Enterprise Solution Architect Corporate

Warrington, England, United Kingdom

12/16/2024

Role Details

Salary - Competitive

Work Type - Hybrid

Job Location - Lingley Mere (UU), Lingley Green Avenue, Great Sankey, Warrington, WA5 3LP

Role Type - Permanent

Employment Type - Full Time

Working Hours - 37.5 Hours per Week

United Utilities’ (UU) purpose is to deliver great water for a stronger, greener and healthier North West of England. We are committed to providing our services in a way that respects the environment, supports the economy, and benefits society.

We value diversity, inclusion and innovation in our workplace, and we foster a culture where our people can grow, excel, and be themselves.

We uphold our ethics, values and business model to fulfil our mission and, by setting clear goals and objectives, we create sustainable long-term value for our colleagues, customers and communities. Whether you work with a team that shares your vision or join a network of peers with similar interests, you will find a welcoming and supportive organisation to be part of.

We’ve got a lot to offer. You’ll be part of a thriving FTSE 100 company and will enjoy a range of core benefits that reflect your value and value contribution.

Job Purpose

• To focus on architecting the technical infrastructure and applications across the entire technology estate and dependent business areas, ensuring the domain architecture meets the needs of the business.
• To engage across technical areas to rapidly gain a deep understanding of the business’ architecture requirements. To use this insight to define an implementable architecture to meet the evolving needs of United Utilities as it becomes more dependent on the provision of resilient digital services to deliver a performant customer and employee experience.
• To be the driving force for advancing the underlying technical Infrastructure of the business and communicating architecture benefits and capabilities with both business and technical colleagues, effectively selling the recommended direction and enabling the business to provide robust and performant integrated business and technology services both internally and externally.
  
  

Job Accountabilities

• Maintain a continual awareness of both deployment best-practice and technical requirements as an input to defining the technology components and guiding investment/spend as required to underpin business and technical services
• Assess the technology estate on an ongoing an iterative basis to continually improve the efficiency, performance and reliability.
• Lead the definition of the Architectural artefacts that describe current, future and transition states of the Infrastructure , together with the corresponding plans and roadmaps – and to ensure the buy-in of key stakeholders.
• Lead appropriate governance activities that oversee implementation of the architecture and taking critical decisions promptly to ensure alignment with plans, or to manage deviations appropriately while documenting and tracking technical debt.
• Provide ongoing support to technical and business areas dependent on the Solution capability, steering technology users to the most appropriate patterns and solutions.
• Lead the definition of the Architectures aligned to a broader Enterprise Architecture and the corporate strategy and plans. Assess the financial and technical impact of change and agree an architecture investment strategy to accelerate the journey from current to target architecture.
• Contribute to facilitate the development of technology strategy/strategies, including the development of roadmaps and plans for realising technology strategy and plans.
• Contribute to the definition of overarching Enterprise Architecture principles.
• Lead the definition of standards, patterns, and other architectural artefacts that guide the implementation of the Domain Architecture. Perform regular review of those artefacts, assessing and verifying efficacy and need.
• Participate in, and use, governance forums to ensure that Architecture standards are adhered to, strategic plans and objectives are met, and roadmaps are realised effectively. Contribute to the development and ongoing maintenance of governance processes and forums.
• Manage exceptions and waivers to architecture standards and plans. Manage and track technical debt as a consequence of waivers and exceptions.
• Continually analyse the current business and IT environment, in respect of solution efficiency, stability and performance.
• Engage key business stakeholders to identify and recommend business and technology-enabled innovation opportunities that enable and drive business strategy. Focuses on growing revenue, improving agility, optimising costs, and mitigating risks.
• Seek ways to drive adoption of new technology and reuse existing technology for integrating the business and its digital assets. Proactively research and provide information on emerging technology trends and disruptions.
• Drives innovation by leveraging new technologies and approaches to renovate, extend, and transform the existing Architecture.
• Leverage practices such as continuous foresight, innovation and futurism to continuously test Architecture strategies, roadmaps, and models, and determine how to adjust these to become resilient and future-fit.
• Within the relevant Architecture domain, provide consultancy on strategic initiatives and other projects/programmes and act as the point of approval for impacting technology implementations and purchases, ensuring that they are aligned to the enterprise architecture strategy.
• Lead the design community contributing to the delivery of the target architecture, ensuring they understand the direction and are motivated to support the delivery of the vision.
• Engage with, and manage relationships with, technology vendors to ensure the optimal outcome for the United Utilities.
  
  

Knowledge And Skills

• Educated to Degree level.
• MBA or Post-graduate diploma.
  
  

The following accreditations or equivalent demonstrable experience or exposure:

• ITIL
• TOGAF or other certification in an Enterprise Architecture Framework
• CSA Infrastructure Guidance
• AWS, AZURE certifications
• First-class skills and significant experience in the definition of Infrastructure artefacts e.g. architectural models, roadmaps, strategies, principles, standards, patterns etc.
• An excellent understanding of a wide range of Infrastructure strategies and techniques across a diverse mix of technology environments, from on-premises data centres to both private and public cloud environments.
• Good knowledge of one or more Architecture Modelling and Notation techniques (methods)
• Deep and broad Infrastructure architecture experience with open stack, proprietary and COTS based infrastructure deployment options
• Demonstrable experience of specific Infrastructure architecture and design techniques including open stack, private cloud, public cloud, virtualisation and containerisation
• Experience with cloud vendor products (Google, AWS or Azure) and cloud-based deployment options for SAP and other mainstream enterprise software vendors
• Experience of pro-active cost-management of multiple cloud vendors and instances to ensure efficient use of cloud subscriptions budget and opex.
• Experience of leading technology and architecture for significant projects
• Good experience of applying and governing architecture implementation across a range of software delivery lifecycles
• Experience of having applied one or more formal Architecture frameworks (e.g. TOGAF, Zachmann)
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
  
  

Benefits

We believe in empowering you to achieve your aspirations and dreams, both in your work and in your life. To help you achieve your goals, we offer a variety of voluntary benefits that you can select according to your needs and preferences.

• A generous annual leave package of 26 days, which increases to 30 days after four years of service (increases one day per year), in addition to 8 bank holidays
• A competitive pension scheme with up to 14% employer contribution, 21% combined, and life cover
• Up to 20% performance-related bonus scheme, as well as recognition awards for outstanding achievements
• A comprehensive healthcare plan through our company-funded scheme
• MyGymDiscounts - gym and wellness benefit that offers up to 25% off on gym memberships and digital fitness subscriptions
• Best Doctors
• Salary Finance
• Wealth at Work courses
• Deals and discounts
• EVolve Car Scheme
• Employee Assistance Plan
• Mental health first aiders
• ShareBuy
• MORE Choices flexible benefits
• Enhanced parental leave schemes
  
  

We rely on every employee to ensure our customers receive the best possible service, day in, day out. In return, we ensure that you will be well rewarded for your efforts, from an excellent salary through to development opportunities that will really kick start a thriving career here at UU.