SOLUTIONS ARCHITECT

Open GI is a leading software development company and a trusted partner to the general insurance industry. Based across the UK and Europe, our support and development services make us a truly diverse organization that offers a range of IT solutions to insurance brokers, insurers, and managing general agents. It is our mission to be both the Technology Partner and Employer of Choice to the UK General Insurance market. Our people are placed at the heart of this and diversity, equality and inclusion are central to everything we do. We know the key to achieving success is to enable a positive, inclusive, and collaborative working culture, and, as part of our commitment, we have signed up for a number of pledges and programmes designed to support and nurture our people. No matter where you sit or which team you are a part of, we want you to know that you contribute in helping us to shape where the company will be in the future. We would love for each employee to be able to talk with pride about our company and, most importantly, consider Open GI to be an inclusive, fun and fulfilling place to work. We are looking for an important enabler for software squads, who will guide our architecture decisions to ensure we build things the right way, according to the architectural and design principles we set. As a hands-on practitioner, the Solutions Architect will facilitate workshops, think strategically, and draw on a broad range of technical and interpersonal skills to collaboratively design solutions at Open GI. Your key responsibilities Develop a compelling and inspired vision, and translate this vision into a roadmap and actionable steps. Contribute to the development, planning, and execution of the technical strategy. Provide technical guidance and oversight to maximize the autonomy and independence of delivery teams. Apply a rigorous and consistent approach to technology decision-making, considering risk, impact, and business factors such as cost and skills in the strategy implementation. Create architecture design and implementation frameworks for building distributed systems. Guide technical decisions to shape the architecture over time, aiming to improve multiple prioritized business and technology dimensions simultaneously. Design and implement software with strong security properties, avoiding common weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Champion agile and lean principles to achieve quality, adaptability, speed, and alignment. Work with customers and partners to understand their integration needs and constraints. What you’ll need to succeed Qualifications Educated to degree level in a computer related subject Experience Essential 5+ years of software development experience Advantageous Typically, 1+ years of technical leadership experience or experience as a solutions architect Experience working with Evolutionary Architecture Experience working with Extreme Programming methods Experience designing and building cloud-native applications in Azure Knowledge of the general insurance industry Skills Establish Architectural Decisions - determine, document, and communicate architectural decisions to support and rationalize the design of the solution to achieve understanding and commitment from stakeholders. Communication - Strong written and verbal communication at all levels. Influential Leadership - formulate direction, influence the shape of the work, leading and guiding a team. Mediate Equitable Solutions - mediate differing stakeholder opinions to arrive at equitable resolutions that ensure successful and stable outcomes. Risk Management - identify and manage risk through to completion as agreed by the appropriate decision-maker(s). Architectural Modelling - select, employ, and construct appropriate models to make inferences, and to justify the design of solutions or to answer architectural questions. Aptitudes Feedback – ability to solicit and engage with feedback on a continuous basis. Emotional Intelligence – able to recognize, understand, and manage your own emotions and recognizes, understands, shares, and influences the emotions of others. Collaboration – able to work jointly with others to co-create and achieve a common goal. Mission and Values Our mission is to be both the Technology Partner and Employer of choice for the UK General Insurance Market. Our values are central to this vision, as they represent how we collaborate to continually deliver for our customers: Accountability: We own our actions and shape our success on the results we deliver Innovation: We tackle challenges with fresh thinking and bold ideas Teamwork: We work together, recognising we can’t do this without each other Trust: We build trust on integrity, transparency and respect We are looking for an individual who embraces our values in their actions, decisions, communications and processes to inspire positivity and, ultimately, exceptional performance. Benefits package Salary from £66,000 per annum depending on skills and experience Company pension Bonus opportunity Life assurance and critical illness cover Cycle to work scheme Perkbox – an exclusive platform offering a wide range of discounts and benefits Holiday entitlement of 25 days per annum pro-rata, increasing to 26 days per annum after three years of service & a holiday purchase scheme A hybrid approach to work, with office attendance twice per month Opportunity for a more flexible approach to start, finish, and lunchtimes to allow you to better manage events outside of work Social clubs - whether you’re into your cycling, crafts, or other hobbies, we have a number of groups at Open GI where individuals who enjoy the same pursuits can get together Wellbeing – wills at work scheme, employee assistance programme and mental health first aiders To apply for this role please fill out the application form and send us your CV.