Senior Solution Architect - Integrated Data & Analytics

at  AXA

SENIOR SOLUTION ARCHITECT - INTEGRATED DATA & ANALYTICS

Hartford CT I Stamford, CT I Morristown, NJ I New York, NY I USA
We invent the new to help the world move forward. Combining powerful analytics and deeper insights with bigger ideas and innovative solutions, we free up our clients’ potential, thereby fulfilling our own. Take it seriously.
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As we develop an enterprise-wide data and digital strategy that moves us toward greater focus on the use of data and data-driven insights, we are seeking a Data & Digital Solutions Architect. The Data & Digital Solutions Architect is a hands-on, execution focused role helping translate the data and digital strategy to architecture and to execution. In this role you will have an understanding of our data and analytical systems at a granular level, and function as organizational data and digital architecture subject matter expert for our various projects.
Your expertise in Integrated Data & Analytics will help guide solutions for: structured and unstructured data ingestion framework; data standardization pipelines; reference and master data management; data governance and data cataloging; capture and analytics of data quality and usage data; enterprise semantic layer; and business intelligence and analytical data experiences.
DISCOVER your opportunity

What will your essential responsibilities include?

• Understanding of AXA XL’s existing architecture
• Understand user requirements (desired output & outcome) and existing environments (current state), and translate these into an architecture and road map
• Collaborate with customers, analysts, other architects, modelers, developers, testers, partners and vendors
• Guide the full lifecycle of a Solution, including:
• Understand the Business Capabilities that are required and translate this to Technical Capabilities and Solution Architecture
• Assist the customer (and business solutions analysts) to define and declare non-functional requirements for building out solution capabilities
• Design AXA XL’s architecture and solutions to meet business requirements in a manner that balances architectural standards, and implementation and operational risks, with restricted parameters such as budget and time
• Document solution interactions and relationships, along with basic infrastructure and application onboarding requirements
• Assist in the creation of cost estimates including implementation as well as total cost of ownership
• Ensure the future-state solutions have been fully vetted, are performant and scalable, enable agility, can be supported, are cost effective and highly available, and meet the robust needs of the business
• Ensure security by design to meet Information Security policies, Legal, Compliance, Risk, and Regulatory requirements, and industry best practice
• Assess vendor tools based on required capabilities, future capabilities, and architecture drivers, and document justification for tool selection
• Be hands on to demonstrate tools, patterns, security, performance, scalability, etc. in a lab environment when necessary
• Work with quality assurance team to ensure the testing approach is appropriate for the given architecture and solution
• Lead design reviews (pre-development) and implementation reviews (post-development) to ensure principles and standards are followed, and that technical debt is managed
• Create a feedback loop for those who are implementing and interacting with the solutions
• Participate in the definition of adoption and experience metrics for the solution to measure the success of the solution
• Present architecture decisions, explain the end-to-end solution, educate others how they can contribute, and provide guidance on tool usage
• Extract best-practice knowledge, reference architectures, and patterns for sharing with the broader community of Architects at AXA XL and/or AXA Group
• Document cost and performance metrics for different design patterns, and provide project teams the ability to decide the most appropriate pattern for their requirements, timeline, and budget
• Participate in the definition and maintenance of Architecture principles and artifacts
• Engage with tool vendors on their roadmaps and appropriate usage of their tools
• Engage with industry experts to validate the architecture and designs, and understand industry trends
• Understand & be able to communicate business problems & technical solutions in appropriate terminology and ability to influence across business lines
• Document data flow and storage mechanisms and provide examples to data developers when necessary
• Work with data modelers to ensure modeling approach is appropriate for the given data architecture and solution

You will report to the Principal Solution Architect – Data and Digital Architecture.

