Solution Architect Job Description Template

We are looking for a solution architect who will play a critical role in the software development cycle, from gathering requirements to directing the activities of the rest of the design team. You will have to frequently examine functional specifications and translate them into system guidelines that shape project development as well as find ways to align projects with enterprise-level systems.

About Us: <Brief Description about the company, its values, and its culture>

Your Responsibilities as a Solution Architect:

Gather requirements and specifications from clients and users.
Work closely with sales team members and enterprise architects to gain a complete sense of stakeholder expectations and limitations before undertaking a major development project.
Examine existing systems and programs to identify areas for improvement and integration.
Develop schedules and test plans, prepare documentation based on analyst reports, and assemble documents presenting project guidelines and milestones to team members.
Identify potential issues between systems and client specifications and propose new solutions to work around these limitations.
Determine a project’s scope before developers begin any major work.
Identify areas where implementation may require more solutions to be successful.
Communicate directly with enterprise architects, developers, and clients.
Direct and oversee the activities of a team of developers, answering questions or helping to resolve issues as they arise.
Monitor timelines and progress to ensure that team members are adhering to these specifications.
Meet with clients to provide feedback and updates on development projects throughout – from the initial conversations to determine project scope and specifications to the final presentation of software solutions.
Prepare reports and presentations, as well as demonstrations, to keep the client informed about issues that arise during development and report on integration and deployment.
Work with outside vendors to develop and implement specific aspects of the software solution.
Consider costs and timelines and ensure that vendors meet deadlines for deliverables and project elements.
Review proposals and estimates from vendors and determine whether they fit into existing budgetary and time restrictions

Skill Sets and Experience Needed for a Solution Architect

Possess a high level of technical literacy and the ability to analyze in detail.
Extensive time management skills to determine development schedules and milestones and ensure that deliverables are completed on time
Experience with team leadership and motivation is essential
Excellent written and verbal communication skills
Possess excellent problem-solving attitude, and ability to quickly change direction based on updated client specifications or system limitations

Degree

Bachelors/Masters in Computer Science or a related field.

Sample Job Descriptions

#1 Principal Global Solutions Architect – Amazon

DESCRIPTION

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is seeking a technical leader for our solution architecture team who will be responsible for the technology strategy and senior-level relationships with global enterprise customers.

The Global Accounts Solutions Architect will be responsible for creating and driving the technical strategy with sales in the management of accounts with a complex and multi-faceted relationship with AWS. You will partner with customers and several AWS teams to craft highly scalable, flexible, and resilient cloud architectures that provide solutions to solve customer business problems and accelerate the adoption of AWS services. In collaboration with sales, you will drive revenue growth across a defined set of customers.

As a trusted customer advocate, you will have the opportunity to help shape and execute a strategy to build mindshare and broad use of AWS with enterprise customers. You will also need to be adept at interacting, communicating, and partnering with other teams within AWS such as services teams, marketing, and professional services, as well as representing your team to executive management.

Must be open to travel at least 50% including international.

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS

Experience collaborating with the sales team to drive customer satisfaction, exceed customer expectations, create and execute business plans to accelerate the adoption of AWS and exceed revenue goals
7+ year’s design/implementation/consulting experience of large-scale, enterprise applications
3+ years’ experience working with multi-national customers in support of technology sales
Demonstrated experience developing enterprise application architectures to meet business requirements in complex environments
Experience with cloud solutions, virtual platforms, software development experience, and operational management practices and frameworks
Understanding of security, risk and compliance frameworks, disaster recovery, high availability architectures, hardware, operating systems, and networking connectivity
Large-scale systems integration involving on-premises technology and public cloud platforms
Technical degree required

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

Master’s degree preferred
Professional experience architecting/operating solutions built on AWS
Experience communicating across internal and external organizations

Amazon is an Equal Opportunity Employer – Minority / Women / Disability / Veteran / Gender Identity / Sexual Orientation / Age.

