Solution Architect

Introduction
At IBM, work is more than a job – it’s a calling: To build. To design. To code. To consult. To think along with clients and sell. To make markets. To invent. To collaborate. Not just to do something better, but to attempt things you’ve never thought possible. Are you ready to lead in this new era of technology and solve some of the world’s most challenging problems? If so, lets talk.

Your Role and Responsibilities We are currently seeking experienced Architect for our IBM Payments Centre. We wish to add talent to help drive our market growth and shape new solutions which deliver Payments modernization and transformation for our clients. We advise clients on addressing Payments industry regulatory requirements, develop strategy and implementation of innovative technologies and adopting cognitive and cloud-based Payments processing Platform solutions that enable our clients to optimize their costs and enable value added overlay services for their businesses.

The IBM Payments Centre team assumes the transformation of all or part of our clients’ Payments operations portfolio and portions of infrastructure to the cloud in support of their digital transformation journey. IBM applies its deep business and technology skills, leading innovation and world-class business processes to help clients maximize benefit from leveraging Cognitive and Cloud capabilities.

Scope:

Basic responsibilities of the candidate typically leading the architecture, technical delivery of payments modernization and transformation initiatives delivered by the IBM Payments Center.

The Architect uses their experience leading the design, sales, and implementation of modern Payments Platform solutions in hybrid, multi cloud deployment contexts. The Architect is experienced in the Payments domain specifically Real Time Payments, Interac, AFT etc. and has a deep understanding of the current Payments Modernization initiatives and trends in the Canada, US and globally.

They must develop strong and trusted relationships with other areas of IBM and team members to achieve quick responses to client demands. This position requires the skills needed to win client trust and confidence leading to the successful delivery of client engagements. The Architect is expected to participate in ongoing billable client activities where follow-on efforts are visualized, participate in the resolution of critical situations, participate in related Sector, Solution Area, or Community activities. The Architect is expected to support new business opportunities, lead the development of solutions supporting that opportunity, and to win that business for IBM supporting and reinforcing business objectives within their area of practice.

Core Responsibilities:

• Design, development and deployment of hybrid, multi cloud and cloud native architectures and solutions for payments transformation initiatives that support the business requirements of the client. Solution responsibility can include but not limited to, infrastructure strategy and design, systems strategy and design, communications strategy and design, and data center strategy and design.
• Lead, create Solution Architecture, High-Level and Low-Level design deliverables with client architects.
• Bring expertise in hybrid cloud platform security governance and compliance.
• Proven understanding of hybrid cloud platform (including OpenShift, IBM Cloud, AWS, Azure) and key cloud services consumption models and be able to construct cost effective solutions for our clients.
• Design the HA / DR strategies for the hybrid cloud solution.
• Best practices in this role use reference architectures and service product assets to develop conceptual and detailed designs.
• Architects are responsible for performance, availability and scalability of the solution and the impact on the client’s infrastructure.
• Support sales opportunities.
• Lead, perform and mentor on consulting engagement pursuits. This includes participating in client opportunity identification and qualification calls, understanding client needs and objectives, articulating and formulating solutions design for proposals and statements of work that align to the client needs while managing delivery risk and working with the sales team through deal progression and signing.
• Engagement oversight. This includes following the Delivery Roadmap to successful project execution. This includes staffing consulting project teams, assisting project leadership (i.e., project manager or engagement leader) in defining or modifying project approach and structure as necessary, deliverables review and participation in key project events as appropriate.
• Collaborate with other teams and team members to develop automation strategies and deployment processes

Required Technical and Professional Expertise

• 10+ years of experience in design and delivery of complex and large-scale IT projects.
• Expertise in the Payments Industry and the design, delivery of payments systems (ACH, Wires, Real Time, Interac, Cheques, Card Payments etc.). Candidates with strong experience in Banking and Financial services will also be considered.
• 3+ years of experience as a solution architect providing hands on technical leadership for the end to end design, delivery and management of hybrid cloud solutions (AWS, Azure, IBM, GCP)
• Cloud solution architect certification in one of major cloud providers (IBM Cloud, AWS, Azure, GCP)
• Experience in design and delivery of cloud native solutions with Microservices, containers & orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes, etc.)
• Proven experience in design and delivery of cloud native solutions with with Micro services, containers and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes, OpenShift)
• Experience in REST API Interface design, API Gateways, Swagger/OpenAPI standard, OAuth.
• Experience leading projects delivered through a globally integrated capability of onsite, nearshore, and offshore teams.
• Experience with Agile methods & DevOps.
• Experience in design and delivery of scalable, fault tolerant and resilient systems Familiar with data center concepts and best practices, high – availability systems, capacity planning, system performance evaluation, and diagnostic techniques and methodologies.

Preferred Technical and Professional Expertise

• Understanding of Red Hat ecosystem (OpenShift, Ansible, RH Fuse, RH SSO, etc.)
• Expertise in solution infrastructure as code and DevOps automations.
• Expertise in Datacenter moves to Cloud.
• Familiar with IT Operations and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) practice.