About the Team
 
We are looking for an experienced Technology Solution Architect to provide thought leadership across our technology landscape specialising on Digital, Gaming and Corporate domains to play a critical role in the success of our daily operations and our strategic projects. The role offers the opportunity to work on cutting-edge digital products while collaborating with top-tier development partners.
The role reports to the Head of Infrastructure and Engineering but will also act in an advisory capacity to senior management.
The role holder will also take ownership of specific strategic interactions with FDJ Group Technology leadership and contribute to both PLI and FDJ group strategy using their expertise to identify opportunities, solutions, issues and risks that impact the PLI strategy and group strategy as a whole.
 
About the Role 

As a Technology Solution Architect you will...

• Be a member of a small group of individuals who drive the strategy for Technology within PLI.
• Create the ideal conditions for PLI Technology to operate as a Systems Integrator, assembling the best of our partners’ solutions for the good of our customers.
• Be a key liaison point for Group technology leadership to understand and seek to enhance PLI’s technology offerings.
• Act as a lead member of the Design Authority, maintain an overall view of all technology within the PLI stack, and ensure its strategic fit and fitness for purpose.
• Alongside the Senior Solution Architect and the Head of Delivery, coordinate the work of contract solution architects on specific projects, ensuring adherence to our standards and principles.
• Evaluate and recommend new technologies and frameworks to enhance our digital product offerings, and act as a trusted advisor to the CTO and Senior Leadership Team in matters of technology strategy (taking the lead in areas such as harnessing Artificial Intelligence, using technology to solve for organisational constraints, etc.)
• Provide technical leadership and guidance to cross-functional teams throughout projects and in-life operations.
• Own the integration architecture across the technology stack and ensure the application of principles and standards to its evolution.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to understand their needs and translate them into technical specifications. 
• Develop comprehensive solution architectures that align with business objectives and technical requirements.
• Ensure that solutions adhere to industry best practices, security and regulatory standards, and compliance requirements.
• Create and maintain technical documentation, including architecture diagrams and design specifications.
• Define project technical scope and associated estimations to enable implementation strategy.
• Manage specific technical issues, risks and assumptions.
• Manage and lead projects in relation to end of life and upgrade requirements.

Your main tasks will be as follows:

• As a senior contributor to the Design Authority, provide technical leadership for technology initiatives across PLI and our partners, ensuring that agreed standards are met across all new initiatives.
• Own the relationship with Group Technology for specific initiatives to evaluate and drive potential synergies in Technology with them. Some travel will be required.
• Actively participate in project planning, estimation, requirements analysis, solution design and change implementation.
• Contribute architectural guidance to the definition of project technical scope and the associated estimation.
• Work alongside senior solution architect and architects from our partners on solution design and take ownership for agreed designs.
• Lead the technical architecture and design and coordinates deliverables from other technical teams (development teams, test and environments team, deployment teams, IT operations)
• Lead the architecture and design of interfaces, error handling, data integrity and quality from source to target systems
• Ensure that the solution delivered meets all functional and non-functional requirements.
• Ensure that technical deliverables are of high quality and aligned with the solution
• Specify non-functional requirements e.g. monitoring and alarms as part of deployment and handover to IT operations and ensure these are met.
• Liaise with IT Test Manager on IT Test definition and execution 
• Agree and document defect/problem support process for new applications and vendors
• Define and implement test environments – definition & management of “path to production”
• Define user access management rules and process (ACL, roles/responsibilities etc.)
• Agree and document Target Operating model, oversight of IT Support Contracts with third party suppliers
• Post project closure and transfer to IT Operations, act as a Triage and SME of business application to business owners and IT support for high priority incidents or for new business and project requirements.

 
About You      
 
The Technology Solution Architect will combine strong functional and technical knowledge, with the following ideal experiences: 

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, Software Engineering, or a related field.
• 10+ years of experience in solution architecture, with a focus on digital product development.
• Experience navigating complex relationships in a multi-faceted technology stack, with Internal, Group and external partnerships.
• Strong understanding of cloud technologies, preferably with certifications in Azure and/or AWS.
• Expertise in evaluating as-is and to-be technologies, and using that evaluation to design scalable, secure, and high-performance architectures.
• Experience working with microservices, containerisation, and serverless architectures.
• Proficiency in integrating various systems and APIs.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Strong leadership and project management experience.
• Experience working in multiple development environments (agile and waterfall and combinations of both).
• Desirable experience with
  • Solution Architecture best practices
  • Software architecture, data architecture, integration architectures
  • Digital - Adobe AEM, GBG, NodeJS, Apple and Android native technologies and integrations.
  • Corporate – MS Azure, MS Dynamics and other Commercial off the Shelf applications knowledge
  • Information Security architectures
• Ability to work under pressure and to demanding timelines.
• Ability to network, build strong relationships and influence effectively.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills.
• Experience in directing the work of multiple 3rd party suppliers.