Associate Director - Solutions Architect - Insurance Operations Domain Solutions

As an Associate Director - Solutions Architect, the roles and responsibilities of the position include:

• Leading delivery programmes by creation of modern Solution Architectures and Technical Designs, collaborating with multi capability teams, senior business and IT stakeholders, managing senior stakeholders and taking accountability for the quality and timely delivery of your team's deliverables.
• Support clients in creating or providing perspective on their technology strategies, roadmaps, or delivery programmes; ensuring investment in the right technology and delivering in the right order; building effective client relationships with senior and peer-level stakeholders across all business and technical domains including IT and Operations.
• Perform a tech lead role in guiding the client throughout the project/programme lifecycle, leading technology architecture engagements, including overseeing multiple technology workstreams.
• Provide technical design governance, solution quality assurance and design reviews to keep complex technology programmes on track against industry good practice and standards.
• Lead the generation of thought leadership and continuous capability development of the Solution Architecture practice to ensure we stay at the cutting edge of the technology developments applicable to the Insurance industry.
• Strengthen and develop our architecture capability by coaching junior team members and leading the definition and implementation of Deloitte accelerators
• Lead and contribute to business development work, bringing an entrepreneurial mindset, leading the development of our key propositions to market through pre-sales, bid preparation and client presentations.
• Lead definition for bids and proposals including opportunities involving independent technology architecture engagements and large-scale technology transformations.
• Help drive the continued growth of the Insurance practice including supporting the firm's commitment to creating a more diverse and inclusive culture.

You must have an aptitude and ambition to be a successful member of our consulting team working in digital transformation, application design and implementation, or process design and implementation. We seek independent thinkers who also thrive as part of a team, with excellent communication and presentation skills and who are enthusiastic and passionate for driving change and real impact in the Insurance industry. As a solution architect, you will be technically minded and relish analysing the detail of complex problems to identify and deliver technical solutions, but also enjoy challenging yourself to work in new Insurance fields contributing to market facing propositions, client engagements and internal initiatives. Essential Experience:

• Proven solution architecture experience, deep technology knowledge, and experience in designing and implementing end-to-end solution architectures.
• Demonstrated experience of delivering innovative solutions as part of a digital transformation programmes, including cross platform integration of emerging technology solutions with existing or new core platforms.
• Experience in operating within an architectural design or technology delivery function within a leading firm within the Insurance industry, consulting firms, InsurTech or leading firm outside of Financial Services.
• Experience or deep understanding in at least one Insurance sector: Commercial Lines (e.g. Complex, Commercial, Specialty inc. Lloyds Market, SME and Delegated Business) and/or Personal Lines (i.e. Retail, Aggregators, Direct Broker, etc.), and the underlying Insurance business processes across the value chain (i.e. Policy Administration, Underwriting, Billing, Claims, Reporting, Reinsurance).
• Deep understanding of End-To-End Insurance lifecycle; Working knowledge of a typical End-To-End IT architecture, key systems, and key challenges for at least one Insurance sector (listed above).
• Demonstrated technology delivery experience including an understanding of all stages of the delivery lifecycle (e.g. inception, discovery, design, delivery, and transition).
• Demonstrated knowledge or in-depth understanding of at multiple key architectural domains - including data, integration, business, application, and operational architecture (including infrastructure, security, and networking).
• Proven knowledge of typical vendors in retail and/or commercial insurance including emerging low-code/no-code platforms
• Understanding of wider vendor landscape, and proven experience of vendor assessment and selection as a part of RFI/RFP process
• Experience of working with insurance vendors, third party service providers and management of vendor relationships
• Experience in leading assessment of IT landscapes, business drivers and understanding impact of emerging technologies to define target and transition state architectures.
• Experience of defining technology strategy as a part of architecture delivery engagements
• Providing technical design governance, solution quality assurance and design reviews to keep complex technology programmes on track against industry good practice and standards.
• Experience of leading teams or workstreams within a wider complex digital transformation programme, able to work closely with developers, testers and other agile roles to help shape delivery.
• Understanding and experience in delivering through various ways of working, including waterfall and various agile methodologies
• Demonstrated experience of owning or developing architectural artefacts, such as high-level design documents, reference architectures, functional or technical design specifications and integration designs etc.
• Understanding of Cloud capability and solutions including application, business case and benefits.
• Analysing and defining solution options and brokering buy-in, consensus and decision making from technical and business stakeholders.
• Strong stakeholder management skills: proven track record in independently engaging and managing a range of client and internal stakeholders, including senior client stakeholders.
• Ability to analyse and define solution options and broker buy-in, gather consensus and drive decision making from business and IT stakeholders.

Desirable Experience:

• Familiarity with modern software delivery tooling, for example, Jira, Confluence, QA and CI/CD tools.
• A proven adaptability and ability to shift focus and work with varied subject matters across different projects.
• Appreciation of emerging technology and trends in the Insurance industry, for example Cloud solutions, GenAI, Underwriting Workbenches or emerging London Market platforms
• Certification or demonstrated knowledge of one of the major Cloud Service Providers - Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Microsoft Azure Platform.
• Certification or demonstrated knowledge and delivery experience with one or more core Insurance applications (e.g. Guidewire, DuckCreek, among others).
• Experience leveraging emerging technology within the Insurance domain.
• A background in software engineering or experience with hands-on technology development and delivery.
• Industry certifications such as BCS, Agile/Scrum, SAFe, among others.
• Enterprise or solution architecture certification (e.g., TOGAF, Zachman).

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