Enterprise Architect

Job description

Job responsibilities

In this role you are accountable for:

1. Take a holistic approach to design, develop a re-use approach as much as possible and have ownership across the BSA for Technology architectural standards, project or programme IT architecture, leading a team of multi-disciplined architects; you will be responsible for NHSBSA governance forums, IT solutions designed for significant areas of the business.

2. Define clearly as-is and to-be architectures and clearly document the solution architectures for the business service and its integration in the overall Enterprise Architecture. Preparation of technical artifacts for submission into GDS assessments; and business cases, both internal and external.

3. Undertake and lead on investigative analysis, facilitate scoping and priority setting of large or highly complex changes, providing options appraisals and recommendations, to feed into business cases providing accurate cost estimation, and selecting the most appropriate means to communicate information.

4. Frequent concentrated work tackling uncertain and highly complex business problems, translating designs both logical and physical to support user friendly processes and systems, and communication of this across business areas.

5. Set direction on the introduction and application of specific standards, tools, techniques and methods to meet requirements ensuring consistency across the community of Technical Analysts is fully aligned to organisational approaches, designs, standards and metrics.

6. Provide hands-on leadership of a multidisciplinary scrum team and interdisciplinary team of architects including mentoring, quality assurance processes and standards;

7. Full responsibility for multiple systems and services across the organisation, monitoring the development of new and emerging tools, technologies and products to assess potential value and identifying opportunities to enhance capabilities, products and services within the organisation.

8. Taking a leading role to identify and share good practices, through leading and directing relevant communities of practice to drive adoption of design standards, trends and patterns.

Staff Management

9. Responsible and accountable for management of staff, staff development, recruitment, resources, delivery and financial elements, applying a matrix management approach with staff within professional disciplines across multidisciplinary teams;

10. Enabling the performance of others, including objectives setting fully aligned to departmental and organisational objectives and goals, and the development and motivation of staff to achieve them, including implementing and conducting appraisals and 1-1s to manage performance.

11. Planning, formulating and organising a broad range of highly complex plans, adjusting the strategic direction and adjusting those plans and then cascade to the team. Develop the architectural teams resource and training plans and set standards expected in workforce management. Identify and collate training needs and a blended approach to meeting these needs that supports the continual professional development of a highly skilled workforce.

12. Receive and act upon, and where possible resolve a range of escalations including staffing, disciplinary, resourcing business and technical, to secure satisfactory outcomes. Where unable to resolve, providing sufficient detail, escalate to the appropriate levels within the organisations, within agreed policies, procedures and processes to ensure appropriate resolution.

13. Undertake recruitment and selection in line with organisational processes and participate in the implementation and delivery of initiatives to secure suitable resources, increase skills levels and develop talent pools to meet the changing needs of the business landscape.

14. Seeking, providing and taking feedback to support and encourage teams and individuals to develop thinking and independently work through issues, to reach solutions-based outcomes. Taking full accountability for the approach and decision-making practices within area, including providing positive challenge to ideas and solutions.

Knowledge Management

15. Frequent individual concentrated work on highly complex and uncertain business problems, leading on the strategic oversight of any new research initiatives, legislation, working practices, policies, procedures, contracts and systems and keeping abreast of technological advances to maintain an excellent understanding of the use of technology in delivering business objectives.

16. To continually develop domain knowledge and expertise at the forefront of sector. Investigate research and development to support future business needs and develop an understanding of emerging technologies and business opportunities across a range of topics and engage in the support and development of the organisation, department and team.

17. Taking ownership for decision making within own area and where needed developing a solution iteratively as required, in conjunction withagreed procedures.

Financial Management

18. Budget holder for the architecture team in accordance with NHSBSA's policies, standing orders, financial regulations and legislative requirements, and the development of business plans including highly sensitive data.

19. Develop proposals for future investment including both technology refresh and project- based change; preparing necessary estimates, mandates and business cases within the technology department and providing estimates for such led by other departments.

20. Develop and monitor IM&T budgets on major systems and projects. Policy and Service Development

21. Full responsibility for policy development and implementation across the Technology team and cascade across the entire organisation.

Relationship Management

22. Identify and develop partnership working opportunities, and relationships both within the organisation, with its stakeholders, and to liaise with other Government, Non-Government organisations, statutory agencies and public and private sector organisations to develop collaborative approaches which can deliver value to the organisation.

23. Participate in the evaluation, benchmarking, specification and procurement of hardware, software and services, ensuring sensitive handling of commercial and financial information, whilst ensuring compliance with Government policy for use of SMEs, Information Security, NHS Confidentiality and Data Protection legislation.

Information Management

24. Full responsibility for multiple systems and services across the organisation, the approval and implementation of processes to review, analyse, monitor and report on a number of areas including agreed service levels, KPI's and standards within team. Reviewing the performances of teams and projects in delivery of services against defined service levels, checking for trends that may trigger reduced performance and investigating where performance is below the agreed thresholds. Ensure that in managing performance a holistic approach is taken and that consideration is given to people, process, changes in demand and tools.

