Solution Architect - Technology

Solution Architect, Technology

Our Team, Strategy and Architecture, is part of a thriving product, engineering, data, operations, and digital community who together design, develop and operate all of RS' global digital services. We work on some of the most exciting product developments and enterprise initiatives, and we design the technology solutions to support these. For example, we:

• Ensure our digital products, platforms and services are built to meet and exceed customers' expectations
• Help others across the business to achieve more through technology
• Facilitate technical design working with our many agile and cross functional teams
• Maintain a holistic view of the technology roadmaps for the company
• Champion technical excellence and the art of the possible

You have a passion for technology and everything that goes into creating great solutions. That includes code, software, products, platforms, people and processes. You understand how to use the latest engineering and architecture techniques, working with internal teams, vendors and partners alike to achieve the best outcomes. For example, you like to:

• Provide technical leadership
• Create a best in class digital experience though customer centric design
• Build digital traffic though web, mobile, voice and related mass market channels
• Create bespoke, high value solutions, for large enterprise customers
• Design the technology that powers a digital business from datacentres, networks and cloud to productivity, enterprise systems and more
• Form partnerships with other leading technology companies

The role is Solution Architect and your accountabilities would be:

• Develop the architecture & overall design for major/strategic projects in line with the output of the Enterprise Architects and providing the boundaries within which the engineering teams can subsequently deliver.
• Support, and actively participate in, robust governance processes relating to target and transition conceptual, logical and physical architectures for application/technology solutions
• Facilitate the process of making Key Design decisions, ensuring that all key stakeholders can contribute to the process.
• Communicate the reasoning and implications of key architectural decisions to senior management stakeholders
• Contribute to cross functional Design Working Groups to discuss, agree and communicate key design elements.

• Ensuring that the programmes, projects and initiatives are aware of, and comply with, the documented Architectural governance processes.
• Provide mentoring and coaching for less experienced members of the Solution Architecture team.

To be effective in the role, you will need the ability to work flexibly. Much of your time will be spent working in virtual teams, with the occasional need to attend the RS Corby and RS London offices, where many of our key stakeholders are based.

Your skills and experience include some of the following:

• Infrastructure (e.g. datacentres, networks and cloud migrations)
• Security and robustness (e.g. identity and access control, scalability, usability, maintainability, monitoring, alerting, etc)
• Platforms (e.g. frameworks, ERPs, Search, PaaS, serverless)
• Architectural design (e.g. methodologies, diagrams, analysis, specifications)
• Integrated systems (e.g. between bespoke, open source, commercial off the shelf and SaaS)
• Deployment environments (e.g. virtualization, containers and automation of these)
• Scalable architectural patterns (e.g. SOA, micro-services, API management, event driven)
• Web and mobile solutions (e.g. internet, http, CDN's, browser and native)

You especially enjoy learning new skills and new technologies (and we would like hear about what you've done, whether it's on the list above or not).

We are technology agnostic, and use the best tool for the job. That said, to give you a flavour, we're currently making good use of:

• Cloud: predominantly AWS but Azure and others too
• Data: the Cloudera and snowflake ecosystems, plus several integrated tools
• Marketing: Adobe, Google plus a slew of ad tech
• ML and AI: using all the above
• Containers: from docker, hashicorp and the cloud native foundation
• Custom development: Java, node.js, graphql, react and much more
• DevOps: we like engineers to own their technology choices and work with them on automation, testing, security, and monitoring

Value and values mean a lot to us, that is to say creating value in our industry and holding true to our values.

In the evolving landscape of high tech industry, it is as important for us to adapt to the changing times as it is for us to deliver great products and great service. To survive and thrive we put innovation at our core and drive creative thinking. It means experimenting with unknowns, trying new things, thinking and acting differently. By doing this we create value for:

• Customers : competing on value, not price, and making it easy to do business
• Suppliers : providing insight and analysis to create better solutions Shareholders: growing profits and creating dividend growth
• Our employees : nurturing talent and building a highly-diverse, high-performance culture

And we always live our values of being seamless, personal and progressive which is why we have come to really value six ways of working:

• Passion : an exceptional experience for customers, suppliers and colleagues every time.
• Integrity : be real and do the right thing
• Innovation : courage to do something bold
• Collaboration : trust our collective genius
• Accountability : if it's to be, make things happen with simplicity and speed
• Aspiration : be ambitious, like you're the owner of our business

Above all, we know we will achieve great things, working with the best people in industry, including, hopefully, you.

What we offer?

• We have an outstanding benefits package, which includes:
• Up to 15% Bonus
• Private Healthcare
• 26 days holiday (with the option to purchase a further week)
• EAP Programme
• Virtual GP access
• Discounted stock options
• Extremely generous contributory Pension at 10.5% employer contribution
• Life assurance

About Us:

RS is an organization that holds customer service and innovation at its heart. This has lead us to growing to operations in 32 countries, more than 500,000 products available online, in catalogues, at trade counters and via service offerings to over one million customers who, together, receive over 50,000 RS deliveries a day. From here we see plenty more opportunities for the future, underpinned by digital, technology, data, and culture of people who are continually transforming and growing the business to meet the needs of our customers in a fast changing world.