Hiring for leading companies

Profile summary:
The Solutions Architect is to be a hands-on business-oriented leader with overall responsibility
for product/platform solutions, architectural deliverables, defining or approving standards,
envisioning technical road-map for the organisation, products, ensure governance of practices,
standards, quality, resource, asset creation and management, intellectual properties
management, engineering research, and more. This is the combination of some management with
strong technical leadership and vision; leading software development, technical and engineering
teams, while building an innovation-oriented organization, with customer centricity.
The ideal candidate will be a senior leader with advance level capabilities understanding and
envisioning creation and integration of multiple solutions, application, across technologies,
across domains, across platforms; with prior experience in driving synergies with external and
internal clients, leading platform engineering practices, solutions delivery and enhancing digital
experiences. Having a track record of collaborating on platforms and reusable code used by
multiple internal and external product engineering teams. Proven experience in building cloud
native architecture and experience in implementing microservices based distributed
environments and containerized deployment. Proven experience in building multi-tenant,
scalable, highly available and reliable distributed web-based applications/platforms.

Role and Responsibilities:
It is critical that the individual has experience of working in technology leadership roles
encompassing product development, engineering, systems architecture, and technical
operations. The ideal candidate will be effective at influencing stakeholders to achieve results and
highly outcome driven. She/he should be comfortable in setting aggressive targets, making
difficult decisions, and holding individuals accountable for set goals. The key roles and
responsibilities will include:
Technology Strategy, Research, & Market Prospecting:

• Develop the strategic vision and transformation roadmap for the group to conceptualize
design and deliver end to end technical solutions while fostering innovation, leveraging
new technologies, and showcasing strong customer intimacy mindset.

• Keep abreast of market trends (including research on newer technology stacks, conduct
competitor analysis etc.), gather market insights, monitor product feedback, engage with
product teams to explore newer possibilities for determining the best tech solutions to
address the business aspirations / problems and to increase credibility in the industry.

• Develop roadmaps and execution plans to meet business objectives with existing or
emerging technologies by partnering with stakeholders internally and externally; and
ensure successful delivery of POCs along with guidance for technical validation efforts.

• Provide detailed technical design for innovative solutions in the latest relevant fields, as
applicable.

• Work closely with market facing teams to strategize for converting potential prospects to
active prospects or customers, and enable communicating the value proposition through
proposals and presentations, to achieve business objectives; and training internal teams
on the product features, compliance and technology.

• Evaluate systems and requirements for prospective clients, and recommend
enhancement opportunities, based on respective business/technical needs; and provide

Solutions Architect
assistance for prospecting, as needed, including support for activities related to product
positioning, technical & scope closure etc.
Solutions Ideation, Design, and Implementation:

• Apply creative thinking/approach to determine technical solutions that further business
goals and align with corporate technology strategies, keeping in mind security,
performance, reliability, scalability, usability, flexibility, and cost.

• Assess client requirements (functional and non-functional) and the BRD, the constraints
and options, to make technological and managerial decisions to accomplish project goals.
Establish business context and requirements for the recommended solution, while
selecting the most optimal option and developing the roadmap for the selected solution.

• Define the solution, as how the applications will look along with its structure,

characteristics, features, phases, while including respective modules and their inter-
operability, security, performance, maintainability, scalability, usability, and reliability of

a product etc.

• Integrate software and hardware to best meet the purpose defined by a client and select
the technology stack by assessing and comparing various technology (platforms,
programming languages, tools etc.

• Review resource plans, budgets and forecasting. Manage the team (internal or vendor) to
achieve target scope, schedule and cost objectives.

• Work closely with the Product team(s) to enable new capabilities to help our customers
deploy our cutting-edge solutions and create highly sophisticated value propositions and
solutions to solve for customers' unmet needs.

• Monitor project performance and influence managing client expectations in terms of the
engagement deliverables, efforts, timelines and product customizations etc.

• Manage risk identification/mitigation strategies associated with the
solution/architecture; and translate / simplify the technical project details / jargons into
language that non-technical stakeholders understand and keep them regularly informed
about technical plans, product development processes, costs, and budgeting.
Process Excellence Enablement:

• Provide leadership guidance to the team to implement solutions and build platforms in
areas that help modernize product architecture, move monolithic applications into cloud,
build data integration pipeline, articulate DevOps (and Dev-Sec-Ops) models, create API
patterns/ frameworks, etc. on a regular basis

• Drive for engineering excellence including automation, quality, efficiency, and
productivity; and encourage periodic audits on the processes being followed to develop
the product and suggest corrections where necessary

• Foster innovation and leverage new technologies. Keep track of the industry development
in big data and high-performance distributed data systems. Evaluate new opportunities
to improve and expand the way we do business.

• Define success metrics and SLAs, as well as tracking them toward agreed targets.

• Instil best practices for software development, service execution and operational
excellence. Ensure such that the tech eco-system is constantly working towards
implementing best practices / benchmarked practices in all aspects of work

Solutions Architect
People Capability and Technological Advancements:

• Ensuring that your team will be future-thinking, track the emerging tech trends, quickly
evaluate the applicability of these to our business domain, quickly prototype and
evangelize the same across the organization

• Recruit employees for the team while ensuring smooth onboarding, coach and develop
Solution Architects so they can transfer deep technical skills to Enterprises who are
considering or using our products & services

• Define team goals and drive the performance by ensuring periodic feedback. Engage with
employees on a regular basis to support and guide them. Motivate, develop, reward and
recognize team members in order to meet targets

• Build subject matter expertise across products and develop teams to represent deep
technical expertise in client pursuits and ensure tight alignment with market
perspectives.
General Requirements:

• Over all 15 plus years of experience in the relevant domain and 7+ years' experience in
managing & developing a high-performing Solution Architect team in a SaaS / PaaS /
Fintech organization.

• A result-oriented professional with working knowledge of BFSI products and experience
working with start-ups or high growth organizations and technical founders will be
desirable.

• Demonstrated ability to propel discussions with senior technical and management
personnel within customers and driving value creation and shaping technical solutions as
per the needs.

• Strong Technical background that enables them to interact with and give guidance to the
IT & product teams to enhance our value proposition. Furthermore, thought leadership
in terms of looking beyond the technology and considering the value technology creates
for our customers

• Possess the desired market and domain knowledge and expertise to manage high volume
transactional business, enterprise & solution selling.

• Communication skills should be impeccable, methodical and be able to multi-task and
prioritize well in a fast paced, dynamic work environment. Require strong interpersonal
& communication skills, both written and oral.

• A proven collaborator who can liaise with all levels and departments within an
organization and should be comfortable assuming high-profile leadership roles in
demanding, highly-visible customer situations.

• Should truly possess the capabilities, character and intellect that exemplify great
leadership.