Solution Architect

PRIMARY ROLE PURPOSE:

Provide high-level design and development of solutions to meet client requirements, ensuring technical integrity of design and capability to deliver.

ACCOUNTABILITIES:

- Act as a leading subject matter expert in the architecture of a complex customer/customers communications network/s.
- Lead a virtual team to draw together the necessary technical knowledge base from within the client, its partners and the customer.
- Define the overall architectural and technical solution to meet defined business outcomes and requirements.
- Undertake tasks requiring technical understanding, diagnosis, qualification of solution fit, and definition of support needs for proposed solutions.
- Assist the proposal team in documenting and presenting solution/s to clients and provide subject matter expertise on the design and technical constraints for inclusion in bids/proposals including input into estimates and costings. Undertake architectural/technical due diligence on all proposed solutions.
- Develop technology roadmaps for specific and integrated service offerings, researching, evaluating and recommending new and/or alternative technologies which will enhance current systems.
- Provide in-depth technical advice and service to clients/or and internal stakeholders to ensure development of efficient systems, utilising established architecture standards, processes, methodologies and tools.
- Act as a source of expertise across the business providing a range of advice and input into technology and service solutions decision-making, and future ICT technology directions and delivery.
- Maintain in-depth, up to date technical and industry knowledge across the client service offerings and relevant market segments.
- Contribute to the development of leading architectural practices and processes.

SPECIFIC SKILLS & EXPERIENCE

- Excellent planning and design skills.
- Thorough understanding of various generations of architectures (technical, operational and application).
- Displays skills to architect, design, implement solutions from verbal and written guidelines, displaying commercial awareness.
- Demonstrated track record of effective technical management and customer engagement.
- Demonstrates solution presentation skills to internal and external clients, effectively communicating complex information both verbally and in written form.
- Estimation skills.
- Demonstrated ability to accurately comprehend and respond to tenders and provide high standards of input into bids/proposals.
- Advanced problem determination and troubleshooting skills.
- In-depth expertise in services and solutions (specific technologies dependent on job-specific requirements).
- Ability to mentor staff, with proven transfer of skills.

ESSENTIAL TECHNICAL SKILLS

- Bridging and Switching - ATM, MPLS/Tag Switching, Spanning Tree, VLANs and Data Link Switching.
- WAN Technologies - Frame Relay, ISDN, ADSL and X25.
- Routing Protocols - BGP, EIGRP, IP Multicast, and OSPF.
- QoS - Classification, Congestion Management, Queue Management, Traffic Shaping and Policing Tools, Link Efficiency Mechanism.
- Content Switching and Load Balancing, ie F5 and Riverbed.
- Security - Firewalls, Intrusion Detection and IPSec VPNs.
- PC Applications - Microsoft Office Suite and Visio.
- Operating Systems - Microsoft and UNIX based.
- Hardware Platform - all Cisco platforms and IOS and CAT IOS, F5, Riverbed, Juniper, Extreme, IBM OS390.
- Network Management - HP Open View, Tivoli, Concord, BMC Patrol, Network Sniffer, Packeteer, Statscout.
- ISP Experience - Access Servers, Caching, DNS, HTML, Radius, SMTP and Web Servers.