Solution Architect

Bekaert is a world market and technology leader in steel wire transformation and coating technologies. We pursue to be the preferred supplier for our steel wire products and solutions by continuously delivering superior value to our customers worldwide. Bekaert (Euronext Brussels: BEKB) is a global company with more than 27 000 employees worldwide, headquarters in Belgium and € 5.9 billion in combined revenue in 2021.

I. Purpose of the Job:
Through your entrepreneurial thinking and action, your experience of the market, engagement with Sales, Commerce and Marketing leaders in the organization, your deep understanding of all processes and methods in technology implementations and agile delivery, you will lead your technology team successfully and raise the customer experience and excellence capability at Bekaert to the next level.

**II. ROLE DESCRIPTION**:
As Solution Architect for Commercial Solutions (customer experience and customer excellence), you are accountable for proactively and holistically leading or supporting architecture, design, build and operate activities for a portfolio of solutions in response to market disruptive forces, and achieving targeted business outcomes. You are trusted and respected as a thought leader who can influence and persuade business and IT leaders and IT development teams.

Main Responsibilities of Solution Architect are:

- Partnering with the Business area for defining and implementing the Commercial IT roadmap for your product tracks. You will also be responsible in streamlining the product operations in alignment with the business objectives of the organisation.
- Work collaboratively across business and technology to build good understanding of strategic objectives for commercial products, identifies business outcomes, explores implications, impacts, and risks, and stakeholders’ priorities.
- Review the requirements, principles and models and guide technology decisions for the commercial organization across different business units at Bekaert.
- Drive customer experience design, prioritization, and management of product tracks. Engages business stakeholders to identify technology-enabled innovation opportunities.
- Leads the analysis of the current technology environment to detect critical deficiencies, legacy, and technical debt, and implement solutions for improvement.
- Oversees and facilitates the research, evaluation, and selection of infrastructure and software technology and product standards, as well as the design of standard configurations.
- Leads technology implementations and modification activities (projects and products) for commercial organization. Creates and delivers working, production-ready reference implementations that can be leveraged and scaled easily by agile teams.
- Steer efficient utilization and deployment of various technology products, technology platform, development technologies, information, data, security controls and infrastructure services.
- Works closely with product managers, product owners and Architect peers (e.g., enterprise, business, information, security) to enable digital solutions / products agility, scalability, and resilience throughout product lifecycle as per industry best practices.
- Leads agile delivery teams to ensure continuous delivery of business value, as well as to leverage shared technologies, tools, value streams and processes that impact speed to value and time to market
- Works with Bekaert Architect community (e.g., enterprise, business, information, solutions, and security architects) to analyse enterprise business context (business strategy and trends) and derive the future state technology architecture.
- Ensure strong alignment to enterprise governance, security and compliance practices through continuous collaboration and necessary interventions.
- Manage communications and ensure visibility of the product development and outcomes.
- Build a world-class Digital Engineering teams. Develop team capabilities and manage deployment to provide customer-focused design and implementation support.
- Ensure teams have the right skills and composition to deliver quickly and respond to emerging requirements with agile approach.

**VI. ESSENTIAL SKILLS & COMPETENCIES**
- Bachelor's degree in computer science, information-technology, system analysis or a related study, or equivalent experience
- Minimum of five years of design and implementation experience in IT, with a deep knowledge in a minimum of two of the following functional disciplines in commercial : Digital Marketing, Marketing Automation, Digital Commerce (B2B, B2B2C, B2C), Sales ERP (SAP SD), Data Driven Pricing Optimization, Customer Service Management (NPS).
- Solid understanding of agile principles and development methodologies and capability of supporting agile teams by providing advice and guidance on opportunities, impact and risks, taking account of technical and architectural debt
- Exposure to multiple, diverse technical configuration