Principal Architect

City of Toronto•Toronto, ON

21h•Onsite

About The Position

In this pivotal, strategically important role of a Principal Architect with the City of Toronto Technology Services Division, you will play an instrumental part in City's technology and digital transformation. You will define, realize, and leverage current and future technology to enable the City's technology vision, building on existing and future system investments to ensure stable, sustainable and scalable technology solutions. Working closely with peers, stakeholders and vendors, you will provide subject matter expertise and leadership in the network domain in the design, analysis, development, and transformation of the platforms or solutions as well as technology standards implementation. As Principal Architect, you will report to Director, Architecture and Standards, and will be part of Technology Services Division’s Architecture team providing leadership in the Enterprise Architecture area. As Principal Architect, you'll also provide oversight on solution analysis, formulation, coordination as well as advising leadership and teams on programs and services at both strategic and operational levels. You will provide innovative, resourceful architectural direction, identifying approaches, concepts, and methods of analyzing complex and sometimes competing priorities.

Requirements

Post-secondary education in Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems or Math, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
Extensive architecture experience in a leadership capacity, gained in a complex technological environment is an asset.
Experience leading major enterprise-wide architectural initiatives, such as capability modeling, road mapping etc, from planning to implementation.
Experience in the formulation of architectures including requirements discovery, analysis, application of abstraction, formulation of solution context, solution alternatives identification and assessment, technology selection, and design configuration.
Experience with Enterprise-grade technology platforms and services.
Experience with Enterprise-wide architecture governance frameworks, and related process optimization supporting accelerated service delivery.
Resourcefulness, analytical and problem-solving skills, paired with excellent communication skills.
Highly developed leadership, interpersonal, conflict resolution, negotiation, facilitation and problem-solving skills, with the ability to work collaboratively in a multidisciplinary team environment and independently as required.
Strong ability to motivate teams and create a collaborative working environment.
Ability to handle multiple competing priorities while working on complex, highly visible projects.

Nice To Haves

Knowledge and experience in application rationalization planning and road mapping would be considered a strong asset.

Responsibilities

Develops the Enterprise Architecture (EA) program for the city and its ongoing evolution of support services for the technology and business communities by building on existing and future system investments to ensure Technology Services provides innovative, stable, sustainable, and scalable solutions.
Leads the analysis of the current technology environment to detect critical deficiencies and technical debt and recommend solutions for improvement. Drives digital innovation by leveraging innovative new technologies and approaches to renovate, extend, and transform the existing core technology base.
Provides direction, leadership and guidance to project teams, assigned project staff and contract resources.
Supervises the day to day operation of all assigned staff including the scheduling, assigning and reviewing of work. Authorizes and controls vacation and overtime requests. Monitors and evaluates staff performance, approves salary increments and recommends disciplinary action when necessary.
Conducts extensive research into assigned area ensuring that research takes into account developments within the field, industry best practices, corporate policies and practices, legislation and initiatives by other levels of government.
Provides leadership to Technology Services on enterprise and domain architects in the city in terms of ensuring a common understanding of the EA, that appropriate skill development/formal training courses and opportunities exist, and by reviewing all technology architect job profiles to ensure appropriate roles exist.
Builds an enterprise architecture community of practice by fostering a strong working relationship among the roles of Principal Architect, enterprise architects, domain architects, solution architects and other architect practitioners.
Provides subject matter expertise, oversight, and direction for the development and establishment of Enterprise Architectures for Information, Applications and Infrastructure. Analyzes existing enterprise business context to derive future state technology architecture.
Provides solutions to meet business requirements, ensuring compliance with the technology strategy, company policies and procedures.
Provides architectural support for application development and modification activities. Assists in application design, development, integration and implementation activities.
Defines requirements, principles and models that guide technology decisions for the enterprise. Works with team members to develop architectural strategies and guidelines.
Collaborates with Technology Services team and recommends new technologies to management to develop robust solutions and reviews and recommends improvements to existing solution architectures.
Analyzes and troubleshoots architecture related issues in a timely fashion.
Provides oversight, expertise and direction in the mapping and monitoring of technologies underlying business capabilities, as well as emerging new uses and standards.
Provides oversight, expertise and direction for the development of Technology standards, the exploration of technologies for service innovation and business support and the establishment of strategies to implement an enterprise architecture model.
Participates in project life cycle for: the preparation and development of high level/detailed technical requirements, planning and scheduling, managing and mitigating technical issues and risks, contribution to feasibility and cost/benefit analysis of business solutions.
Leads, participates in or oversees the preparation of or prepares and/or supervises the preparation of various formal contractual documents such as: Request for Expression of Interest (REOI), Request for Information/Proposal/Quotation/Resource (RFI/P/Q/R), ITAPP, Statement of Work (SOW), Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU) and Service Level Agreements (SLA).
Deals with confidential information affecting the organization and its resources. Prepares and presents reports to management supporting recommendations on changes/improvements in business processes, training and services, standards that impact appropriate staffing levels and resource allocation.
Participates in the development, implementation, administration, monitoring and maintenance of enterprise architecture, collecting confidential information on infrastructure and application gaps.
Provides leadership to the Architecture Review Boards.
Refines the EA based on the results of the annual assessments and ongoing contact with all sections in the Technology Services Division and divisional technology groups to ensure that all aligned with enterprise technology capabilities.
Defines new and/or changed architecture requirements and design principles incorporating current and future technology requirements.
Works with Quality Assurance, Audit, policy teams to ensure city architecture, security and privacy standards and best practices.
Ensures that architecture and related quality assurance processes are communicated, understood and implemented enterprise wide.
Implements and sustains an accessible enterprise repository for reference models and project-related architectural materials.
Reviews and certifies models and architectural solutions as conforming or not to the Technology Standards, identifying remedial actions, or implications of non-compliance in an exempted design.
Ensures that architecture enables linkage to all partners in the public and private sectors through effective communication with all levels of government, the broader public sector and the private sector.