Solution Architect

Job content

Location: Cirencester

Do you want to work in a flexible environment, home & office, hours to suit us both? Do you want to work for a company that strives to get things done and make real change? Well this could be the role for you, whether you are coming back from an extended break, don’t meet all the criteria or looking for the next challenge in your career give this roll a view.

I have the pleasure of managing a great team of people and looking to add to my current pool. We’re a friendly bunch who get opportunities to work on some great projects and technologies.

The Solution Architecture function is a key part of the Technology team at St. James’s Place. You’ll be working on major strategic initiatives resulting in changes to in-house applications as well as our Salesforce deployment, SaaS providers and 3rd party applications.

To also work closely with a number of our development partners and help drive architectural roadmaps and strategy. Building and maintaining relationships with external and internal stakeholders whilst working with the wider technology and change teams will be key to successful delivery.

You’ll be joining a team designing and building IT solutions to support our own internal staff, our Partner community and our Clients. We are a cloud first organisation and make extensive use of Salesforce, SaaS and AWS solutions. You’ll be keeping abreast of key developments that could impact our systems as well as changes in tools, technologies or working practices that can be exploited to improve the services we deliver.

Key Responsibilities:

• Proactively communicate and collaborate with external and internal stakeholders, have a clear understanding of strategic business requirements as well as deliver the following artefacts as needed: Conceptual, logical and physical designs, Interface designs, taking account of functional and non-functional requirements
• Understand business drivers and business capabilities (future and current state), and determine corresponding system designs and change requirements to drive the organisation’s targeted business outcomes
• The need for strong analytical and product skills, including a deep understanding of how to interpret business needs and translate them into an overall solution design
• Work closely with Solution Designers and other Architecture disciplines to ensure requirements are clearly-understood and ratify all designs through the Technical Design Forum
• Understand technology trends and the practical application of existing, new, and emerging technologies to enable new and evolving business and operating models.
• Consult with application and infrastructure development projects to fit systems or infrastructure to architecture, and identify when it is necessary to modify projects to accommodate the solutions architecture
• Own the relationship between the stakeholders, technology teams and support teams
• Challenge stakeholders on their assumptions of how they will successfully implement their ideas and challenge scope why this is needed
• Provide regular progress reports to your Manager
  
  

Required Skills

• Exceptional interpersonal skills, including teamwork, facilitation and negotiation
• Ability to work with in-house and outsourced development teams in a multi-supplier environment
• Capable of interpreting business requirements (both functional and non-functional) and understanding the impact they will have on solution designs
• Excellent understanding of project lifecycle and application development methodologies, particularly how to architect in an Agile environment
• Good understanding of underlying infrastructure components such as cloud IaaS and network architecture
• Experience of a variety of application integration approaches, application development, design and integration
• Evaluating OTS solutions and evaluation for integration with existing back end systems.
• Ability to understand the long-term ("big picture") and short-term perspectives of situations
• Capable of creating and delivering clear presentations and to facilitate workshops to gain and agree requirements and solutions
• Ability to translate future-state business capabilities and requirements into solution architecture requirements
• Possess the ability to work on multiple concurrent projects
  
  

Thank you for taking an interest in a career with St. James’s Place Wealth Management. We are an equal opportunities employer and committed to ensuring all applicants will be treated in a fair and equal manner and in accordance with the law regardless of gender, marital status, race, religion, colour, age, disability or sexual orientation.

Flexible Working

Research tells us that applicants (especially those from underrepresented groups) can be put off from applying for a role if they do not meet all the criteria, or have been on an extended career-break. If you think you would be a good match for this role and can demonstrate some transferable experience please apply, regardless of whether you tick every box.

We are open to discussing reduced hours, job share arrangements and flexible working so please ask the question and start a conversation!

Why work for us?

Our Rewards

In joining us we aim to give peace of mind for you and your loved one’s futures. In addition to an attractive salary and eligibility to participate in the discretionary annual bonus opportunities, you will also receive an excellent benefit package including:

• Non-Contributory Pension – 10% (increasing with length of service) with further pension matching
• Meaningful protection benefits with real value, such as 10X life cover, PHI, and critical illness.
• Share schemes that enable all employees to have a stake in SJP
• Best in class terms and conditions including flexible working and 6 months paid maternity and paternity leave.
• Private Medical and Dental Insurance
• 28 days holiday entitlement increasing with length of service (with the option to buy an additional up to 5 days
• Cycle to work scheme
• Employee Volunteering
  
  

Our Culture

St. James’s Place has a long tradition of community support and looking to do the right thing. As a business in 2019 we gave 4.4% of our profit before tax to community activities and the Tortoise Responsibility100 Index (January 2020) showed us to be the second most generous FTSE100 company by community investment for very £1,000 earned. Over 96% of our group employees are involved in supporting our communities and good causes. Over 80% of all our employees and Partners donate each month to our Charitable Foundation, which is now the 6th largest UK corporate foundation. Through the matching St. James’s Place gives on all donations our Charitable Foundation distributed over £12m in 2019.

We are proud of our inclusive culture, a space for everyone to be their authentic self, no compromises. We are active members of:

LGBT Great

30% Club

The Diversity Project

Disability Confident

Find out more: https://www.sjp.co.uk/careers/life-at-sjp

Our Awards:

We understand it’s important to be proud of the company you work for, that’s why we’re proud to share with you some of our recent awards:

’Wealth Management Company of the Year’ at the City of London Wealth Management Awards 2020

‘Best Benefits Launch’ award, awarded by Reward Gateway 2019

’Best Wealth Manager Growth Portfolio’ at the Wealth Advisor Awards for 2019

How To Apply

To apply for this role please click on the Apply button below.

We occasionally close vacancies early due to high volumes of applications. We would therefore recommend you complete your application prior to the closing date which is for guidance only.