Architect Premium III

Azure Sme Architect

Role is 4 days a week onsite in DC. Looking for Azure SME architect. Need to blueprint out the project. Long term 2-3 years. Strong agile exp.

Project Libra is a sub-project within project ARIA, which is the overall ERP replacement project. The goal of projectLibra is to modernize the workhorse Integrated Loans Administration Platform (iLAP) which has been the backbone of WBG lending business for well over 2 decades. The platform currently manages a loan portfolio of $$$ billion of IBRD loans and guarantees as well as IDA Loans, credits, and guarantees.iLAP is a highly customized solution atop SAP and integrates with several internal applications like Client Connections (part of e-Business client portal), LIS (Loans Information Source – a loans data warehouse) and few others. The objective of LIBRA is to modernize ILAP with an in-house developed cloud solution, re-build the interfaces to work with the new platform, replace LIS, re-integrate Client Connection, migrate reports to power BI, reconstruct other applications that are likely to be impacted by the solution, as well as build upstream/downstream extensions to the solution, if any. The new solution will be hosted on Microsoft Azure.

Scope Of Work

The Solution Architect shall provide subject matter expertise on Design and Architecture and directly contribute to building a technical Blueprint, architecture, and design of enterprise applications. This includes collaborating with application, data, infrastructure, and security architects to develop a cohesive enterprise application architecture strategy which will rationalize and guide the implementation, integration, and management of solutions. Architect will be developing a direction for the new lending solution — including systems (meaning not just applications, but also processes and information), shared infrastructure services, and shared application services and components to better match business objectives. The roles & responsibilities include the following.

• Lead design for project Libra, develop and maintain core architectural constructs, provide architectural leadership to relevant teams from various location across the globe.
• Communicate critical technical choices, specify requirements and constraints for design and implementation, and provide input for scoping the level effort for the project.
• Provide a long-term vision for the platform, considering changes in technology within the context of ITS current implementation and our feature roadmap.
• Advise on deployment strategies for new features and components, assessing if rollout plans are safe, progressive, and reversible.
• In-depth understanding of the business environment, its processes and complexities of the organization and apply the knowledge towards the proposed work program.
• Design and validate solutions that are practical, flexible, resilient, scalable, reusable, and strategic.
• Contribute to the development of a body of generally applicable frameworks, methods, procedures, and deliverables.
• Recognize and identify potential areas where existing policies and procedures require change, or where new ones need to be developed, especially regarding future business expansion.
• Present, discuss, and walk through the merits of the solutions recommendations with a group of enterprise architects.
• Institute and lead the adoption of best practices and standards, to improve the quality of the deliverables.
• Ensure best practices are adhered to in the adoption of new technologies.
• Architect solutions across multiple IT environments and Business system components, envision solution for projects / programs / applications.
• Research, evaluate, and select from existing and emerging technologies the options best fitting business and IT strategic needs.
• Interact with the Enterprise Architecture and Enterprise Platform teams to ensure that solutions are built in adherence with the defined enterprise standards.
• Manage daily technical challenges and communicate with management if there are any risks or issues.
• Well-versed in the latest technologies and tools being used to improve IT development and delivery.
• Coordinate effort within different IT groups like Enterprise Architecture, Office of Information Security, Data Management Office as and when needed.
• Understanding of security best practices and standards.
• Work with stakeholders to offer contextualized technology strategies, solutions and roadmaps which are aligned to their business needs.
• Document key artifacts related to WBG application environments, integration platforms, data flows, application inventories, entity-relationships, and process workflows.
• Help build supporting frameworks for on-premises, mobile, cloud-native and hybrid solution architecture approaches and implementations aligned with specific business application requirements and constraints.
• Identify the area in the architecture and design that are contributing towards technical debt and provide recommendations to remediate same.
• Work with enterprise architecture team to align various solutions architecture to enterprise standard, reference architecture, patterns, and best practices.
• Identify technology trends which have the potential for the World Bank to accelerate the use of innovative digital platforms and/or hosting solutions.
• Developing target-state guidance (reusable standards, guidelines, individual parts, and configurations) for evolving the technical infrastructure across the enterprise, to enable business strategy and deliver business outcomes.

Skills / Experience Required

• About 10+ years of experience in architecting complex applications
• Experience with IT projects in the Financial Industry
• Experience with IT projects utilizing multiple technologies and frameworks, particularly agile/hybrid agile.
• Deep knowledge and experience of Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud platforms and services in an enterprise environment. Experience with IaaS/PaaS cloud architectures and patterns (e.g., horizontal scaling, immutability, 12-factor design).
• Prior experience with leading cloud native solution development initiatives.
• Experience with delivering effective strategies for cloud integration.
• Experience designing and implementing CI/CD toolchains leveraging Microsoft TFS, Git/SVN, Chef, Jenkins, etc. Experience with cloud infrastructure and application templates (e.g., using AWS Cloud Formation, Azure Resource Manager).
• Familiarity with micro-frontends, implementing microservices and container-based architectures and deployments (e.g., Docker, Cloud Foundry, Kubernetes).
• Prior success in designing cloud applications, supporting changes to development, testing, deployment, migration/transformation, and configuration management processes consistent with a DevOps approach.
• Exceptional analytical and problem-solving skills, including the ability to define technology roadmaps and evaluate total-cost-of-ownership of solutions.
• Experience evaluating cloud service designs and alternatives to achieve desired balance of performance, risk, and cost.
• Familiarity with deployment patterns/strategy (blue/green, canary, rolling, draining)
• Experience managing programs and/or multiple projects, including simultaneous task assignments.
• Strong teamwork and interpersonal skills and the ability to communicate with all management levels.
• Strong documentation, analytical and problem-solving skills
• Organized, agile, persistent, and proactive. Ability to work on multiple tasks within tight deadlines.
• Ability to learn new technologies quickly, self-starters and motivated, and able to work with others, and communicate effectively.
• Actively seeks knowledge needed to complete assignments and shares knowledge with others, communicating and presenting information in a clear and organized manner.
• Delivers information effectively in support of team or workgroup. Good writing and editing skills, with a strong command of English and an ability to convey complex ideas in a clear, direct, and lively format.
• Able to take personal responsibility and accountability for timely response to client queries, requests or needs, working to remove obstacles that may impede execution or overall success.
• Strong experience in Modern Integration – cloud and in-premise and/or hybrid, APIs, and ESB/SOA; and Data/Dataflow governance, strategy, & implementation