Solution Architect

Job Description - Solution Architect

About Hiscox:

At Hiscox we care about our people. We hire the best people for the work, and we're committed to diversity and creating a truly inclusive culture, which we believe drives success. We embrace hybrid-working practices, balancing the ability to work remotely with the culture and energy we experience when we are face-to-face in our offices. Our focus on collaboration and cross-functional working is supported with virtual tools that minimise physical travel, hot-desking neighbourhoods that create a physical sense of community and Team Charters that our teams co-create to set out how they'll work together. This modern way of working has contributed to impressive employee engagement scores across Hiscox and means we're delivering even better solutions for our Hiscox Colleagues.

Position: Solutions Architect
Reporting to: Lead Architect
Location: London - Hybrid (2 days in office)

Role Overview:

Hiscox is seeking an experienced Solution Architect to join Hiscox Re & ILS, a business unit providing reinsurance and third-party capital management services. The successful candidate will have a strong sense of ownership, proactivity, and pride in their work. They will use their experience on a range of large and small change initiatives, providing architectural oversight to delivery and producing architecture deliverables that suit the size and nature of the change. They will also work with a wider group of solution, domain, and enterprise architects from across the Hiscox group to drive forward the wider IT strategy and commercial gains.

Key Responsibilities:

1. Taking full ownership for the design and delivery of modern solutions that are secure, scalable, performant, resilient, compliant, cost-effective, and commercially viable. Solutions will need to satisfy not just immediate stakeholder requirements but also align to wider strategies, standards, and principles.
2. Engage with, assist, and empower Agile delivery teams across the whole lifecycle of a change initiative, from requirements gathering through to BAU.
3. Deliver architecture deliverables (HLDs/MLDs, diagrammatic artifacts) that are suitable for the change in question using consistent templates and approved tooling. The successful candidate does not need to be an expert in all areas of architecture, but they will need to own the responsibility for seeking the information, collating it, and documenting it.
4. Work with the Lead Architect to mature the architecture practice, helping to embed architecture principles, standards, and strategies into Agile team planning and deliveries.
5. Working closely with business domain experts and product owners to understand problem statements and value realisation opportunities, often working alongside business analysts.
6. Engagement with a range of colleagues from deeply technical staff to senior business colleagues from across the enterprise. The ability to understand stakeholder interests and adapt your engagement style, approach and terminology is essential.
7. Collaborating closely with vendors to ensure their suitability and the suitability of their product(s), including active contribution to, and reviewing, RFIs and RFPs.

Skills/Experience:

1. Strong, demonstrable knowledge of solution architecture, its constituent phases/layers, and the importance of architectural process.
2. Experience of on-premise, cloud and hybrid solution design: Windows and Azure PaaS experience strongly preferred, containerisation knowledge desirable.
3. Experience of producing architecture deliverables and artifacts required.
4. Experience in conceptual and logical data modelling with the ability to clearly represent complex ideas graphically.

Nice to haves:

1. Experience with Software Delivery Lifecycles and DevOps practices preferred.
2. Understanding of TOGAF, Zachman, Kotusev or similar EA frameworks preferred.
3. Understanding of Agile (Scrum) is necessary, SAFe knowledge also useful.
4. First-hand experience with Confluence, Teams, LucidChart and Jira preferred.
5. Experience of team leadership and mentoring preferred but not essential.

Rewards:

• 25 days annual leave plus two Hiscox days
• 4 week paid sabbatical after every 5 years of service
• Company and personal performance related bonus
• Contributory pension

Other benefits include:

• Money towards gym membership
• Christmas gift
• 4 x life insurance