Chief Technical Architect

Department: Engineering

Reports to: Director, Engineering

Location: West London

We are currently looking for a Chief Technical Architect to join Engineering working with an exceptionally strong team. A pragmatic approach coupled with the ability to see the ‘big picture’ is a must for this role.

The Chief Technical Architect will champion the architectural integrity, consistency, and long term future of the Sonetto Product Suite. The Chief Technical Architect will assist senior management in defining and mapping the future product and technology strategy providing leadership to the product development team. The Chief Technical Architect will co-ordinate the evaluation, conceptualization, design and integration of major new capabilities into the Sonetto Product suite ensuring that product design and technology choices position Sonetto well for the long term while efficiently satisfying short term market requirements.

The Chief Technical Architect will be a technical leader in all phases of the product development lifecycle and will establish strategic technical directions and plans for all major new and existing product features.

The Chief Technical Architect will work at multiple levels ranging from individual engineers to around the board room table with senior executives. The Chief Technical Architect must be comfortable and effective at communicating in many different ways.

Responsibilities

• Provide architectural leadership and guidance, defining the product technical architecture vision and design principles.
  
• Work closely with product managers and the software development team to develop innovative solutions that meet the market needs with respect to functionality, performance, scalability, reliability, to realistic implementation schedules and adherence to architectural goals and principles.
  
• Review existing software architecture and identify areas for improvement in the areas of scalability, maintainability and performance.
  
• Lead engineering projects by creating initial design and ensuring that projects meet architectural goals and principles through the development lifecycle.
  
• Prepare the high level technical architecture of each product release to meet both functional and non-functional requirements.
  
• Prepare high level designs.
  
• Drive the detailed architecture design ensuring it adheres to the objectives and requirements, design principles and vision for the overall release.
  
• Help to shape the future of Sonetto product platform
  
• Keep abreast of emerging technologies
  
• Collaborate with product manager and senior executives to understand the product requirements. Translate business and product requirements into a structured technical designs and solutions.
  
• Collaborate with development manager, QA manager and product manager to ensure that release schedules technically and commercially viable.
  

Required skills and experience

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or in Software Engineering.
  
• 12 years experience in software development and maintenance
  
• 5 years in leadership roles across the range of software development
  
• Strong leadership skills with experience in providing technical leadership and coordination.
  
• Strong presentation skills
  
• Innovative, visionary and proactive approach with strong business and technical vision.
  
• Strong hands on experience in complex systems application architecture and design, service orientated architecture
  
• Excellent knowledge of Object Oriented design, design patterns, Advanced C# and .NET, C++, PHP, ASP.Net, D/HTML, XML/XSLT, Script, Stored Procedures and ‘AJAX’ technologies
  
• Strong understand of networking, network architecture and internet related protocols (TCP/IP, HTTP, SOAP, Remoting etc).
  
• Good understanding of software component, distributed systems development on OOAD principles.
  
• Solid experience with SQL Server or any other RDBMS including performance and scalability
  
• Ability to mentor new technologies and champion ideas throughout the development organization.
  
• Ability to develop long-term department technology strategies and significantly influence the cross-company engineering processes and standards
  
• Strong customer focus.
  
• Should have Knowledge/experience in best practices for software development
  
• Excellent communication skills both written and spoken.
  
• Proven results oriented person with a delivery focus
  

Characteristics

• Dynamic and energetic but level-headed
  
• Pragmatic
  
• Approachable with the ability to enthuse, motivate and inspire
  
• Creative thinker and natural problem solver
  
• Credible, assertive and influential
  
• A “can-do” attitude with a passion and general curiosity for technology
  
• Ability to communicate business values and benefits
  
• Methodical with good attention to detail
  
• Able and keen to use initiative to identify and take ownership for additional tasks that add value to the customer or team.
  
• Able to work in a team or independently and manage own time.
  
• Strong communicator with the ability to interact with customers at all levels.
  
• Willingness to travel
  

Desirable skills

• Knowledge Management
  
• Rule Engine technology
  
• Semantic Web
  
• CMM/ISO knowledge