Principal Solution architect

Job DescriptionJob DescriptionVP, Insurance Solution Architect
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Our client is seeking a VP, Insurance Solution Architecture to join the Information Technology Architecture department, located at the US headquarters in Warren, New Jersey.

The desired candidate will have an established track record of building high-quality Insurance solutions, be results-driven and bring strong architecture/engineering skills and a deep understanding of modern technologies including Cloud Engineering Standards & Practices, DevSecOps, CI/CD Pipelines, APIs, nfrastructure as Code and Agile Delivery Practices. Successful candidates must have worked extensively in a major cloud environment (Azure, AWS or GCP) and have an excellent understanding of cloud concepts. The candidate must possess strong Insurance technology knowledge, analytical skills, communications skills, and demonstrates great problem-solving ability.

The roles primary responsibilities include:
• Work with Business and Technology leadership to develop architecture priorities and direction to enable business imperatives
• Partner with leaders across the organization to design, support and help deliver against Solution Architecture priorities and Everest strategic objectives.
• Maintain key relationships across the enterprise spanning Technology and Business functions.
• Cultivate and maintain good working relationships with key technology vendors that support Insurance platforms.
• Understand customers’ overall application landscape, priorities and success measures to design implementation architectures and solutions.
• Engage with business stakeholders to help drive a common strategic technology vision aligned with business strategy and objectives.
• Influence strategic decisions and priorities related to technology solutions and remove impediments to delivering value.
• Work with business and technology teams to align on strategy, prioritize work, and design solutions.
• Gathering client feedback to help shape and influence our technology strategy and roadmap.
• Ensure the solutions that are delivered meet high standards for quality, performance, and scale.
• Design the overall technological architecture of the product, collaborating across business and technology functions.
• Apply technical knowledge to architect solutions that meet business and IT needs, create and modernize application platforms to ensure long term technical viability of new capabilities.
• Provide subject-matter expertise across Software Architecture topics including Cloud, Engineering Standards and Practices, Architecture Best Practices, etc.
• Guide Agile Value Steams, Trains and Teams on technology strategy related to the develop of platform designs and solution roadmaps.
• Provide leadership across the enterprise to drive new technology and advancements into production.
• Display strong thought leadership in pursuit of modern architecture principals and technology modernization.
• Lead the development and adoption of reference architectures for existing, new and emerging Cloud and Cloud-native solutions within Microsoft Azure Cloud.
• Drive continuous technology transformation to minimize technical debt.
• Ensure the alignment of IT initiatives and architectures with the target state.
• Look for opportunities to capitalize on technology advances through analysis of key industry and technology trends while assessing potential impact on the enterprise.
• Build strong partnerships with engineering to ensure proper alignment of skills with technology direction.
• Optimize talent strategy to ensure proper mix of resources and attract and retain best talent.

To be successful in this role, we’re seeking the following:
• Bachelor's Degree (required) or Master's Degree (preferred) in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field
• 10+ years of overall technology experience in strategy, architecture, engineering, configuring and implementing software solutions and services
• 5+ years of Software Engineering and Enterprise Architecture experience including engineering practices, tools and standards
• 5+ years of successful technology leadership experience at an enterprise level within a company or as a consultant
• Demonstrated ability to lead in a highly matrixed organization through a combination of influence, partnership, and authority
• Experience leading, coaching, mentoring, and developing people and teams.
• Hands-on knowledge of current technology standards/trends coupled with a desire to continually expand personal knowledge/skills
• Domain knowledge of the Insurance Industry (preferably P&C) and value chain as well as the technologies and solutions relevant to this industry is desired
• Ability and interest in mentoring technical staff and raising our collective technical competencies
• Cloud Architecture Certification (AWS, GCP, or Azure) or strong architecture experience on Cloud
• Ability to establish and maintain relationships with other business and technology leaders
• Strong written and verbal communication skills coupled with the ability to tailor communication to all levels of an organization
• Open-minded with proven ability to work collaboratively with others in team environment
• Strong understanding of IT environments, technologies in relation to business needs
• Demonstrate strong ability to work in a team environment and foster cross-team collaboration
• Experience executing technology modernization initiatives including migration to cloud native and API Strategies
• Strong grasp of value creation and business capability models
• Recent experience working in a Scaled Agile environment with Agile tools, e.g. Jira, Confluence, etc.
• Strong experience with APIs, accelerators, DevSecOps, Infrastructure as Code and Containers
• Working Knowledge of Data Streaming or similar capabilities such as Kafka, Kinesis, etc.
• Strong knowledge of Insurance and (COTS) Platforms including Guidewire (Policy, Claims and Billing), Policy Decisions, etc.
• Active knowledge and experience with modern Data & Analytics platforms including Data Lake, Data Bricks, ML Ops, AI and ML capabilities
• Documented experience successfully leading cloud architecture definition, migration and modernization of the our technology capabilities
• Demonstrable experience in engineering solutions through the process of decoupling complex monolithic systems
• Experience in defining and documenting architecture and coding standards and best practices
• Display strong thought leadership in pursuit of modern architecture principals and technology modernization
• Builds strong partnership with engineering teams to ensure proper alignment of skills with technology direction
• An inspirational leader skilled at developing others while modeling a culture of continuous learning, mentoring, and coaching.
• Mentor and coach architects and engineering teams to increase skill levels and drive quality.
• Measuring performance through established objectives and metrics that deliver agreed upon business, technology, and people results.
• Prepare and deliver comprehensive communications to convey architectural direction and how it aligns with enterprise strategy.

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