Solution Architect

We are looking to hire a Solution Architect to join our Product and Technology team in Chicago. 

      
Align Business and Technology Strategies

     
Ensure that our product strategy and vision is
aligned with the technical capabilities of our hotel platform, and our industry
partners and clients.

     
Work with Sales and Marketing to communicate the
technical capabilities of our hotel platform.

     
Work with domain architect to
provide an architecture that supports product requirements

     
Act as a liason between product and technology
teams during product development, assisting with translation from high level
business requirements to detailed design.

     
Work with development teams to define appropriate
monitoring capabilities for technical operations, and KPIs for business
operations and Finance.

     
Work with the Data & Analytics team to
identify opportunities to use data to support new product development.

     
Work with the QA team to ensure that test plans have
adequate coverage and appropriate acceptance criteria

      
Ensure operational excellence with Business and
Technical Operations

     
Support production readiness reviews to ensure
that product releases are ready to go live.

     
Act as a liason between Product & Technology
and Business Operations to design and optimize processes.

     
Serve as subject matter expert to triage
production issues and ensure that the right parties are engaged with production
incidents.

     
Perform root cause analysis for technical
issues, and defective processes.

     
Assist the product team in management of
technical debt and prioritization of fixes for customer impacting defects.

      
Represent Hotel Product & Technology
internally and externally as a subject matter expert

     
Maintain relationships with suppliers, partners,
clients, and industry organizations to keep abreast of new developments and
opportunities.

Competency Describe

Ability
to see the big picture

Able
to comprehend a large, complex system from end to end. Ability to predict the
effects of a change to one part of the system on other parts. Ability to
perform root cause analysis by observing the symptoms of a problem and
tracing them back to a root cause.

Ability
to evaluate 3rd parties

Able
to perform due diligence on product and technology companies. Can gather
competitive intelligence and see whether a new partnership brings new risks
and/or opportunities.

Change
management

Able
to introduce new ideas and processes, and lead teams to adopt them. Can
introduce new product development methodologies used by state of the art
Digital companies.

Self-management

Able
to achieve positive outcomes even with ill-defined projects. Can identify
gaps in resourcing and/or skills, and meet the needs on an ad-hoc basis as an
all-around player.

Technical skills

Languages

      
Fluent in English – both verbal and written

      
Additional languages would be beneficial

      
Proven ability to work within a multicultural
environment

Presentation
skills

      
Strong communication skills

      
Ability to present and influence senior level
business leaders

      
Able to expain technical issues in plain
language to

Computer
knowledge

      
Broad based knowledge of current and emerging
technologies,

tools and
techniques.

Specific
skills

      
GDS and other hotel distribution interfaces

Education/Experience

Education

      
B.S. or equivalent experience

Experience

years experience in the hospitality and
travel industries.

      
Preferred candidate has wide ranging
experience with hotel suppliers,
GDS/CRS, hotel distribution, retail/OTAs, or TMCs.

      
Ideal
candidate has experience in a cross functional role,