This inclusive employer is a member of myGwork – the largest global platform for the LGBTQ business community. End Date Tuesday 02 July 2024 Salary Range £68,202 - £75,780 We support flexible working – click here for more information on flexible working options Flexible Working Options Hybrid Working, Job Share Job Description Summary. Job Description Solution Architect Location: Bristol, London Hours: Full time Working Pattern: 2 days in the office About the Opportunity Lloyds Banking Group is the UK’s biggest Retail, Digital and Mobile bank with over 30 million customers and a big responsibility to help Britain Prosper. We’re in the middle of a £3bn investment into our People, Platforms and Data as part of our strategy to build the Bank of the Future and grow sustainably. This is a time of growth for the platform. We're passionate about building a Diverse, collaborative, empowered and skilled team. We're on the journey to simplify and modernise our tech stack and innovate using new technologies. We're keen to move towards our target state with a cloud first (private and public) approach in our hosting strategy and to transform our systems from monolith to microservices whilst decommissioning our legacy estate. Teamwork is essential to the success of this role. As an experienced Solution Architect within Commercial Lending Platform, you'll work collaboratively alongside other Solution Architects, Enterprise Architects, Product Owners and Engineering team within platform. To help us define and design solution architecture that unlocks and builds opportunities to deliver excellent customer journeys and business outcomes, whilst meeting our strategic goals. Optimise, evolve, and deliver an efficient solution. Support shaping of the roadmap and prioritising outcomes which are essential to keep the solution / product in good health. Build an organisation that is truly data driven and providing the best value propositions to our customers. About the role: Whoever joins the team will play critical role in crafting solutions that can provide continuous flow and will be responsible for: Partner with Enterprise Architecture & service providers to elaborate on solutions, their interfaces and validating technology assumptions, evaluating implementation alternatives and software lifecycle risks, assumptions, issues & dependencies. Providing analysis of options and deliver end-to-end solution designs using relevant architectural building blocks as well as producing designs for features that enable frequent incremental customer value delivery. Promoting adaptive design practises to drive collaboration across Platform teams centring on a common vision with continuous feedback. Participating in Agile ceremonies, elicit requirements, shape & validate designs or prototypes that deliver customer outcomes that align to our target architecture. Demonstrating industry best practise, frameworks, standards & policies in crafting opportunities & value for our customers. Contributing to the financial investment process to acquire funding for key solution opportunities. Setting guiding principles and solution success criteria for platform capability or feature development across our Platforms. Providing oversight & foster built in quality, decoupled & modernised architectures. Supporting Product Owners & Platform Leads in identifying, articulating and impact assessing software & infrastructure currency risks or issues, offering options & recommendations on action planning & continuously Evergreening solutions/systems within the Platform. Help develop our talented people evangelise for the architecture principles through mentoring, coaching and participation. Here's where you'll make a difference: Your contribution will be instrumental to our strategy of simplifying, modernising, and de-risking the Group technology landscape, ensuring value for customers and shareholders. This role is key to driving the long-term sustainability and integrity of the organisation. What we need from you: We need a Solution Architect who understands the challenges of modern architecture and builds a compelling strategic vision and will understand a wide array of technology implications including people and process, bringing this to your integrated view of design. Experience we’re looking for: Are experienced working in multi-disciplinary product, feature or platform teams. Are excited at the prospect of changing culture by inspiring change through new insights with teams or like-minded people, encouraging each other to find the right technology solutions. Have experiences in systems engineering or solution architecture with appreciation of software development processes such as Behaviour Driven Development & Test Driven Development. Enjoy communicating & influencing audiences with little or no technical knowledge while aligning recommendations to organisational strategy & imperatives. Worked with collaborators to influence their thinking about what is possible through technology innovation. Have understanding & experiences in applying different project, architecture, life cycling and risk management methods to bring in customer value. Demonstrate strong understanding of solution & software architecture patterns. Have experience in defining and/or operating environments embracing Agile Architecture, Emergent & Intentional architecture techniques. Experience of systems or solutions development, change lifecycle, release management at web-scale. Experience in partnering & collaborating with Enterprise, Security, Data & Infrastructure architects to create customer value or tackle business problems. Proficient & demonstrable experience in leading activities associated to Architectural Governance, Risk Management or Compliance processes. Familiarity of Architectural Frameworks such as TOGAF, Archimate, Cloud Architectures or similar. Have an ability to understand how and where third party products could be deployed, including solid understanding of vendor evaluation and selection processes & best practises. Prior experience in Mobile native, Cross platform/Hybrid App, API Gateway Management and microservices domain. You must be a keen and comfortable communicator who is happy working with a wide range of technical and non-technical colleagues. You would produce high quality documentation tailored to the audience which would include senior stakeholders. As a role that can require demanding delivery timeframes, in this role you need to be self-organised and be able to proactively prioritise your time. If this is you, come and join our inclusive, values-led focused on making a difference. Apply today, we’d love to hear from you. About working for us Our focus is to ensure we're inclusive every day, building an organisation that reflects modern society and celebrates diversity in all its forms. We want our people to feel that they belong and can be their best, regardless of background, identity or culture. We were one of the first major organisations to set goals on diversity in senior roles, create a menopause health package, and a dedicated Working with Cancer initiative. And it’s why we especially welcome applications from under-represented groups. We’re disability confident. So if you’d like reasonable adjustments to be made to our recruitment processes, just let us know. We also offer a wide-ranging benefits package, which includes: A generous pension contribution of up to 15% An annual bonus award, subject to Group performance Share schemes including free shares Benefits you can adapt to your lifestyle, such as discounted shopping 30 days’ holiday, with bank holidays on top A range of wellbeing initiatives and generous parental leave policies Want to do amazing work, that’s interesting and makes a difference to millions of people? Join our journey. At Lloyds Banking Group, we're driven by a clear purpose; to help Britain prosper. Across the Group, our colleagues are focused on making a difference to customers, businesses and communities. With us you'll have a key role to play in shaping the financial services of the future, whilst the scale and reach of our Group means you'll have many opportunities to learn, grow and develop. We keep your data safe. So, we'll only ever ask you to provide confidential or sensitive information once you have formally been invited along to an interview or accepted a verbal offer to join us which is when we run our background checks. We'll always explain what we need and why, with any request coming from a trusted Lloyds Banking Group person. We're focused on creating a values-led culture and are committed to building a workforce which reflects the diversity of the customers and communities we serve. Together we’re building a truly inclusive workplace where all of our colleagues have the opportunity to make a real difference.