Solution Architect- Buying And Merchandising

Technology

Team

Architecture

Job Title

Solution Architect

Reports to

Domain Architect

Business Context:

This is an exciting time for Primark as we embark on an ambitious growth and business transformation agenda. This role is truly critical for us - we're looking for a passionate and talented architect to help shape our usage of digital technology to provide our customers with a genuinely first-class experience. Come help us implement the latest technologies to scale the business and increase our speed of delivery as we continue to offer Amazing Fashion at Amazing Prices.

Job Purpose:

Primark Technology is embarking on a transformation journey to support and enable business strategy, which includes modernising our operating model as well as technology architecture. Solution Architects will help us define our high-level technical architecture and will design solutions to deliver great business outcomes, meeting our longer-term strategy. You will Influence and promote the collaboration across platform and domain teams on the solution design. Partnering with platform and domain teams, you'll elaborate on the solution and its interfaces, validate technology assumptions, evaluate implementation alternatives, and contribute towards the product area's roadmap.

Key Responsibilities:

• Design technical solutions that may span multiple workstreams, whilst identifying downstream application dependencies. This role not only owns the solution through to delivery but is also responsible for understanding the wider Primark application estate.
• Oversee the technical acceptance of agile user stories and ensure the integrity of any proposed solutions across workstreams and associated application architects.
• Identify and exploit the re-use of any components, patterns and techniques and document these for re-use by other projects.
• Establish and direct proofs-of-concept in innovation and make recommendations on technology adoption.
• Work with the Security and Information Risk functions to ensure any solution meets the needs of our security standards and principles.
• Develop an evolving and balanced solution architecture for projects, addressing business function needs and achieving alignment with known business function priorities and roadmaps, enterprise architecture principles, standards and governance processes agreeing on design changes and pragmatic trade-offs.
• Manage logical to the physical design, collaborating with both internal and external delivery partners.
• Where required, establish and direct innovation-led proof of concepts and make recommendations on technology adoption and benefits.
• Ensure that delivery projects plan for all relevant architectural governance, design reviews and gating.
• Develop the solution and technical acceptance criteria to ensure the integrity of any proposed solutions across our Tech estate and enable communication with relevant stakeholders.
• Support delivery projects in accounting for solution infrastructure from an operational and supportability perspective and that all non-functional requirements (including SLAs for business continuity, availability and scalability, and security) are addressed in the solution.
• Ensure that the solution architecture balances functional, service quality and operational management requirements but remains bound by relevant commercial, business function and technical constraints.
• Share and collaborate on technology solutions with other stakeholders, especially implementation partners to ensure skills are developed in-house and knowledge is retained.
• Communicate a portfolio of content and reusable solutions to suppliers and partners, ensuring the most appropriate deployment of their technology and products as possible.
• Support wider Tech relationships with technology vendors.

• 5+ years of experience with IT Architecture and System implementation.
• Experience in defining application architectures and roadmaps for complex solutions working for all layers of the technical architecture
• A background in delivering solutions that securely span a complex infrastructure domain
• Experience in systems development change lifecycles, best practices and approaches
• Excellent collaboration skills with the ability to communicate complex technical concepts clearly to peers and leadership level colleague
• An appropriate degree, equivalent qualification or experience

:

• Be a passionate and visionary technologist able to inspire others to challenge and disrupt the current reality to co-create a compelling technology-orientated future business by: Being able to scan potential technologies (established, emerging and emergent)Finding ways to translate that into business opportunitiesBe able to take people along with you, empowering new ways of working and successfully executing those opportunities
• Ability to understand complex technical processes/challenges and create pragmatic solutions is critical to success in this position.
• Strong interpersonal skills enabling the ability to comfortably communicate with key stakeholders, including senior business leaders, product owners, project managers and business analysts.
• Practical experience in delivering change in a fast-moving, multi-vendor environment supported by an agile delivery framework.
• Previous experience in this space, preferably with a leading and innovating retailer.
• Recognised expertise in digital consumer and marketing technologies, demonstrating the ability to put forward relevant knowledge of architectural patterns, technology components and vendor products preferably within a luxury or related retail industry.
• Experience within an architecture team where you have developed solutions aligned with an overarching strategy.
• A good understanding of how to derive complex digital solutions for a truly global business where the customer experience is seamless across multiple channels, including retail store interactions.
• Experience in providing leadership and guidance to peers and junior members of the team.