A Leading Housing Association located in London are looking for an Azure Architect to join their team on a permanent basis. This role is hybrid working with flexible base locations across England.
ABOUT THE COMPANY
The company is the country’s largest housing association, they provide a home to 350,000 people nationwide. They build more than 2,000 new homes a year and through their charitable foundation) they provide opportunities for residents to thrive – supporting people into work, improving neighbourhoods and focusing on sustainability.
The company believes in having a home to call your own is fundamental to being able to access the right opportunities in life. That is why their mission is to provide homes for those who need them most, They're all driven by this shared purpose at the company. They want to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to build a better future and they’re relentless in pursuing it.
The company's IT Team is an integral part of their Group Technology and Change function, and works closely with both business and technology teams across the organisation. Key areas of responsibility for the team include management of their technology and application ecosystem, governance and security, commercial management, technical architecture and customer service.
ABOUT THE ROLE
The Azure Architect is responsible for executing the IT Platform Modernisation Strategy which will reduce complexity, deliver resilient services and migrate core technology to Microsoft Cloud Services. The post holder will also be responsible for defining, developing and promoting Technical Architecture standards in line with strategic and business goals.
Key Accountabilities:
Responsible for evaluating on premise and cloud technologies, documenting architecture diagrams and ensuring the secure design of new and existing systems. Overall responsibility of developing and maintaining the Azure Roadmap.
Develop company’s technology blueprint, target technical architecture and technology to support robust decision making and deliver technology enabled business transformation.
Drive the deployment of solutions onto the Azure platform by establishing relationships with key technical and non-technical decision makers to resolve business problems and develop impactful solutions and long-term cloud adoption.
Responsible for designing technology platforms characterised by high levels of risk, impact and business or technical complexity. Ensure all designs exhibit high levels of performance, security, scalability and appropriate reusability and reliability upon deployment.
Responsible for attending Architecture Governance forums, ensuring appropriate documentation is maintained. You will also provide ad hoc reports and white papers to respond to project issues and management questions.
Support the secure evolution of company.s technology stack, evaluating new technologies in conjunction with technical architects and solution designers. Keep pace with the latest industry trends and vendor offerings to capitalise on opportunities ensuring company’s services remain current.
Build strong relationships with the Group Technology and Change Architecture Team, collectively owning the simplification of company’s systems and the reduction of Technical and Solution Debt.
Experience and pre-qualification criteria
Essential:
Substantial demonstrable experience within a Technical Architecture role in a complex enterprise level organisation including representing Technical architecture and design in organisational project teams, ensuring adherence to policies and standards.
Microsoft Azure Solutions Architect certification or equivalent experience
Expert-level skills in Azure administration and experience with Azure development and DevOps processes
Deep domain expertise of cloud infrastructure solutions (i.e Windows IaaS, Security, Management, Storage, Networking) Substantial demonstrable experience of building positive relationships in a complex matrix technology structure, with a proven record of driving decisions collaboratively and resolving conflict.
Extensive knowledge of current and future technology trends, specifically Microsoft Online Services.
Extensive proven track record in Platform security - including defence in depth, secure by default, updates and patching, secure boundaries, and zero trust.
Substantial experience in technical requirements capture, assessment and technical options proposal.
Extensive enterprise scale technical experience with cloud and hybrid infrastructures, architecture designs, migrations and technology management
Extensive knowledge and implementation of high availability, disaster recovery, business continuity and performance tuning best practices. Excellent verbal and written communication, with the ability to engage technical and non-technical audiences.
Desirable:
Experience of using Cloud Frameworks (i.e. Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure, Microsoft Azure Well-Architecture Framework).
Knowledge of Microsoft 365, Power Platform and awareness of Dynamics 365
Experience of Azure Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
Knowledge of end to end IT programmes and project management
Experience of third party oversight.
Experience in of the secure software development lifecycle (SSDLC) and infrastructure-as-code, particularly integrating vulnerability management and security testing into deployment pipelines
Extensive experience of Data Protection regulation and Data Governance frameworks.