Description** **

Canada Life UK looks after the retirement, investment and protection needs of individuals, families and companies. We help to build better futures for our customers, our intermediaries and our employees by operating as a modern, agile and welcoming organisation.

Part of our parent company Great-West Lifeco, Canada Life UK has operated in the United Kingdom since 1903. We have hundreds of respected and supported employees committed to doing the right thing for our customers and colleagues.

Canada Life UK is transforming to create a more customer-focused business by providing our customers with expertise on financial and tax planning, offering home finance and annuities propositions, and providing collective fund solutions to third party customers.

What we're building

We are seeking a Lead Architect to join our Architecture team and work closely with our Wealth and Investment Assets Engineering product teams to take charge of the design and build of Wealth business roadmap, wealth products solution architecture and ensure robust implementation. This is an exciting opportunity to lead the technical development of CLUK’s Wealth business, products and services, unlocking reusable solution building blocks to accelerate the wealth business growth and digitisation.

Job summary

As a Lead Architect, you will be responsible for the end-to-end solution architecture of the CLUK Wealth solutions and products, taking it from inception through design, architecture, engineering, coding frameworks, and into ongoing operational ownership and change management.

You will create robust solution building blocks to support operational processes, security and risks procedures and ensure alignment to business ambitions and target architecture, as well as balance the need to deliver at pace and minimise technical debt.

In this role, you will collaborate with others to drive the reuse of architecture and technology components and services, communicating with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

You will set the Wealth business related reference architectures, standards, and design patterns, and ensure that these are aligned and embedded in the Enterprise Architecture framework as well as enabling engineering team to operate with confidence and autonomy within guardrails set and working to these standards.

The successful candidate will have experience in leading the definition of solutions and work packages, delivering change initiatives, and achieving strategic objectives. The candidate will design and implement robust architectural solutions within our intricate system landscape. The ideal candidate will possess extensive experience in financial services, a deep understanding of IBM iSeries, Microsoft infrastructure and Azure capabilities; and the ability to integrate diverse vendor systems effectively.

You will share overall responsibility with the Wealth Product delivery team for all aspects of project activities and deliverables.

If you are a passionate solutions-focused architect with the ability to lead and drive change, we want to hear from you. Apply now to join our team and help shape the future of our Wealth and Investment Assets business.

Duties/Responsibilities

• Be responsible for end-to-end solution architecture of the Wealth business and product delivery from design, architecture, solutions options and modelling, coding frameworks and ELT and through into ongoing operational ownership and change management.
• Create opportunities to collaborate and drive reuse of wealth and investment assets components and services, communicating with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Set Wealth and Investment asset related reference architectures, standards and design patterns and ensure delivery teams are working to these.
• Provide oversight and advice to other Lead Architects and/or technical SMEs who are undertaking the design of solutions leveraging existing platforms and related services and capabilities;
• Work with Data Architect(s), Principal Architects and other Lead Architects to make sure that organisation’s systems are designed in accordance with the appropriate data and technology architecture.
• Undertake structured analysis of technical issues, translating this analysis into technical designs that describe a solution for resolution - evolving new components, capabilities and patterns as required.
• Provide Peer Reviews - participate in design and code walkthroughs and be consulted on general design, design patterns and technical issues as part of the wider Architecture practice.
• Maintain a leading-edge view of the overall delivery technology landscape looking for opportunities for improvement of the Wealth ecosystem.

Skills, Knowledge and Experience

• Significant FS systems and architecture Definition and Implementation using both on-prem and Cloud Native design.
• Demonstrable experience and expertise in multiple financial services technologies and services (SAP, IBM Iseries, banking systems and payment platforms, Policy admin systems)
• The ability to work with business and technology stakeholders to translate business problems into technical designs.
• Creates an optimal design through an iterative process, aligning the user need with the system requirements and organisational objectives.
• Capable of producing strategy for Wealth technology that meets business needs. Able to create, refine and challenge patterns, standards, policies, roadmaps and vision statements.
• Understands technical governance and is able to participate in or deliver the assurance of a service.

Qualifications

• Educated to degree level or equivalent experience in I.T.
• TOGAF or BCS Certification (Desirable)