Senior Service Architect

Welcome to Specialist Services, a division of Group Technology Sourcing in Europe. Our focus and value lie in leveraging specialist knowledge and capabilities on a wide range of subjects that either complement or enhance our standard reselling activities. We are here to bolster the "Value Add" aspect of being one of the world's largest Value Add Resellers (VAR). Our Center of Excellence teams are organised into European Departments, with team members based in Germany, France, Belgium, Hungary, and the United Kingdom. For our Rest of the World services, we also have team members in India and Malaysia.

What you’ll be doing

You’ll be a competent design authority on larger or more complex solutions, demonstrating an understanding of the portfolio of services, the GTS business, customer/market needs, and commercial factors. You’ll identify, design, and deliver larger or more complex architectures, strategies, and solution sets, ideally recommending re-use of standards wherever possible and always capturing dependencies/enablers.

You’ll be responsible for the design and communication of structures to enable and guide the pre-sales, sales, design, and transition functions to design and implement integrated, and wherever possible, standard/scalable solutions. You’ll identify changes to service, process, organisation, operating model, and other aspects that may be required in addition to technology components, as the market and solutions change. You’ll identify clear gaps in requirements that are not fully met and any options or considerations that require a business decision ideally ahead of solution and service design teams discussing options with customers. You’ll provide comprehensive guidance on the development of, and modifications to, solution components to ensure that they take account of relevant architectures, strategies, policies, standards, and practices and that existing and planned solution components remain compatible.

You’ll need to be a tenacious, driven, and self-motivated consultant/collaborator, capable of consulting with customers to guide them to the best available service offerings. Your ability to communicate with gravitas and forensically review proposals will ensure predictable delivery in terms of service and cost expectations.

Responsibilities:

• Implement robust service offerings with supporting documentation (standard and deal by deal).
• Create, own, and champion services intra-operability design, testing, and documentation.
• Shape pre-sales understanding of solutions that should be acceptable to the customer and may make solution/service trade-offs. Consult internally and externally on the end-to-end sales-contract-design-transition-in-life process to ensure we land standard services and are fully confident in any variances proposed to customers. You will be a critical collaborator and communicator with sales and customers (at all levels).
• Support pre-sales with the understanding of the implications to cost and service of non-standard services and flag this to governance as required. Provide a detailed assessment of how we could deliver non-standard solutions and the cost/risks of doing so to input into deal decision-making.
• Work with stakeholder groups to continually improve our service standard offerings and seamless implementation and running of them through assurance strategies. This would be output from your Acceptance into Hypercare checkpoints/gates, Hypercare assurance, Acceptance into Service checkpoints/gates, and reviewing learning and necessary improvements.
• Consult with pre-sales, sales, design, and transition leads to ensure that solutions/designs can be implemented effectively and predictably with assured outcomes. Consult internally and externally, proactively, on the end-to-end sales-contract-design-transition-in-life process to ensure we land standard services and are fully confident in any variances proposed to customers.

What You’ll Bring

• A Strategic Thinker: You will regularly receive tangible feedback from user groups to support investment decisions. You should have experience in developing technical strategies, architectures, and proposals, incorporating trade-offs from the original specifications, and having them accepted by the relevant Business Approval review without significant changes. You will lead on articulating investments for non-standard designs, explaining why and what changes are needed.
• A Documentation Expert: You will author design and test documents for large, complex solution developments, incorporating strategic-level risks and remedies. You will manage a large design team to achieve documented handover criteria and create detailed assessments of how to deliver non-standard solutions, including cost and risk evaluations. You will ensure adherence at Acceptance into Hypercare checkpoints/gates, Hypercare assurance, and Acceptance into Service checkpoints/gates, reviewing learning and necessary improvements.
• An Innovative Leader: You will have a proven track record in developing new offerings, with documented feedback from customers and/or sales indicating that IT strategies and architecture for significant areas of the customers’ business have been developed through collaboration with user groups.
• A Design Authority: You will lead on high-level design documents for major solutions, managing design artifacts, standards, and end-to-end design while maintaining an audit trail for an effective design control process. You will ensure that non-standard design artifacts are created and validate that the end-to-end sales-contract-design-transition-in-life process is robust and delivers seamlessly and predictably.
• An Effective Communicator: You will deliver presentations and assessments on solutions and requirements. You should have an understanding of Group Technology Sourcing, system/service definition, and Software/Cloud. If not already in place, you will be expected to build a deep understanding of the wider technical/service architecture to support your role and confidently join dots in customer/sales discussions, solution/contract reviews, transition plans, and assurance.
• A Value-Based Conversationalist: You will confidently engage in value-based conversations with internal and external stakeholders about our standard services and inter-operability.
• Leadership Accountability: As a key member of our leadership team, you will have a natural desire to take on general leadership accountability and lead roles, flexing your personal scope as necessary to add value.

Additional information

Location: UK - Hybrid
Hours: Full-time
Role Type: Permanent