Solutions Architect

At Embark Student Corp. (“Embark Corp.”), we’re on a journey to create an entirely new student experience. One that is built on instilling confidence in students around the paths they are choosing and their ability and agency to achieve their goals for the future. As enablers and orchestrators of students’ success, we will create access, affordability and agency for students and their champions across our services and solutions. This will provide them with guidance and support in all aspects of planning and saving for post-secondary education – giving them a future-ready advantage and help them thrive well past their educational journey.

Embark Corp. is cultivating an environment that enables growth, trust and pioneering. To help drive our transformation and growth, we are guided by the following strategic pillars:

• Elevate our Expertise in Education Savings & Planning
• Aspire to be Trusted and Easy to do Business with
• Put our Customers in the Center of Our Experience
• Partner to Drive Value, Scale and Reach

We are looking for a Solutions Architect to proactively and holistically lead and support Enterprise Architect activities that guide the development and management of a portfolio of solutions. Solutions include projects, products, systems (including applications, technologies, processes and information), shared infrastructure services and shared application services. This role provides the necessary leadership, analysis and design tasks related to support the development of technology solutions to ensure that solutions meet business needs and align with architectural governance and standards.

CHALLENGES TO BE MET

Translate Business Strategy into Solutions Architecture

• Understands business drivers and business capabilities (future and current state) and determines corresponding enterprise system designs and change requirements to drive the organization’s targeted business outcomes.
• Understands emerging technology trends and disruptions and the practical application of existing, new, and emerging technologies to enable new and evolving business and operating models.
• Translates business and technical requirements into an architectural blueprint to achieve business objectives and documents all solution architecture design and analysis work.
• Analyzes the technology industry, competitors and market trends, and determines their potential impact on the enterprise.
• Provides deliverables like standard definitions, reference models and architecture designs to help the architecture review board (ARB) assess the impact of new and ongoing technology investment on the business and IT estate.
• Acts as a consultant on a broad range of technologies, platforms and vendor offerings to drive targeted business outcomes.

Leads Solutions Design and Analysis

• Leads evaluation, design and analysis for the implementation of a solutions architecture across a group of specific business applications or technologies based on enterprise business strategy, business capabilities, value-streams, business requirements and enterprise standards.
• Creates architectural designs to guide and contextualize solution development across products, services, projects and systems (including applications, technologies, processes and information).
• Creates reference architectures focused on detailed design principles, decision points, detailed APIs, major systems and dependencies between business and IT.
• Manages and develops the architecture for a broader scope of projects or products, working closely with application architects that manage and design architecture for a single project or product or initiative.
• Analyzes the business-IT environment (run, grow and transform the business) to detect critical deficiencies, legacy and technical debt, and recommends solutions for improvement (systems of record, differentiation and innovation).

Orchestrates Solutions Delivery

• Designs and directs the governance activities associated with ensuring solutions architecture assurance and compliance.
• Defines the principles, guidelines, standards and solution patterns to ensure solution decisions are aligned with the enterprise’s future-state architecture vision.
• Facilitates the evaluation and selection of software product standards and services, as well as the design of standard and custom software configurations.
• Supports product managers in EOL (end of life) product decisions to maintain, refresh or retire products, services or systems (including applications, technologies, processes and information).
• Monitors the current-state solution portfolio to identify deficiencies through aging of the technologies used by the application, or misalignment with business requirements.
• Identifies the organizational impact (for example, on skills, processes, structures or culture) and financial impact of the solutions architecture.

Facilitates and Collaborates to Deliver Business Outcomes

• Works closely with the program management office (PMO) or project management office to ensure the execution of plans corresponds with what is being promised throughout the project or product lifecycle.
• Works closely with the product owners and product managers to ensure a robust architectural runway that can support future business requirements throughout the product lifecycle.
• Provides for detailed design within agile teams to ensure the project or product is aligned with the overall enterprise architecture.

WHO WE ARE LOOKING FOR

Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, information-technology, engineering, system analysis or a related study, or equivalent experience.
• 5+ years of IT architecture and solution integration experience.
• 2+ years experience architecting solutions on cloud hosting providers, Google Cloud Platform, Azure, AWS.
• 3+ years of experience developing and integrating RESTful APIs and building complex systems using microservices, OpenAPI specifications and web messaging protocols such as SOAP, REST and RPC.
• Exposure to multiple, diverse technologies, platforms and processing environments.
• Good understanding of strategic and new and emerging technology trends, and the practical application of existing, new and emerging technologies to new and evolving business and operating models.
• Good understanding of product management, agile principles and development methodologies and capability of supporting agile teams by providing advice and guidance on opportunities, impact and risks, taking account of technical and architectural debt.
• Experience developing architecture blueprints, strategies and roadmaps.
• Experience delivering presentations to senior-level executives and technical audiences.

Skills

• Knowledge of various backend development languages like Java, Go and Python.
• Knowledge of various database technologies like MySQL, NoSQL, MongoDB and Oracle.
• Knowledge of various aspects of an enterprise technology architecture like business, information, data, network and security.
• Understanding and knowledge of system development life cycle methodologies (such as waterfall, spiral, agile software development, rapid prototyping, incremental, synchronize and stabilize, and DevOps) and ITSM/ITIL.
• Knowledge and understanding of different modeling languages (such as UML and ArchiMate).
• Excellent understanding of application development methodologies.
• Excellent analytical, planning, organizational and technical skills.
• Ability to work with developers in an in-and-out outsourced environment.
• Organizationally savvy, with the ability to navigate organizational politics.
• Skilled at influencing, guiding and facilitating stakeholders and peers with decision making.
• Ability to articulate new ideas and concepts to technical and nontechnical audiences.
• Ability to understand the long-term (‘big picture’) and short-term perspectives of situation.
• Ability to translate future-state business capabilities and requirements into solution architecture requirements.
• Ability to propose and estimate the financial impact of solution architecture alternatives.
• Ability to work creatively and analytically to solve business problems and propose solutions.
• Ability to quickly comprehend the functions and capabilities of new technologies.
• Someone who listens to diverse perspectives with an empathetic attitude.
• A lifelong learner that is performance driven.
• Someone who recognizes our customers as our most important stakeholders.
• The ability to work in a team setting and serve value.
• Someone who continuously takes initiative and embraces change.

Characteristics

• Trusted and respected as a thought leader who can influence and persuade business and IT leaders and IT development teams.
• Technology neutral: remains unbiased toward any specific technology or vendor choice, and is more interested in results than personal preference.
• Displays intellectual curiosity and integrity.
• Motivated and driven by achieving long-term business outcomes.
• Ability to work effectively in a team environment and lead cross-functional teams.

Work Model

We have adopted a hybrid model, leveraging the best of remote and in-person work. This work model however can differ depending on roles and leaders.

Equal Opportunity Employer

We at Embark Corp., are committed to fostering an inclusive, accessible environment, where all employees and customers feel valued, respected and supported. We are dedicated to building a culture that reflects the diversity of our customers and communities in which we live and serve. If you require an accommodation for the recruitment/interview process (including alternate formats of materials, or accessible meeting rooms or other accommodation), please let us know and we will work with you to meet your needs.

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