Senior Solution Architect Manager

About the role

At BT we are undergoing a huge E2E transformation of our business. Transforming, journeys & technology with both process, IT & Network change. This is driving a wholesale change to the way our agents & customers work across the Service in Business, transforming how we serve customers through digital experiences, automation, AI & simplified service operations.
To realise this ambition, we need a strong design leader who can ensure solutions are conceived, designed & delivered with an E2E perspective across customer journeys, operational processes, data, technology & people
AS the E2E design & architecture lead you will be responsible for leading the tech strategy for any service journeys that are self-serve web or app based, helping 1.1 million B2B customers manage their services seamlessly. Creating coherence across multiple initiatives ensuring that local optimisation does not come at the expense of the broader customer, colleague or business outcome. And to ensure that our architecture is simplified, making maximum reuse of capability in each of our components as possible to meet agent & customer needs. 
The role will drive powerful & tangible change leading our design capability, shaping strategic architecture direction and establishing the standards, governance and ways of working needed to deliver scalable maintainable and customer centric solutions.

What you’ll be doing

End-to-end design leadership
1.    Owns the end-to-end design capability across Business Digital Service & considers other business units. Delivering innovative solutions with customer, colleague & operations in mind. 
2.    Establishes & governs design principles, standards, patterns & practices that drive consistency, simplicity, scalability & reuse.
3.    Leads solution design activities across strategic programmes ensuring alignment to business strategy & architecture standards. 
4.    Drives a culture of systems thinking ensuring teams understand impacts & pre-empts issues before design is complete. 
5.    Champions thought leadership, provides advice on multiple technologies and shapes the long-term direction of solution architecture strategy
Architecture & solution governance
6.    Design authority across complex initiatives, ensuring we meet functional, security, operational, resilience & support requirements.
7.    Ensures the right designs & artefacts are created, validated & governed.
8.    Drives effective tool use, uses vendor standards, minimises complexity & customisation. 
9.    Governs architecture decisions & solution designs ensuring they will last through review, assurance & approval processes.
10.    Identifies opportunities to reduce technical debt, simplifying the technology landscape & improving operational efficiency. 
Stakeholder leadership
11.    Builds strong relationships with business, product, engineering & operations to align & help others understand technology capability.
12.    Translates complex concepts into clear language to support informed decision making. 
13.    Influences senior leaders to secure decisions that optimise customer & business outcomes. 
Team leadership
14.    Leads, coaches and develops a high-performing team & collaborative community.
15.    Builds future capability through mentoring, knowledge sharing & succession planning.
16.    Fosters an inclusive, accountable & customer focused culture. 
Continuous improvement & innovation
17.    Identifies emerging technologies & industry trends that can improve customer experience, operational efficiency & business value
18.    Continuously improves design processes governance tooling & ways of working.

Essential Skills and Experience

The skills you’ll need to succeed

Design

1.    End-to-end systems thinking
2.    Strategic thinking & planning
3.    Architectural leadership
4.    Stakeholder engagement & influencing
5.    Team leadership & coaching
6.    Design governance
7.    Problem solving & decision making
8.    Commercial awareness
9.    Communication & storytelling
10.    Risk & dependency management
11.    Skilled in TOGAF or equivalent frameworks

Technology

12.    Technologies on one or more of our core technologies: ServiceNow, Salesforce Field Services & digital platforms.
13.    Skills in AI or AI based service transformation a plus
14.    Skills supporting service environments, technology or service transformation

Experience you’d be expected to have

•    Experience leading architecture, solution design, or enterprise functions within large & complex organizations
•    Proven track record of delivering end-to-end solutions across customer journeys, processes, technology & operations.
•    Experience leading multi-disciplinary teams
•    Strong understanding of architecture, assurance & decision making frameworks
•    Experience working across multiple technology domains & platforms.
•    Strong stakeholder management & influencing skills at senior leadership level.
•    Experience operating within large-scale transformation programmes
•    Knowledge of TMF standards a plus