Sr Enterprise Architect

Client – South Metro, MN (ideally onsite 1 day/week (Wednesday)

6 month contract to hire (potential for direct hire)

Job Description

The Enterprise Architect is a trusted advisor for both the IT and the Business leadership team. The individual is a results driven self-starter and will be responsible for syndicating and developing the target state vision and strategy for systems, processes, information and technologies. This is enabled through deep and broad expertise of both technology and financial services business.

In addition to visioning, the role is responsible for working with the technology development teams to build out the appropriate roadmaps to iteratively develop the capabilities to achieve the desired target state. The strategies are expected to be fluid and evolve over time and the incumbent will be responsible for ensuring all artifacts remain relevant.

A high-impact Architecture function can accelerate progress against critical IT objectives that require a cross-enterprise perspective. The mission of our client is to:

• Reduce costs and enhance agility through IT portfolio complexity reduction;

• Mitigate business risk through architecture documentation, standardization and project governance;

• Support increased business flexibility by promoting pan-enterprise interoperability; and

• Increase the speed of business capability enablement through IT-business alignment, technology innovation, and solution design.

Responsibilities

• Evaluate and document current architecture

• Lead analysis of the current IT environment to detect critical deficiencies and recommend solutions for improvement

• Lead research, discovery, planning, and implementation efforts to improve business processes

• Define strategy for legacy integration initiatives

• Collaborate in the development of standards and ensure consistent application of standards throughout the enterprise

• Lead effort to achieve a architecture this is compliant with federal, local and industry rules and regulations

• Incorporate SOA principles into enterprise architecture design, including identifying

opportunities for common services and service reuse

• Identify Enterprise Value in projects and drive consensus to balance creation of enterprise assets vs. project needs for time to market and managing risk and costs.

• Lead selection of preferred technologies and participate in R&D activities

• Participate in relevant external standards organizations, industry groups, panels, etc.

• Document all architecture design and analysis work

• Develop, improve, validate, and use tools to facilitate enterprise architecture efforts

• Lead analysis of technology industry and market trends to determine their potential impact on the enterprise architecture

• Provide technical leadership, guidance, and support in the deployment of complex applications in global distributed computing environments across the project lifecycle

• Consult with infrastructure project teams to fit infrastructure to architecture. Conversely identify when it is necessary to modify the application architecture to accommodate infrastructure needs

Leadership

• A thought leader who is innovative, entrepreneurial, well respected, and actively sought out. Is considered an authority by peers.

• Courage to push difficult or unpopular perspectives

• Ability to explain complex technical issues in a way non-technical people understand without being condescending.

• Self-starter who solves complex technology and operational problems/issues with little to no guidance from senior management. Seeks senior management advice and guidance as needed for critical decisions with broad business exposure and high risk.

• Business/Application Knowledge – demonstrates deep knowledge/expertise in multiple and inter-dependent applications and processes.

• High energy and drive. Laser-focused on delivery with strategic-thinking, collaboration, facilitation, negotiation and motivational skills.

• Able to serve as evangelist of the architectural vision, strategy, and principles

• Able to establish relationships with business and IT leaders, as well as the technology subject matter experts

• Strategic dexterity: outstanding situational and flexible thinking

• Conduct tradeoff analysis (be able to look at alternative architectural approaches and present pros, cons and recommendations)

• Subject matter expert across multiple technologies, architectures, and business applications with special emphasis on application/systems inter-dependencies

• Remains unbiased toward any specific vendor or technology choice; is more interested in results than personal preferences.

Requirements

• 10+ years solutions design and implementation experience at line of business or enterprise level

• 5+ years of experience in design and architecture at enterprise level

• Proficiency in IT governance and SDLC

• Ability to analyze project, program and portfolio needs, as well as determine resources needed to meet objectives and solve problems that involve remote and elusive symptoms, often spanning multiple environments in a business area.

• Business case development for initial and follow-on work

• Manage and direct multiple engagements developing key architecture artifacts and standards while following an architecture development process.

• Ability to apply multiple technical solutions to business problems.

• Ability to quickly comprehend the functions and capabilities of new technologies.

• Ability to effectively adapt to rapidly changing technology and apply it to business needs.

• Proficiency in Systems engineering techniques such as portfolio analysis, analysis of alternatives, and architecture modeling

• Proficiency in business process modeling & reengineering

• Proficiency in various architecture disciplines like Application, Data, Security and Infrastructure.

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Business or equivalent experience is required

• Master’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Business or equivalent discipline is a plus