Solution Architect

Oxford University Press; England; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

A prominent educational publisher is seeking a Solution Architect to design and support customer-facing applications. The role involves collaboration with product owners, technical oversight of development teams, and championing DevOps practices. Ideal candidates will have experience in cloud technologies and customer-facing environments, with capabilities in stakeholder management and technical leadership. The position offers a hybrid work model, competitive benefits including private medical insurance and pension contributions, and opportunities for professional development.

Benefits

25 days' holiday plus bank holidays

Private medical insurance

Management bonus

Pension contributions up to 12%

Employee networks and societies

Qualifications

• Experience in leading technical teams and acting as the technical authority.
• Deep understanding of technology for business requirements.
• Experience in customer-facing product delivery environments.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with product owners to design customer-facing applications.
• Guide development teams in architectural patterns and coding standards.
• Champion DevOps practices including CI/CD and test automation.

Skills

Technical leadership

Scrum methodologies

Kanban methodologies

Scaled Agile methodologies

Cloud-based technologies (Azure, AWS)

Stakeholder management

Communication skills

Job description

We are seeking and Solution Architect to work with our school’s education business to design and support our customer facing education applications.

OUP’s application portfolio includes several customer facing systems such as digital-, content-, and data-centric platforms, web and eCommerce applications, learning & assessment services, online journals, other online research platforms.

As a Solution Architect you will collaborate closely with product or system owners to understand their requirements and challenges, and then creating high-level design documents to address those issues effectively. You will work with other Enterprise, Solution and Application Architecture colleagues to define all aspects of solution design, appropriate technology, and workflows to develop, implement and quality assure solutions/applications.

You will translate the strategy into capabilities, working with key stakeholders to ensure they are managed and prioritised accurately into initiative led deliverables that adhere to the longer-term technology strategy, while delivering essential capabilities for business growth in a time sensitive manner. You will support application centric Application Architects within their divisions while providing consultancy within the larger OUP architectural community.

The role also includes hands-on technical leadership, guiding development teams and vendors in the implementation of architectural patterns and coding standards.

Key responsibilities in this role will include:

• Working with engineering and delivery teams, both in-house and 3rd party based, to ensure their detailed designs align to the end-to-end solution architecture and align to architecture principles. Owning the specific solution / architecture for complex solutions spanning multiple components, systems and capabilities.
• Refine technical delivery approaches for product / enabling problem statements.
• Champion DevOps practices, including CI/CD, test automation, and containerization strategies.
• Provide technical oversight and guidance to internal and partner ensuring solution implementation aligns with architectural standards
• Facilitating and participating in detailed design reviews and ensuring that all components of the solution are aligned to the target state vision
• Partner with the Enterprise Architecture team to deliver applications that move the press towards an agreed target architecture and standards.
• Identify opportunities for framework-oriented strategies.
• Translate and implement complex solutions into plain English to enable clear understanding of delivery and expectations from portfolio teams.
• Promote development of the technical team with effective supervision, coaching and mentoring

We operate a hybrid working policy that requires a minimum of 2 days per week in the Oxford office.

About You

To be successful in this role, you will ideally have/be:

• Experience in technically leading development teams, acting as the technical authority, guiding and coaching development team members.
• Experience in working with Scrum, Kanban and Scaled Agile methodologies.
• Experience in shaping, advising on, and delivering solutions to required quality within agreed budget and timescales
• A deep understanding of technology and how it can be both developed and used to meet business requirements.
• Experience in delivering solutions within a customer facing product delivery environment.
• Knowledge of Enterprise Architecture principles.
• Experience of cloud-based technologies, ideally across Azure and AWS.
• Overall knowledge of application capabilities, integration, data design methodologies and industry best practices.
• Skilled communicator with good stakeholder management skills
• An understanding and knowledge of publishing or closely related industries with an emphasis on the use of digital technology (desirable)

We care about work/life balance here at OUP. With this in mind, we offer 25 days’ holiday that rises with service, plus bank holidays and Christmas closure (3-days) and a 35-hour working week. We are open to discussing flexibility in respect of working hours and the use of technology to support regular remote working, dependent on role. We also have a great variety of active employee networks and societies.

We help make your money go further by contributing to your pension up to 12%, offering loans and savings schemes through our partnership with Salary Finance, in addition to travel to work schemes and access to a wide range of local discounts.

This role comes with the added benefit of private medical insurance and a management bonus.

Please see our Rewards and Recognition page for more information.

Please note this advert may be removed before the advertised end date, so we encourage you to apply as soon as possible.

We are committed to supporting diversity in our workforce, and ensuring an inclusive environment where all individuals can thrive. We seek to employ a workforce representative of the markets that we serve and encourage applications from all.