Principal Architect - APAC, Europe, UK & Lloyd\'s

We invent the new to help the world move forward. Combining powerful analytics and deeper insights with bigger ideas and innovative solutions, we free up our clients’ potential, thereby fulfilling our own. Take it seriously. Make it fun. Know it matters.

As we develop an enterprise-wide Insurance strategy to transform our business, we are seeking an Insurance Principal Architect. The Insurance Principal Architect is a hands-on, execution focused role helping translate the Insurance strategy, define architecture, and deliver the solution. In this role you will have an understanding of our Insurance systems and processes, and function as an Insurance architecture subject matter expert for our various projects.

DISCOVER your opportunity

What will your essential responsibilities include?

• Understanding of AXA XL’s existing architecture
• Understand user requirements (desired output & outcome) and existing environments (current state), and translate these into an architecture and road map
• Collaborate with customers, analysts, other architects, modelers, developers, testers, partners and vendors
• Guide the full lifecycle of a Solution, including:

• Understand the Business Capabilities that are required and translate this to Technical Capabilities and Solution Architecture
• Assist the customer (and business solutions analysts) to define and declare non-functional requirements for building out solution capabilities
• Design AXA XL’s architecture and solutions to meet business requirements in a manner that balances architectural standards, and implementation and operational risks, with restricted parameters such as budget and time
• Document solution interactions and relationships, along with basic infrastructure and application onboarding requirements
• Assist in the creation of cost estimates including implementation as well as total cost of ownership
• Ensure the future-state solutions have been fully vetted, are performant and scalable, enable agility, can be supported, are cost effective and highly available, and meet the robust needs of the business
• Ensure security by design to meet Information Security policies, Legal, Compliance, Risk, and Regulatory requirements, and industry best practice
• Assess vendor tools based on required capabilities, future capabilities, and architecture drivers, and document justification for tool selection
• Be hands on to demonstrate tools, patterns, security, performance, scalability, etc. in a lab environment when necessary
• Work with quality assurance team to ensure the testing approach is appropriate for the given architecture and solution
• Lead design reviews (pre-development) and implementation reviews (post-development) to ensure principles and standards are followed, and that technical debt is managed
• Create a feedback loop for those who are implementing and interacting with the solutions
• Participate in the definition of adoption and experience metrics for the solution to measure the success of the solution
• Present architecture decisions, explain the end-to-end solution, educate others how they can contribute, and provide guidance on tool usage
• Extract best-practice knowledge, reference architectures, and patterns for sharing with the broader community of Architects at AXA XL and/or AXA Group
• Document cost and performance metrics for different design patterns, and provide project teams the ability to decide the most appropriate pattern for their requirements, timeline, and budget
• Participate in the definition and maintenance of Architecture principles and artifacts
• Engage with tool vendors on their roadmaps and appropriate usage of their tools
• Engage with industry experts to validate the architecture and designs, and understand industry trends

You will report to the Head of Insurance Architecture.

SHARE your talent

• Bachelors Degree or equivalent
• Line management responsibility for APAC & Europe, UK & Lloyd's solution architecture team
• Rate Quote Bind, Underwriting, Claims and Risk Consulting domain architecture authority & accountability, is self-supervising from a technical perspective
• Act as a strategic advisor to management
• Experience in technology products evaluation
• Use skills to profoundly influence senior/executive management where contributions may impact the industry as well as the company
• Effective management and leadership skills with the ability to influence department’s strategy
• Work on novel and diverse, "state-of-the-art" issues/problems, and on assignments of large scope, impact and importance
• Contribute to the development of the Strategic Architecture
• Provide technical training and direction to others as needed at all levels of the organisation
• Established experience within architecture roles.
• Possess broad and deep insurance and architecture expertise and knowledge
• Understand & be able to communicate business problems & technical solutions in appropriate terminology and ability to influence across business lines
• Ability to navigate business dynamics/political sensitivities
• Excellent presentation, communication (oral & written), and relationship building skills, across all levels of management
• Proven organisational skills with attention to detail and ability to handle change
• Excellent problem solving and analysis skills
• Must be able to work well under pressure and consistently meet deadlines
• Ability to work as part of a team or to be self-directed as required
• Practiced at working as part of a global team (including outsourcing) spanning multiple time zones
• Knowledge and active use of Agile, SCRUM and Continuous Delivery
• Understand cultural differences and be effective working in a diverse environment
• Passion for learning and prepared to go the “extra mile”
• You care about what you do, and what we do
• Hands-on experience with architecting, implementing, and performance tuning of:

• Insurance products & services
• Basic Salesforce knowledge – mandatory
• Azure cloud platform environment
• Container & Orchestration platforms
• Relational databases and structured query languages
• Message queues, streaming technologies, and event driven architecture
• Microservices
• Integration and ETL/ELT technologies
• Reference & Master Data Management
• Access control and security