Senior Solution Architect (Migration and Design Assurance)

Xcede; City Of London; On-site; GBP 120,000 - 185,000; Full time

Job summary

Xcede is leading a London-based migration and design assurance engagement with a major enterprise data centre transformation programme. You will independently review high level and detailed migration designs from delivery partners, ensuring technical integrity and alignment to target platforms.

This senior role requires proven governance experience and the ability to challenge designs with pragmatic recommendations.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience as a Senior Solution Architect within large, complex enterprise environments.
• Proven experience reviewing and assuring solution designs delivered by systems integrators or third party delivery organisations.
• Strong understanding of enterprise infrastructure, private cloud, virtualisation, networking, storage, databases, security and application integration.
• Experience on application migration, data centre transformation or infrastructure modernisation programmes.
• Solid grasp of application and database migration patterns, constraints and technical risks.
• Experience working within formal enterprise architecture governance, including review boards and design authorities.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication, with strong consulting, influencing and stakeholder engagement skills.
• The ability to work autonomously, exercise independent judgement and balance technical quality against delivery risk and cost.

Responsibilities

• Independently reviewing high level and detailed solution designs produced by delivery partners
• Assessing designs for technical integrity, completeness, operational viability and migration feasibility
• Validating solutions against functional and non functional requirements, including availability, resilience, performance, security, integration and supportability
• Ensuring migration solutions align with the strategic technology platforms, architectural standards and target landscape
• Evaluating application and database migration approaches (rehost, replatform, refactor, retain and retire), dependencies, licensing and legacy technology risks
• Ensuring designs account for operational readiness, monitoring, backup, disaster recovery and support
• Preparing assessments for architecture review boards and design authorities, and documenting findings, risks, decisions and exceptions
• Constructively challenging delivery partners, providing pragmatic recommendations and escalating material risks through governance
• Managing multiple concurrent reviews across several migration workstreams with minimal supervision

Skills

Senior Solution Architect

Stakeholder engagement

Architecture governance

Independent judgement

Migration and data centre experience

Tools

TOGAF

Enterprise architecture

Job description

Senior Solution Architect (Migration and Design Assurance)

Location: London, with frequent client site attendance and occasional European and global travel

Contract: Initial 6 months, strong likelihood of extension

IR35: Inside IR35

Rate: Competitive day rate

We are partnering with a specialist technology consultancy supporting a major enterprise data centre transformation programme. A large portfolio of business applications is being migrated from existing data centres onto established strategic technology platforms, and as the programme moves from assessment into migration execution, an experienced Senior Solution Architect is needed to provide independent architectural assurance.

You will review, challenge and validate migration solution designs produced by third party delivery partners, making sure they are technically robust, aligned to the target platforms and ready to progress through architecture governance. This is not primarily a public cloud engineering or build role. The target environment is centred on enterprise private cloud, virtualisation and hybrid infrastructure, so broad enterprise technology experience and strong architectural judgement are key.

You will join a small, senior architecture team, so autonomy, excellent communication and the confidence to engage senior stakeholders are essential.

What you will be doing

• Independently reviewing high level and detailed solution designs produced by delivery partners
• Assessing designs for technical integrity, completeness, operational viability and migration feasibility
• Validating solutions against functional and non functional requirements, including availability, resilience, performance, security, integration and supportability
• Ensuring migration solutions align with the strategic technology platforms, architectural standards and target landscape
• Evaluating application and database migration approaches (rehost, replatform, refactor, retain and retire), dependencies, licensing and legacy technology risks
• Ensuring designs account for operational readiness, monitoring, backup, disaster recovery and support
• Preparing assessments for architecture review boards and design authorities, and documenting findings, risks, decisions and exceptions
• Constructively challenging delivery partners, providing pragmatic recommendations and escalating material risks through governance
• Managing multiple concurrent reviews across several migration workstreams with minimal supervision

What we are looking for

• Extensive experience as a Senior Solution Architect within large, complex enterprise environments
• Proven experience reviewing and assuring solution designs delivered by systems integrators or third party delivery organisations
• Strong understanding of enterprise infrastructure, private cloud, virtualisation, networking, storage, databases, security and application integration
• Experience on application migration, data centre transformation or infrastructure modernisation programmes
• Solid grasp of application and database migration patterns, constraints and technical risks
• Experience working within formal enterprise architecture governance, including review boards and design authorities
• Exceptional written and verbal communication, with strong consulting, influencing and stakeholder engagement skills
• The ability to work autonomously, exercise independent judgement and balance technical quality against delivery risk and cost

Nice to have

• Enterprise private cloud and hybrid cloud platform experience
• Familiarity with Microsoft Azure and AWS
• Background in financial services, insurance or another highly regulated industry
• Experience of large scale data centre exit programmes
• TOGAF or an equivalent enterprise architecture methodology
• Experience working alongside major global systems integrators, or within a client side architecture assurance function

Interview process

a 30 minute technical video interview, followed by a one hour face to face interview.