Activities
1. Business Analysis & Architecture
– Work with Product Managers and Product Owners to translate business requirements into features and to create a PI roadmap (Product increment) and architectural runway.
– Responsible for defining enabler features required for execution of the Program Kanban on both architectural and operational level.
– Co-define Non-Functional Requirements (NFRs) with business and IT stakeholders and enable privacy and security by design at feature level.
– Responsible for defining the solution architecture and the sizing of features of the Program Kanban.
– Support SREs in their recommendations for landscape availability, stability and performance, translated into solution designs and promote them to the Product Managers, RTEs, Product Owners and DevOps teams.
– Engage with infrastructure stakeholders to ensure infra relevant aspects are taken into account when designing DevOps architecture guidelines & solutions for an ART.
– Steers the architectural team of an ART, accountable for all architectural aspects in the ART (including infrastructure).
– Architect with Agility in mind: ensuring that DevOps practices (things like CI/CD pipeline, monitoring, alerting etc.) can be embedded in the current and future architecture.
– Manages the architectural debt of the ART in coordination with the Product Manager and Release Train Engineer

2. Delivery
– Support implementation of features from the Program Kanban.
– Provide oversight in and foster the principles of Built-In Quality, Shift Left and Team & Technical Agility.
– Define, explore, and support the implementation of ART Enablers to evolve solution behavior, working directly with DevOps teams to implement them.
– Participate in SAFe events like Program Increment (PI) Planning and Pre- and Post-PI Planning, System and Solution Demos, and Inspect and Adapt events.
– Advises product manager and RTE on technical debt

3. Design
– Responsible for defining systems and their interfaces and analyze technical trade-offs to guide solution design decisions.
– Work with Enterprise Architect, to develop, analyze, split, and realize the implementation of epics into features and align with the architectural vision.
– Work with the Competence Leads to define the system on competence level in Communities of Practice.

Work/thinking level and experience
1. Academic background and thinking level (BSc.) with education in computer science, engineering, informatics or equivalent technical fields.
2. 6-8 years of relevant experience in information Technology, knowledge of technological developments and trends in the industry in a (comparable) dynamic business environment.
3. Excellent knowledge of IT architecture, from solution architecture till supporting infra systems along with demonstrated expertise in conceptualizing future ready solution designs.
4. Senior in stakeholder management.
5. Fluent communication skills in English, Dutch is important and German is a pro.
6. Experience in functionally leading a group of people (>50).
7. Knowledgeable in 2 or more functional business domains.

Other characteristics
Complexity
– Creating innovative solutions which help meet the business and IT goals and enable Essent to become market leader.
– Bringing in quality, privacy and security by design mentality and enable it with solution architecture.
– Thinking end-to-end solutions which bring best value to the customer and reduce time to market of services and products.
– Works across different technology stacks, reaching the complete customer base of Essent and its brands.

Impact
– The role drives the essential balance between speedy delivery and operational excellence.
– Involves stakeholder interaction at management level and ability to work with and control budgets.
– Breaking down enterprise level architectural choices to team level deliverables.
– Ensures that the technology choices are future ready and economically justified.

Nature of the contacts
– Works with the Enterprise Architect to ensure organizational guidelines are reflected in the team driven solution delivery.
– Works with the Release Train Engineer and Product Manager for capacity planning balance between delivering new functionality and support, maintenance and upgrade activities.
– On a tactical level interacts on license management and the System Team and Senior DevOps Engineers for implementation of the architectural runway.