Source: amazon.jobs

#2 EY Jobs- Solution Architect

Position Summary:

The lead solution architect is a “thought-leader” and a “change agent” with strategic and tactical responsibilities.

A Solution Architect

is responsible for delivering solution designs and architectures for key global initiatives using COTS, MOTS, and custom-developed applications hosted in a variety of environments considering re-use, scalability, and reliability.
Oversees and sometimes leads the successful implementation of these designs and architectures by managing expectations and risks, ensuring appropriate organizational structures, principles, tools, and responsibilities are in place
Evaluates solutions to ensure that they are in alignment with the broader organization’s mission, strategy/objectives, capabilities, and processes using industry-recognized architectural models and roadmaps
Creates reliable solution plans that include cost estimates and optimized delivery approaches by working with the business and multi-disciplinary teams, enforcing governance and compliance activities for the solution
Acts as a bridge between technical and business audiences during solution planning, development, and deployment
Works with the business to understand and solve complex problems, by presenting various solution options and technical concepts in a comprehensible manner.

Essential Functions of the Job:

A Solution Architect provides architecture leadership & subject matter expertise to client engagements focusing on complex & innovative products and reusable assets
Prior to kicking off a project as part of a product life cycle, the solution architect develops solution plans intended to support business investment decisions which means they must hold the appropriate balance between costs, risks, and quality of the product
The solution architect creates innovative and practical designs that account for the end-to-end technical solution of a system, in line with the business strategy and objectives and within the context of EY’s technology environment.
For that, he/she works closely and continuously with the business/client to focus on meeting business/client requirements and incorporating broader aspects such as overall product costs/revenue, data privacy & sovereignty, business continuity, information security, integration with other systems, etc.
He/she is key in identifying, defining, and implementing reusable assets and standards. The solution architect is also responsible for adherence to these standards and consumption of reusable assets across products and portfolios
He/she ensures relevant technical strategies, policies, standards, and practices are applied correctly across Technology programs/projects and products.
He/she also contributes to the development of architecture governance structures, methodologies, and compliance activities
He/she works with vendors to assess vendor products, understand vendor’s delivery models and assist in implementing them at EY.
A solution architect can work across multiple projects with varied stakeholders. He/she sets architectural direction, builds consensus, mediates conflicts providing technical leadership and advisory services to the business. He/she anticipates needs and potential objections and helps to create an environment which solicits positive contributions from all participants: Solution and Technical Architects, engineering teams, product manager, project managers, product analysts, test and project teams, Information Security and Operations.
He/she has excellent interpersonal communication and organizational skills that are required to operate as a leading member of global, distributed teams that deliver quality services and solutions.
He/she cultivates lasting relationships across the business, IT, and vendors/industry analysts to maintain insight into the broader enterprise as well as industry trends.
He/she recognizes industry technology trends and emerging technologies understand how they apply to EY, and can drive their adoption into our organization.
He/she evangelizes and encourages the importance of technical quality, emerging technologies, sharing & experimentation across the org through mentoring, hackathons, communities, etc.
He/she drives an ongoing communication plan to educate stakeholders on the purpose and benefits of solution architecture
He/She guides others in resolving complex issues in solution architecture and solves complex, escalated aspects of a project

Analytical and Decision-Making Responsibilities:

Converts business and technical requirements into technology solutions
Considers the art of the possible, compares various architectural options based on feasibility and impact, and proposes actionable plans
Assesses and manage multiple technical challenges simultaneously
Ensures architectural deliverables meet schedules and estimates
Applies judgment when implementing application development/engineering methodologies, processes, and practices, to meet all project requirements; including product design, information security, code maintainability, and reliability
Anticipates project issues and risks before they occur, and work with teammates to identify and implement solutions or mitigations with relevant stakeholders
Should possess good product instinct and excellent project management skills to push projects over the finish line with sound planning and persistent execution
Demonstrates strong analytical and technical problem-solving skills
Has the ability to analyze and operate at various levels of abstraction
Can balance what is strategically right with what is practically realistic by balancing the risk to the project, product, or to the firm.

