SR. PRODUCTION ARCHITECT

LOCATION:  Mississauga, ON

SALARY:  Open base plus variable annual bonus

PURPOSE OF POSITION:

Reporting to the Director of Production Architecture you will be responsible for the design, creation and maintenance of high level architecture to support a Canadian production line of business within the organization.  In this position, you will ensure all platforms conform to the company’s strategic direction with respect to product road maps, security, disaster recovery, scalability and utilization of infrastructure.

The initiatives coming out of this area play a key role in expanding the company’s product base and operational viability in the marketplace.

The ideal candidate would:

·         Manage a team of senior level architects, vendors, and offshore partners.

·         Be viewed internally and externally as a leader in systems architecture by applying technical expertise to specific business problems. 

·         Provide strong leadership, mentorship and guidance in the development of staff. 

·         Build outstanding working relationships within the company with the Development team, Product, Operations, Sales, and Application Support teams 

RESPONSIBILITIES:

·         Provides management and expert advice on all aspects of architecture design and development.

·         Oversees the creation of architecture and detailed technical design, security documentation, data model, disaster recovery, performance test planning

·         Effectively manages staff through utilization of work planning tools, productivity measurement, guidance, mentorship, fostering a team atmosphere and information sharing

·         Manages and implements standards, protocols and procedures as defined by the CTO  to deliver timely, accurate, stable and flexible  platforms and infrastructure

·         Effectively manages staff to optimize people potential through career guidance

·         Continually strives to streamline procedures in the user community through delivering standard and consistent production architecture solutions meeting the present, and future business needs

·         Actively takes measures to improve overall documentation, reporting, development practices and infrastructure.

·         Develops migration and integration strategies for all systems within area of responsibility

Business Area Liaison

·         Build strategic partnerships with company business leaders and clients

·         Work with all lines of business and various industry groups to understand the impact their strategic plans are likely to have on architecture requirements

·         Work closely with our Engagement Services group, Customer Relations and Sales groups to actively manage client expectations

·         Effectively manages relationship with vendors to ensure products and infrastructure meet or exceed end-user business needs in relation to performance and up time

·         Must be able to communicate effectively and present technical concepts to clients

IT Metric Reporting 

·         Ensure company’s production architecture measurements and processes are meeting or exceeding industry best practices

·         Provide detailed status reports on relevant metrics to IT management. Address short comings in production architecture when required

Best Practices

·         Researches internal and external environments for best practices, current and emerging technology advances

REQUIREMENTS: 

-          5+ years of management experience in large organizations in a leadership role driving the development process strategically and operationally within a high growth, matrix environment

-          Ability to gain the confidence of the clients, staff and CTO; and be viewed, within his/her discipline, as a leader based on credentials of past experience

-          Demonstrated ability to mature a team and implement best practices processes for several major technology projects

-          Demonstrated success in managing a complex mix of internal and external stakeholders on projects

-          Thorough understanding of iterative software development life cycle (SDLC). Knowledge of the Rational Unified Process (RUP) and a UML modeling tool, such as Enterprise Architect, is highly desired

-          Experience having developed or managed software development in mixed environment of IBM mainframe, Wintel and Java services

-          Knowledge of Grid technology, CAR/LAR image processing and manipulation a highly desired asset

-          Off-shore vendor management experience is a desired asset

-          Must have had direct client facing roles and experience (negotiation/dispute handling)

-          Must have had experience in managing architecture teams

-          Must have had experience managing project accounting, and department budgets

-          Bachelor’s degree in Engineering or Computer Science or equivalent. Advanced degree is an advantage

-          Minimal travel may be required for the position

The position is focused more on applications.  However, having knowledge of infrastructure architecture would definitely help.