Solution Architect - Asset Management

Summary

• Manchester Airport based
• Permanent Role
• Flexible/Hybrid working for a better work/life balance
• We are proud to be a diverse employer, and we welcome candidates from all backgrounds

Why MAG?

Manchester Airport Group:

At MAG we provide the airport facilities and travel services that people need to connect with the world. As the largest UK owned airport operator, we serve over 60 million passengers a year from Manchester, London Stansted, and East Midlands Airports. With over 270 destinations across the globe, our businesses not only bring people together but also support the prosperity of the regions in which we operate.

Sustainability is one of our core values, and it shapes everything we do. We're committed to protecting the environment and supporting our local communities.  Our programmes include airport and airline decarbonisation, comprehensive education, skills and employment support and community engagement initiatives including volunteering opportunities.

At MAG, we recognise creating a first-class journey for our customers starts by creating a first-class career journey for our colleagues and we are committed to building inclusive environments in which our people can thrive. You’ll also have access to some great benefits including:

• Bonus scheme
• 11% company contribution pension
• 25 days holiday plus bank holidays
• Free parking
• Subsidised public transport
• Huge range of company discounts
• Free Virtual GP service, available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
• Care Concierge service
• Two volunteering days per year

The role

We have an exciting opportunity for a Solution Architect within our Asset Management Product Tower. 

As a solution architect in our MAG IT team, you’ll be charged with helping us to transform our business through technology, digital and automation. Working across our airports and group functions, you will define technology solutions to meet requirements, taking into account systems, data, process and people.

Ensuring that designs are aligned to the overarching technology end state strategies (or challenging them if you see fit!), you’ll work hand in hand with business analysts, project managers, development teams (both internal and external) and the business stakeholders directly to ensure that solutions will meet desired business outcomes, and add value to MAG.

You’ll be helping to solve problems for our business including working out how to digitize our passenger journey, improve aircraft turnaround times, optimize colleague experiences and drive efficiencies across our group. You’ll have a hand in delivery end to end, from inception and shaping, right through to post go live support.
Role Responsibilities

•Delivers design specifications to the level of detail required to begin engineering, whether that be high level, detailed or interface specifications

•Recommends / designs structures and tools for processes, applications and technologies which meet business needs

•Takes business requirements and works collaboratively across engineering teams, business analysts and product leads to define solutions that meet business objectives, and are deliverable in the desired timeframes

•Works comfortably with suppliers and third parties, ensuring collaboration but also being aware of the commercial implications that design decisions can have

•Undertakes or supports market studies and option evaluations, product selections

•Supports business case development and benefit identification and benefit realization (including benchmarking and KPI development)

•Supports testing efforts by helping to define test cases, assess results and approves evidence of integration tests where relevant to designs

•Contributes to the wider Technology roadmap definition, updating and ideation

•Presenting IT solutions to a range of stakeholders in the business and technical communities (ideally up to CxO level).
 

What will make you successful in the role?

Essential technical skills:

•Solution Architect Experience within an Asset Management setting

•Detailed technical knowledge spanning enterprise technologies, systems and infrastructure, private and public cloud, development and DevOps toolsets

•Experience building and executing an IT strategy, maintaining a technology roadmap and being able to adapt to business, market and technical change

•Extensive experience of developing, mapping and maintaining a technical architecture including enterprise, applications, service, infrastructure and data using a recognised methodology e.g. TOGAF

•Extensive experience communicating complex technical information and informing the priority of spend, based on technical input and related risk vs. conflicting business priority

•Ability to understand and articulate the interactions between business functions, processes and IT components, how the individual parts interact with and impact the whole

•Demonstrable experience of maintaining knowledge of innovative, cutting-edge and emerging technology trends and solutions, ensuring that the business is able to make effective use of new technologies

•Experience of developing application, cloud and infrastructure transformation / migration strategies and plans

•An ability to provide architecture expertise & guidance to the Heads-of-technology, advising on possible solution sets and opportunities to increase capability

•An ability to provide architecture expertise & guidance to the business to ensure solutions are produced which adhere to a set of architecture guidelines

Desirable technical skills:

•Understanding of Airport / Aviation IT landscape; knowledge of the processes, applications, technology and data requirements, major trends and complexities of such a business

•Experience of airport development and construction projects

•SAP (HEC/PCE,S4, Cloud Suite – Successfactors, Ariba, Concur…)

•AWS / Azure / SoftLayer

•WAN / LAN / Security / Data Centre Technologies

•ESB / Integration / Middleware / ETL

•IoT / Smart Infrastructure

•Provision on Managed IT Services

•TOGAF or equivalent certified

•General business skills: 

•Ability to establish and articulate a vision, set goals, develop and execute strategies, and track and measure results in a commercially driven environment

•Excellent interpersonal, networking and collaboration skills coupled with the ability to build strong and lasting relationships with senior stakeholders across the division

•Excellent capability to interact, influence and build consensus with senior stakeholders

•Experience working in a complex programme, assimilating large amounts of highly complex information, often technical in nature, and engaging with multiple stakeholders

•Excellent communication and presentation skills

•Proven ability to work well within a senior team, supporting and advising senior leaders

•Commercially astute