SHARE YOUR TALENT

We’re looking for someone who has these abilities and skills:

• Initiates own work receiving broad direction as needed
• Guide and mentor colleagues at all levels and provides advice to senior/executive management on complex/strategic issues
• Lead or manage large, long term or complex projects with dotted line responsibility
• Ability to assess and advise on the department’s strategy
• Independently resolve a variety of novel strategic challenges that have significant impact on organization-wide cost and efficiency with far-reaching impact
• Resolve novel problems requiring creative application of advanced skill, training and education
• Several years in relevent architecture roles.
• Possess broad and deep insurance and architecture expertise and knowledge
• Understand & be able to communicate business problems & technical solutions in appropriate terminology
• Ability to navigate business dynamics/political sensitivities
• Excellent presentation, communication (oral & written), and relationship building skills, across all levels of management
• Outstanding Organizational skills with attention to detail and ability to handle change
• Excellent problem solving and analysis skills
• Must be able to work well under pressure and consistently meet deadlines
• Ability to work as part of a team or to be self-directed as required
• Practiced at working as part of a global team (including outsourcing) spanning multiple time zones
• Knowledge and active use of Agile, SCRUM and Continuous Delivery
• Understand cultural differences and be effective working in a diverse environment
• Passion for learning and prepared to go the “extra mile”
• You care about what you do, and what we do
• Passion for data and experience working within a data driven organization
• Hands-on experience with architecting, implementing, and performance tuning of:
• Data Lake technologies (e.g. Delta Lake, Parquet, Spark, Databricks, HDFS, Hive)
• Integration and Data Pipeline/ETL/ELT technologies
• Analytical data models and semantic layers
• BI tools and techniques
• Reference & Master Data Management
• Metadata management and data governance
• Azure cloud platform environment
• Data access control and security

• Understanding of AXA XL’s existing architecture
• Understand user requirements (desired output & outcome) and existing environments (current state), and translate these into an architecture and road map
• Collaborate with customers, analysts, other architects, modelers, developers, testers, partners and vendors
• Guide the full lifecycle of a Solution, including:
• Understand the Business Capabilities that are required and translate this to Technical Capabilities and Solution Architecture
• Assist the customer (and business solutions analysts) to define and declare non-functional requirements for building out solution capabilities
• Design AXA XL’s architecture and solutions to meet business requirements in a manner that balances architectural standards, and implementation and operational risks, with restricted parameters such as budget and time
• Document solution interactions and relationships, along with basic infrastructure and application onboarding requirements
• Assist in the creation of cost estimates including implementation as well as total cost of ownership
• Ensure the future-state solutions have been fully vetted, are performant and scalable, enable agility, can be supported, are cost effective and highly available, and meet the robust needs of the business
• Ensure security by design to meet Information Security policies, Legal, Compliance, Risk, and Regulatory requirements, and industry best practice
• Assess vendor tools based on required capabilities, future capabilities, and architecture drivers, and document justification for tool selection
• Be hands on to demonstrate tools, patterns, security, performance, scalability, etc. in a lab environment when necessary
• Work with quality assurance team to ensure the testing approach is appropriate for the given architecture and solution
• Lead design reviews (pre-development) and implementation reviews (post-development) to ensure principles and standards are followed, and that technical debt is managed
• Create a feedback loop for those who are implementing and interacting with the solutions
• Participate in the definition of adoption and experience metrics for the solution to measure the success of the solution
• Present architecture decisions, explain the end-to-end solution, educate others how they can contribute, and provide guidance on tool usage
• Extract best-practice knowledge, reference architectures, and patterns for sharing with the broader community of Architects at AXA XL and/or AXA Group
• Document cost and performance metrics for different design patterns, and provide project teams the ability to decide the most appropriate pattern for their requirements, timeline, and budget
• Participate in the definition and maintenance of Architecture principles and artifacts
• Engage with tool vendors on their roadmaps and appropriate usage of their tools
• Engage with industry experts to validate the architecture and designs, and understand industry trends
• Understand & be able to communicate business problems & technical solutions in appropriate terminology and ability to influence across business lines
• Document data flow and storage mechanisms and provide examples to data developers when necessary
• Work with data modelers to ensure modeling approach is appropriate for the given data architecture and solutio