Supervision Responsibilities:

Can lead a diverse group of project stakeholders and members towards the successful delivery of a project.
Provides formal and informal coaching on the job to grow team members to their full potential. Mentors junior members of the team and reviews their work acting as a best practice/quality resource
Able to delegate when appropriate but leads by example when required
Receives general direction from the Solution Architecture Leadership Team. Works with architecture leaders and peers, business stakeholders/clients, product owners, project managers, product managers, engineers, product analysts, and business stakeholders to drive a project’s progress and ensure success
Due to our global organization and global operating model, there may be cross-border reporting lines (your manager may be based in another country).
This position may have 2-3 direct reports in different locations.

Knowledge and Skills Requirements:

Has an expert understanding of solution architecture.
Can adopt and related new technologies to the set of problems we face at EY while adhering to security and other EY standards
Can communicate solutions, ideas, suggestions to a variety of (business) stakeholders effectively and comprehensibly
Possesses strategic business acumen and understanding of organizational strategy
Deep understanding of Application, Infrastructure, and security architecture and non-functional aspects like Performance, Scalability, Reliability, Availability,… all the so-called “capabilities” of a system
Understanding of latest cloud computing and data technologies, business drivers, emerging computing trends, and deployment options.
Expert in defining, designing, and developing distributed and scalable products and services, including reusable domain-specific microservices on multi-platform /hybrid clouds (such as Microsoft Azure, AWS, Google Cloud Rackspace, VMware, or OpenStack)
Able to navigate the EY organization to facilitate work beyond the immediate technical team
Experience with Agile & DevSecOps methodologies;
Excellent project management, collaboration, interpersonal and communication skills
Broad understanding of EY Technology, including service offerings, technical standards, and policies, technical and business strategies as well as organizational structure
Strong collaborator – willingness to share ideas, documentation, and leading practices
Conceptual and analytical thinker – ability to extract, analyze, and document complex business and technical requirements/strategies

Education:

Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent in Engineering, Computer Science, IT, Mathematics, Economics

Experience:

Minimum of 15+ years overall IT industry experience
Minimum of 5+ years in a solution or technical architect role using service and hosting solutions such as private/public cloud IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS platforms
Experience in architecting and designing technical solutions for Microsoft-centric solutions based on industry standards using (Azure) IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS capabilities.
Experience with any claims-based authentication (SAML/OAuth/OIDC), MFA, JIT, and/or RBAC / Ping, etc.
Knowledge of cloud security controls including tenant isolation, encryption at rest, encryption in transit, key management, vulnerability assessments, application firewalls, SIEM, etc.
Managed the end-to-end lifecycles of a project in a solution architect capacity
Experience with mission-critical technology components with DR capabilities
Experience with multi-geography, multi-tier service design, and management
Extensive experience in financial management, solution plan development, and product cost estimation
Solid business acumen, management, and marketing communication skills
Significant experience in presenting ideas, products, concept papers to varied audiences
Experience coaching and mentoring others
Leadership capability and proven ability to manage difficult stakeholders
Experience supporting peer teams and their responsibilities; such as infrastructure, operations, engineering, info-security

Other Requirements

As this is a role with a global focus and responsibilities, you may be required to work outside of the normal working hours in your time zone to partner with other IT Services staff globally.

This role may also include travel, both domestic and international.

