Sr Architect

• Strategic planning and road mapping activities, particularly for Guidewire Policy Center implementations.
• Driving technology and thought leadership across technical projects involving Guidewire applications.
• Ensuring project documentation for the Architecture Review Board, including Technical Approach and Technical Design.
• Managing the tenants of the project's architecture (business, application, information, and technology architecture).
• Promoting reuse of technologies and processes across technical projects.
• Developing reference architecture, compliance rules, and principles for use across the portfolio and sharing them across the enterprise.
• Managing technical risk for all technical decisions and any platform dependencies.
• Leading the evaluation process of the architecture components of the project.
• Planning and integrating new technologies into projects for effective execution.
• Communicating enterprise application platform vision and strategy for software architecture and application capabilities, software platforms, and shared solutions.
• Ensuring software portfolio conformance within the division (Get Current/Stay Current).
• Mentoring Solution and Senior Solution Architects to further their growth.

Key Measures of Success:

• Delivering technical design and approach.
• Providing position statements and solution patterns.
• Measurable roadmaps with clear milestones

Required Skills & Competencies and Experience/Skills:

• At an expert level, uses core solution architecture skills:
• Excellent interpersonal skills in areas such as teamwork, facilitation, and negotiation.
• Excellent planning, facilitation, and organizational skills.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to understand the long-term ("big picture") and short-term perspectives of situations.
• Ability to translate business needs into solution architecture requirements.
• Ability to estimate the financial impact of individual solution architecture alternatives.
• Ability to define multiple solution options to business problems.
• Knowledge of key aspects of client's business.
• Expert knowledge of information principles and policies.
• Understanding of application development methodologies.
• Understanding of SOA, object-oriented analysis and design, or client/server systems.
• Ability to quickly comprehend the functions and capabilities of new technologies.

Competencies:

• Conceptualization: Visualize the solution, process, or infrastructure required to satisfy the business requirement.
• Innovation: Improve organizational performance through the exploration and introduction of new opportunities that add to the business value proposition or reduce costs.
• Results-driven Attitude: Deliver appropriate solutions based on Enterprise Architecture principles and compliance rules within required timeframes.
• Enterprise Perspective: Understand the broader implications of strategy across all business units while visualizing the project-level implications.
• Foresight: Manage short-term, medium-term, and long-term planning horizons concurrently.
• Consensus Building: Enable a group of people with diverse backgrounds to accept a majority or common conclusion without damaging relationships.
• Facilitation: Guide a debate without forcing a conclusion while ensuring all participants have an opportunity to voice ideas and opinions.
• Leadership: Influence a broad audience to adopt a particular path and be respected as a leader regardless of position/role in the organization.
• Logic: Select the best solution from a range of options to resolve an issue or seize an opportunity.
• Communication: Effectively convey the results of the architecture, the process to develop it, and the value it provides by demonstrating the applicability of technology to the business.

Experience:

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, system analysis, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• Minimum of 10 years in the industry with at least 5 years as a Senior Solution Architect with increasing development responsibility.
• Exposure to multiple, diverse business systems, technologies, and processing environments.
• Solution design and development experience.
• Specific experience with Guidewire Insurance Suite Policy Center application.
• Experience with GW PC cloud migration, data integration, APIs, MFA, SSO, and performance tuning.
• Insurance Industry & Product Knowledge:
• Broad understanding of Property/Casualty systems & applications.
• Understanding of how changes/updates affect not only the specific domain but also other systems in the assigned business unit.