Job description

Solutions Architect
One day a week in the office (Monday's) - Offices at Wembley Stadium
Full Time - Permanent

Gerrard White are working with a leading charity in delivering outstanding grassroots football facilities to clubs and communities across the UK.

They are looking for a Solutions Architect will lead on the high-level design of all enterprise services to ensure that all systems and applications developed, outsourced, or purchased integrates correctly into the architecture to provide a coherent platform which is well documented on an application portfolio.

The post-holder will also be responsible for reviewing existing legacy applications, assessing, and proposing direction and designing and implementing the future state systems architecture required to meet the needs of the organisation.

The post holder will work closely with the Business Analyst and stakeholder teams within the organisation to ensure that the functional business requirements are delivered, as well as leading the development team when designing innovative solutions.

This is an ideal opportunity for an experienced and enthusiastic Solutions Architect who is looking to take a key role within a sport-focussed organisation and enjoys developing the skills within an organisation following the implementation of and improvements to technology solutions.

Principal contacts

Internal: Head of Technology, Scrum Master, Business Analyst, Chief Finance Officer, Director of Grant Management, Director of Programmes, Director of Brand, Development Team.

External: External software suppliers, Data analysts from our funding partners

Key responsibilities:

1. Managing the internal development team for our Grant Application and Management processes.
2. Ensuring the design and architecture of our services meet the current and future data and technology needs.
3. Understanding the dependencies, interoperability, future viability, and cybersecurity requirements of our technology stacks across the entire service catalogue, including making recommendations for commissioning and decommissioning services as needed.
4. Support the Scrum Master to facilitate development activities, processes, or work packages to ensure the delivery of new grant offerings and system functionality improvements as specified in the product development roadmap.
5. Supporting the Scrum Master, Business Analyst and development team in resource planning, capacity planning, task/story creation, refinement, and effort/story-pointing.
6. Suggesting improvements for and outlining the benefits of improvements in production processes for the development team to optimise resource allocation.
7. Regularly reporting progress with stakeholders, including raising risks, issues and other noteworthy project items in a timely manner and supporting in resolution.
8. Ensure that system benefits are understood and realised at all levels.
9. Ensure that all information collected, utilised, and disseminated via its systems is done so according to all legislative and regulatory requirements (i.e., Data Protection Act, EU General Data Protection Regulation).

Other activity

1. Undertake duties as can be expected to ensure the department's smooth running and efficiency.
2. Carry out duties and responsibilities of the post in compliance with policies - especially Equal Opportunities and Health & Safety.

PERSON SPECIFICATION

Qualifications & Experience

1. Related computer engineering degree or significant industry experience
2. Good technical understanding of development frameworks, value cycles, business processes, business requirements and UAT (User Acceptance Testing) methodologies
3. Extensive experience with the end-to-end software delivery cycle
4. Evidence of collaboratively working within Agile / Scrum teams, and experience in influencing and co-ordinating external suppliers to meet the data and technology need.
5. Strong knowledge of Microsoft Dynamics 365, PowerApps and Power BI technologies
6. Working knowledge of JIRA
7. Experience of translating business requirements into a well optimised and elegant technical design, supported by development teams.
8. Experience of successfully managing a small team of people; motivating and inspiring them to achieve objectives

Skills and abilities

1. Ability to critically evaluate business requirements and turn them into effective solution designs/proposals across the full technology stack.
2. Proven ability in working with multiple development frameworks, methodologies, and solutions.
3. Exceptional team management skills; able to communicate technical matters, both verbally and in writing, to both skilled and non-skilled staff.
4. Strong time and capacity management skills; able to work across the organisation on multiple projects simultaneously, managing expectations and prioritising workloads.
5. Able to manage moving deadlines and changing priorities and maintain a flexible mindset when managing conflicting priorities across the business.
6. Have a demonstrable ability to use your technical skills to break down the problem/solution into deliverables for the development team to build and test.
7. You are flexible & adaptable in applying your skills wherever required, depending on the current needs of the team.

In return you will get a competitive salary alongside an outstanding benefits package that includes -

• 8% employers' contribution (6% employee)
• Private Medical - Personal - AXA Group
• Health Cash Plan (optical, physio, dental)
• £30 gym subsidy
• 2% collective bonus (discretionary) - based on KPI's being hit
• Free Wembley match tickets - England, FA Cup (Semi/Final), League Cup, Charity Shield
• 25 days holiday