Insurance Application Architecture Lead

Berkley•Urbandale, IA

About The Position

An Enterprise Architect helps lead the organization in the planning, development, and application of enterprise architecture to achieve business objectives and strategies. They align technical initiatives, principles, and practices with WRB’s strategic vision, goals, constraints, technologies, and tools. They are able to span business and technical strategies as well as provide detailed design recommendations to individual solutions. This role understands the relationship between business processes and enabling technologies over a multi-year time horizon so that better recommendations and better decisions can be made. Enterprise Architects have a history of working at a detailed level with various technologies in various roles and often move into an Enterprise role after serving in several other architect roles designing, implementing, and maintaining a variety of systems and tools using a diverse set of technologies. An Enterprise Architect is also an active member of the WRB Architecture Community. They are aware of and engage with other architects for consultation on projects or efforts. They are also aware of and contribute to patterns, standards, best practices, proofs-of-concept, tool evaluations, mentoring, and continuous improvement.

Requirements

10+ years progressive engineering experience developing/engineering solutions and leading multiple cross-domain technical or engineering initiatives.
6+ years in multiple (minimum of three) Architecture domain roles (Software, Application, Solution, Integration, Data, Cloud, Platform, Systems, Desktop, Security, Business, and/or Enterprise) leading multiple architecture initiatives.
Significant hands-on technical base across multiple technical domains
Ability to thrive and produce results with little or no supervision in a fast-paced, entrepreneurial environment.
Excellent written and oral communication skills with ability to interact seamlessly at all levels with both technical and business stakeholders.
Strong customer service focus and sense of urgency.
Ability to quickly adapt and learn modern technologies and systems.
Superior problem solving and analytical skills.
Ability to create an atmosphere of teamwork and collaboration.
Ability to look at the “big picture” and see opportunities for improvement.
Ability to break opportunities for improvement down into bite-sized chunks that can be pursued on a project-by-project basis.
Bachelor’s degree from four-year college or university in computer science, engineering, business, or other related field or equivalent work experience.

Nice To Haves

3+ years using public cloud platforms and architectures (Azure, AWS, GCP).
3+ years using Agile development methodologies.
2+ years as an Enterprise Architect
Work history in the financial services or insurance industries.

Responsibilities

Provide feedback to overall 3-5-year architecture strategy, including technology investment and lifecycle goals.
Contribute to the development, management, and ongoing maintenance of a business and technical capability model.
Build target and reference architectures to contribute to WRB’s multi-year architecture strategy.
Maintain contact with vendors, industry peers, and professional associations to keep informed of existing and emerging industry trends, standards, and technologies.
Able to create supporting architecture documentation and artifacts on a consistent basis.
Provide consulting and guidance services to development and infrastructure teams as well as other architects in the development of solutions.
Present recommendations and solutions clearly and concisely to multiple audiences (including SVPs, business/segment Presidents, and CIOs); emphasizing capability development and value creation over technology specific results.
Participate in technology and tool evaluations, including some hands-on engineering and proof-of-concept work.
Build relationships with business partners, technical groups, and management on technical strategy, priorities, and timelines.
Lead architecture projects and technical adoptions across BTS and WRB; effectively manage change management for impacted groups.
Be visible and inspire others to engage with and follow WRB’s technical strategy.
Identify pattern and standard gaps and determine potential options to address.
Research, develop, and drive the adoption of design patterns and standards.
Perform technology and tool evaluations, including proof-of-concept and feasibility analysis.
Contribute to a catalog of design patterns and standards and socializing them with the architecture community.
Participate in the architecture review process for patterns, standards, and solutions.
Rationalize technology and tool recommendations.
Is aware of and an advocate for patterns and standards (esp. in Infrastructure, Data, and Security domains).
Contribute to the architecture community by participating in online forums, developing standards, patterns, solutions design documentation, and white papers which are shared across the community.
Develop strong relationships with other business and technical teams and mentor less experienced developers and/or engineers in the development of their skills.