Desired Qualifications

Configuration management and automation tools such as Azure DevOps, Ansible, Puppet, Octopus, Chef, Salt, etc.
Software development full lifecycle methodologies, patterns, frameworks, libraries, and tools
One or more programming and scripting languages such as JavaScript, PowerShell, Bash, SQL, .NET, Java, Python, PHP, Ruby, PERL, C++, etc.
Relational, graph, and/or unstructured data technologies such as SQL Server, Azure SQL, Cosmos, Azure Data Lake, HD Insights, Hadoop, Neo4j, etc.
Data movement and transformation technologies such as Alteryx etc.
Visualization tools such as Power BI or Tableau
Analytics tools including Azure Stream Analytics, SQL Analytics, Data Lake Analytics.
AI and Machine Learning tools such as Azure ML etc.
Delivery using common methodologies especially SAFe Agile but also Waterfall, Iterative, etc.
Certifications e.g. Microsoft, TOGAF, AWS Cloud Certified, Pivotal, CISSIP, Zachman, ITIL, Cisco, (ISC)2, CEH, SAFe, PMI, and SAP, etc.
Extensive experience in project and/or product management
Experience in architecting mobile applications that are either independent applications or supplementary add-ons (to intranet or extranet)
Experience in architecting Data Analytics solutions

Source: ey.jobs

#3 Solution Architect .Net – Boeing

Boeing is the world’s largest aerospace company and leading manufacturer of commercial airplanes and defence, space, and security systems. We are engineers and technicians, skilled scientists and thinkers, bold innovators and dreamers.

Join us, and you can build something better for yourself, for our customers, and for the world.

We are currently looking for a talented Solution architect to be a part of our Core Architecture team and be that technical leader that will help us design, develop and deploy architectural solutions. It is an exciting time to be a Solution Architect on our team as we are defining what the future strategy of our systems will be and this truly is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

You would work as a team member alongside the Product Leads, Technical Leads, and other supporting team members to deliver solutions that help the Boeing Company build safer, better, and more efficient airplanes.

You would be a member of a team of technical leaders that are responsible for creating the technology strategy (Mobile, Web, Data, Cloud, Additive Manufacturing, etc.) of current and future systems. Leading design discussions and mentoring engineers on proper platform and application solutions. Publishing and presenting to technology leaders and business executives. Providing leadership around technical solutions and collaborating with other technologists on creating cross-domain solutions.

Additional responsibilities would include:

Solution Ideation
Assist business in the scoping and planning of upcoming projects by using a design thinking approach.
Solution Architecture and Design
Legacy application rationalization
As-Is and To-Be modelling
Participate/Lead in producing the solutions conceptual architecture and associated artefacts
Develop logical architecture of solution components based on conceptual architecture/design
Advice/Mentor on Technical and Functional Design
Provide advice and guidance to team leads regarding technical and functional design decisions
Collaborate across domains to design/deliver larger scoped initiatives

Skills needed:

Lead experience in application development (.NET) 8+ years
Deep knowledge of database design, data architecture, and comparison to relational databases
Deep knowledge of SOA and WebServices – REST/Restful
Understanding of Micro Services and 12 Factor authoring
Experience in Agile framework and DevOps
Understanding of Cloud technologies – Pivotal Cloud Foundry, Azure
Strong presentation and communication skills
Ability to fail fast, learn and pivot
Experience with Engineering and/or Manufacturing domain is a plus
Ability to develop a community of practices to facilitate discussions with the technical team to drive improvement and efficiencies.
Ability to work with engineers and executives.
Focus on the total cost of ownership of a technology or service.

All information provided will be checked and may be verified. This requisition is for an international, locally hired position. Candidates must be legally authorized to work in India. Boeing will not seek immigration and labor sponsorship for any applicants; this is the responsibility of the job candidate. Benefits and pay are determined at the local level and are not part of Boeing’s U.S.-based payroll. RELOCATION BENEFITS IF INDICATED ARE LIMITED TO IN-COUNTRY MOVES AND ARE NOT AVAILABLE FOR OVERSEAS RELOCATION. THERE IS NO EXPATRIATE PACKAGE ASSOCIATED WITH THIS POSITION.

Qualifications

Bachelor’s degree with 8-12 years related work experience.
Lead experience in application development ( .Net).
Experience in Agile framework and DevOps.

Experience Level – Individual Contributor

Contingent Upon Program Award – No, this position is not contingent upon the program award

Schedule – Full time

Boeing is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Employment decisions are made without regard to race, colour, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, physical or mental disability, genetic factors, military/veteran status, or other characteristics protected by law.

Source: jobs.boeing.com