Description
Digital Architect that has very strong Agile delivery experience is immediately required by a leading global consultancy for full-project life cycle assignment based in Sussex.
Agile Architects applying MUST come from a very strong Digital project background, you should also have a strong track record of working as an architect through the full project life cycle.
The main responsibilities of the post are:
Provide hands-on technical leadership, in the development, operation and ongoing improvement of complex, transformational digital services serving millions of users.
Work with product managers to understand user needs for new and existing services.
Act as the technical authority in prospective, information gathering and scene setting meetings with other government departments, evaluate technical proposals from external suppliers, and make implementation recommendations to senior stakeholders.
Work with delivery teams and partners to break technical requirements down into appropriate pieces, and to identify key API requirements for integration with internal and external systems.
Lead the rapid development of user-driven prototypes to identify technical options and inform architectural approaches, working with colleagues and supplier team members to write tests, code and documentation for new and existing systems.
Ensure that new and updated platforms, products and transactions are thoroughly tested for performance, are able to handle specified load, and can be maintained over the long-term.
Work with external suppliers to ensure that their system architectures are robust, scalable, open and secure, with appropriate overall system design and integration points/APIs, to deliver a high quality user experience.
Advise on, manage and implement agile delivery projects within government departments, providing guidance, mentoring and training in agile technical delivery and evolutionary software architecture to government departments and agencies.
Provide mentorship and/or line management for software developers and junior software developers
Assist with building a culture of continuous delivery and improvement, ensuring that key systems are regularly analysed, maintained and improved.
Specialist skills and requirements
Essential
Comprehensive and recent experience designing and implementing complex software systems, ie is an active software developer currently engaged in architecting and building high-volume digital services
Proven capability in managing technology implementation projects and in presenting to/working with stakeholders at every level of seniority
Demonstrable track record of successfully taking an evolutionary architecture approach to software architecture
Focused on strategic alignment of technical design and architecture to meet business growth and direction
Knowledge of Agile product management, in particular determination of vision, objectives, goals and success criteria
Experience of developing product roadmaps, backlogs and measurable success criteria, and of writing user stories, ie can establish a path to delivery for breaking down stories
Experience organising and performing prototyping and proof of concepts
Experience with Agile methodologies (TDD, SCRUM, Kanban, etc)
Building and scaling high-traffic websites and/or high volume transaction processing and analysis platforms
Experience designing and implementing scalable and robust approaches to caching, security and databases (including relational, eg MySQL, PostgreSQL, and NoSQL, eg Cassandra, MongoDB)
Experience with automated configuration management, deployment and testing solutions
Use and implementation of modern Front End web programming techniques, such as HTML5, CSS3, AJAX, REST, JSON
Experience with a web programming framework such as Django, Ruby on Rails, Scala/Play etc
Experience developing and using web-based APIs (especially REST-based APIs)
Experience with open source solutions and community
Experience using and deploying on Cloud based platforms
Experience sharing knowledge and working in a multi-disciplinary team
Technically, Scala, Continuous Delivery or Micro Services experience would be an advantage. However this technical experience is not essential.