Solution Architect - Azure or AWS in Manchester

At IBM CIC, we provide technical and industry expertise to a wide range of public and private sector clients in the UK. A career in IBM CIC means you’ll have the opportunity to work with leading professionals across multiple industries to improve the hybrid cloud and AI journey for the most innovative and valuable companies in the world. You will get the chance to deliver effective solutions, driving meaningful business change for our clients, using some of the latest technology platforms. Curiosity and a constant quest for knowledge serve as the foundation to success here. You’ll be encouraged and supported to constantly reinvent yourself, focusing on skills in demand in an ever changing market. You’ll be working with diverse teams, coming up with creative solutions which impact a wide network of clients, who may be at their site or one of our CIC or IBM locations. Our culture of evolution centres on long‑term career growth and development opportunities in an environment that embraces your unique skills and experience.

We Offer

• Many training opportunities from classroom to e-learning, mentoring and coaching programs and the chance to gain industry recognized certifications
• Regular and frequent promotion opportunities to ensure you can drive and develop your career with us
• Feedback and checkpoints throughout the year
• Diversity & Inclusion as an essential and authentic component of our culture through our policies and process as well as our Employee Champion teams and support networks
• A culture where your ideas for growth and innovation are always welcome
• Internal recognition programs for peer‑to‑peer appreciation as well as from manager to employees
• Tools and policies to support your work‑life balance from flexible working approaches, sabbatical programs, paid paternity leave, maternity leave and an innovative maternity returners scheme
• More traditional benefits, such as 25 days holiday (in addition to public holidays), private medical, dental & optical cover, online shopping discounts, an Employee Assistance Program, life assurance and a group personal pension plan of an additional 5% of your base salary paid by us monthly to save for your future.

Your Role And Responsibilities

We are seeking IT Architects to lead the design and implementation of hybrid cloud application modernisation projects with our Public Sector clients. You will provide technical leadership for migrating existing applications to cloud and for building new cloud native solutions.

Your Responsibilities Will Include

• Providing architectural, consultative and engineering support for our customers’ journeys to the cloud
• Bringing industry insight to deliver innovative solutions, that are tailored to the specific needs of our customers
• Leadership for transformations of enterprise complex projects, from system requirements through delivery and production/deployment, providing architectural and hands‑on technical leadership to ensure overall solution integrity
• Building strong relationships with our clients and acting as a trusted advisor

Preferred Education

Bachelor's Degree

Required Technical And Professional Expertise

• You will be familiar with AWS or/and Azure and be comfortable with Microservice architectures and a range of cloud, devops and integration technologies.
• You will have worked on hybrid cloud complex systems integration projects designing elements of the target cloud solution and its integration with existing on‑premise applications.
• You will be comfortable working in ‘rainbow’ teams with multiple different suppliers or as part of a wholly IBM team.
• Your background is likely to be a mix of large‑scale waterfall deliveries and more agile projects.
• You will be a hands‑on professional with a proven track‑record in keeping your skills up to date, ideally evidenced through recognized certifications.
• Proficiency in designing and implementing hybrid cloud solutions combining on‑premises and cloud‑based services.
• Experience in creating architecture diagrams component models and technology stacks for hybrid environments.
• Deep understanding of major cloud providers (e.g. AWS Azure Google Cloud) and their respective services.
• Familiarity with cloud‑native services serverless computing and managed services.
• Experience in designing managing and optimizing on‑premises infrastructure including virtualization storage and networking.
• Knowledge of on‑premises automation tools (e.g. Ansible Puppet Chef).
• Proficiency in designing and implementing secure connectivity solutions (e.g. VPNs Direct Connect VPN Gateways)
• Experience in integrating on‑premise Public cloud technologies (AWS, Azure, IBM Cloud, Kubernetes etc.)
• Strong understanding & delivery experience of cloud native architectures
• Extensive experience using agile delivery methods, i.e. Scrum
• Good understanding of scaled agile delivery methods, i.e. SAFe or LeSS

As an equal opportunities’ employer, we welcome applications from individuals of all backgrounds. However, for you to be eligible for this role, you must have the valid right to work in the UK. Unfortunately, we do not offer visa sponsorship and have no future plans to do so. You must be a resident in the UK and have been living continuously in the UK for the last 5 years. You must be able to hold or gain a UK government security clearance.

Preferred Technical And Professional Experience

• Good knowledge of system design & delivery
• Java & JavaScript frameworks eg Spring Boot, React, Angular, J2EE
• Enterprise integration technologies (Kafka, MQ, IBM Streams, ESBs, ETL etc)
• Enterprise level persistence technologies (Oracle, Postgres, DB2, NoSQL, Redis, Graph etc.)
• Estimation experience (top down, bottom up, planning poker etc.)
• Experienced in architectural languages or frameworks e.g. UML, Zachman, TOGAF
• Understanding of Automation in the development, testing and operations context.