Domain Architect

The Domain Architect has a dual role. On the one hand he is the key entry point for the business into IT and as such he is accountable to set up and maintain a healty win-win relationship. On the other hand he is accountable for the long term profitability of IT and as such has to ensure the necessary trade offs, between speed & flexibility vs. reliability & affordability, are constantely maintained.

Start date:
01/10/2015
End date:
31/12/2018

Responsibilities:
•Defines the IT architectural strategy for his/her business area based on the corporate customers strategy
•Designs an IT solution making the right balance: speed & flexibility vs. reliability & affordability
•Negotiates the business demand into an achievable set up
•Keeps a watchful eye on technological and methodological evolutions in the broad field of IT and introduces these evolutions at the right time within the customer
•Develops a mid term plan for the IT environment ensuring that all standards, guidelines and best practices are applied and guard the alignment with the IT architectural Strategy based on the mid term business requirements
•Define the application architecture and guarantee the conformity of project designs with the chosen or desired architecture. Propose pilot projects and take care of their follow-up in order to guarantee the feasibility of big projects in our environment
•Build a win-win relationship with the business to jointly design the best solutions at the appropriate time at an affordable cost.
•Define the architectural vision allowing to execute the business strategy whilst supporting the key IT needs of reliability and affordability.
•Is accountable to deliver the IT strategy and the technological direction in his area of competence.
•Is accountable for the correct introduction of new technologies.
•Choose the best solutions within the existing and emerging technologies best fitting in the company and the strategical IT needs.
•Work out/elaborate solutions for the different hard- and software environments and components.
•He/she is accountable for the application landscape in his/her business domain and survey the coherent and optimal implementation of processes and technological strategies. Consequently he/she understands very well what are the driving contributions to TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) and is key contributor to keep their evolution under control.
•Works closely together with and support the Head of Architecture and Demand in governing the corporate application landscape, defining architectural roadmaps, and refining the architectural Strategy and Vision.

Market dynamics in the energy sector, the strong evolution of regulatory and the very substantive changes (demand side management, smart metering, mobility, social media, …) the sector is undergoing, put a high pressure on IT.

As such the job requires skills to place the numerous questions of the business units in the overall context of the evolution of the IT systems, and hence be able to impose the necessary trade offs. Also the skills engagement, arbitration, facilitation and leadership are very important.

The most important challenge of this function is to combine the strong negociation competences with a realistic vision on the technological landscape to generate a persistent implementation despite a difficult global framework.

Technical skills:
The profile we are looking has the following competences:

•Has strong listening and communication skills
•Has experience in facilitation, mediation and consensus building
•Is able to clearly present ideas, results and reports to a wide variety of stakeholders, from management over business to IT (in their 'language')
•Is open-minded, engaged, motivated, flexible and has a constructive attitude
•Has a very strong business knowledge of his/her domain
•Is creative by applying abstract concepts in an innovative way to solve problems
•Is a master at winning hearts and minds of people in the spirit of what is best for the company
•Has a very strong conceptual mind and is able to transform theoretical concepts into pragmatic and working solutions
•Has very strong negotiation skills
•Strong technical and analytical competences
•Strategic insight
•Has the capability to combine strategical insight in long term cost evolution with the tactical win-wins need to negociate with the business

Personal skills:
KNOWLEDGE
•The ideal candidate has an university degree in exact sciences (preferably in IT) or equivalent relevant work experience.
•Background in SAP, .Net, SQL, Java and SOA, and sufficient technical and programming knowledge to correctly evaluate migration, trials and development strategies.
•A proven track record of working on successful IT strategy and architecture designs and their implementation.
•A proven track record of deliver succesful solutions in complex negotiations
•The ideal candidate is able to explain to a main board in plain English and French the complex technical reality, allowing the senior leadership of the company to evaluate options and take the right decisions.

EXPERIENCE
•10 years of professional experience in the management of technological development platforms. Knowledge of SAP is an asset.
•5 years of professional experience as domain/enterprise architect.
•3 years of professional experience in a SOA architecture.