Delivery Management

25. Input into workforce planning, ensuring required operational commitments are fully met, business change is estimated, prioritised, and delivered, resourcing issues are identified, mitigated and managed to deliver business value.

26. Leading, managing and engaging teams to deliver multiple strands of work such as continuous improvement, project related work, and operational tasks, both within the organisation and across external bodies to meet strategic goals and deliver high quality outputs for theorganisation.

27. Leading on strategic procurement of hardware and software for various areas of the organisation, including selecting suppliers, accountability for delivery of quality outputs, meeting delivery timescales. Giving full consideration to cost, specification, maintenance and support to ensure the overall needs of the business are met from an ICT perspective, and that they are aligned with the business and ICT strategic directions.

In addition to the above accountabilities, as post holder you are expected to:

Undertake any other duties and responsibilities as agreed with your line manager and commensurate with your role

Demonstrate the business values and behaviors in all aspects of your conduct at work.

Ensure and maintain a safe working environment which reflects the business health and safety policies and practices.

Be familiar with and adopt policies and practices governing finance, budgets and the procurement of services.

Ensure your behavior reflects a commitment to and the benefits of equality and diversity in the workplace

Working relationships:

Responsible to: Head of Technology Governance

Responsible for: Architecture Team

Key Connections: Directors Senior Business stakeholders ICT Service Managers Senior ICT Suppliers ICT Intelligent Client Managers and Staff Peer Networks in Architecture, Service Management and Intelligent Client functions

Person Specification

Specialist Skill/Knowledge

Essential

• Business change, rationalisation and transformation and implementation of strategic approaches, plans, activities and solutions.
• Evaluation, interpretation, translation and communication of complex data/information from multiple sources and requirements to inform decision making.
• Design of cost effective and scalable enterprise solutions, from development through to implementation in a multisupplier environment.
• Provide business assurance of supplier's designs and proposals.
• A range of skills and specialism across a diverse and detailed technical knowledge, covering web applications and services, information, infrastructure, cloud and managed service architectures.
• Planning and organisational skills across a broad range of o A variety of approaches to hosted solutions and data centres including co-Location (and integration into Service Management models) o Working to GDS Principles and having participated in GDS assessments Approval body Certification Interview activities to support the delivery of project planning and resource management.
• Communicating and negotiating with external bodies, suppliers and organisations to reach satisfactory outcomes for the NHSBSA.

Desirable

• A variety of approaches to hosted solutions and data centres including co-Location (and integration into Service Management models)
• Working to GDS Principles and having participated in GDS assessments

Experience

Essential

• On-going professional development
• Leading and managing staff to deliver organisational goals and objectives
• Engaging and building relationships with a range of stakeholders to support delivery of business outcomes
• Creatively interpreting strategy and translate emerging trends and technologies to deliver innovative solutions which might impact or benefit the organisation including: Cloud technology, Mobile devices and apps and Collaborative working tools
• Devising comprehensive architecture for enterprise scale, high-volume digital services and initiatives that deliver capacity, performance and system availability improvements that ensure business targets are met or exceeded.
• Devising architectural standards and designs, iteratively to meet the needs of the organisational approaches and in line with GDS standards.
• Dealing with a number of strands of work in tandem, coupled with prolonged periods requiring high levels of concentration to provide high quality outputs, including the development of technical solution artifacts for inclusion in Business Cases, to be used both internally and externally to the NHSBSA.
• Providing full solutions design for complex systems and services, including developing and implementing solution and enterprise and application architecture in a multi supplier environment.
• Managing budgets to maintain effective cost analysis and projection.
• Engaging and communicating with a range of stakeholders, up to and including board level.

Desirable

• Analysing digital / web services in a fast-paced environment.
• Open source and cloud technologies and their sourcing.
• Experience of migrating services across different Data Centre locations and legacy application consolidation.
• Solution and service design and delivery within an Agile development environment.
• Conforming to financial standards within a commercial environment.

Qualifications

Essential

• An IT related degree or equivalent plus significant demonstrable experience in two of the following: IT Architecture (digital and service) , System Design, Business and Technical Analysis, Management of a significant ICT implementation OR Significant demonstrable experience in at least three of the following: IT Architecture, System and Service Design, Business and Technical Analysis or Management of a significant ICT implementation

Desirable

• TOGAF certification or equivalent, or willing to work towards this certification
• Experience of working in an agile environment and experience with agile methodologies such as Scrum and Kanban
• ITIL or SIAM Certification
• Undertaken GDS Assessor training

Certificate of Sponsorship

Applications from job seekers who require current Skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. For further information visit the UK Visas and Immigration website (Opens in a new tab).

From 6 April 2017, skilled worker applicants, applying for entry clearance into the UK, have had to present a criminal record certificate from each country they have resided continuously or cumulatively for 12 months or more in the past 10 years. Adult dependants (over 18 years old) are also subject to this requirement. Guidance can be found here Criminal records checks for overseas applicants (Opens in a new tab).

Employer details

Employer name

NHS Business Services Authority

Address

Stella House

Goldcrest way, Newburn Riverside

Newcastle Upon Tyne

NE15 8NY

Employer's website

https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/what-we-do/work-us (Opens in a new tab)