of Microsoft technology stack, platforms and components (o/s, DB, web, application)
Experience of working within both Waterfall and Agile delivery frameworks
Experience working with multiple external delivery partners in the execution of IT projects
Experience working on multiple concurrent projects often with competing priorities

The following skills, knowledge and experience are desirable but are not essential:

Experience of Insurance Industry processes, applications, solutions & architectures
Experience of Automation tools / technologies (BPMN / Workflow / RPA)
Experience of PaaS, IaaS, SaaS deployment models especially in a Public Cloud
Knowledge of “cloud native” technologies and tooling ideally using Microsoft Azure
Basic knowledge of the relevant use cases for Enterprise Service Bus tools
Knowledge of API and micro services-based architectures desirable (this is not a development role)
Experience of architecture modelling tools (SPARX, Mega, ArchiMate or similar)
TOGAF or other recognised architecture frameworks
Prior experience managing projects and/or operational experience would be highly beneficial

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