Solutions Architect

About BII

British International Investment is the UK’s development finance institution, owned by the UK Government. With a mission to solve the biggest global development challenges, we aim to create a virtuous circle of investment and impact. Your contribution will be essential. 

It won’t be easy: we do the hardest work in the most complex markets. Be prepared to test your skills, get creative and say your piece as you take on high-profile work as part of a diverse team of exceptionally smart, passionate people. 

In return, you can take your career to all-new places in a culture that rewards curiosity and collaboration, and balances high performance with wellbeing.

BII at a glance

Over 75 years supporting sustainable business growth in developing and emerging markets

More than £8.8 billion in net assests

1,400+ businesses invested in

950,000 workers in the businesses we support 

650+ people in our diverse global team

3 key development objectives: Productive | Sustainable | Inclusive

Team and role overview

• Over the years the Technology team has grown as the business has evolved.
• The IT architecture team is relatively recent, small and multifunctional. The technical environment is growing in complexity, in terms of business requirements, number of key systems supported and much needed integration of existing systems.
• BII has invested heavily in the Microsoft stack (Azure & M365), with most of the infrastructure in the Cloud.
• Most solutions are 3^rd party and all are hosted in the Cloud. There is little internal development however this may evolve to a more balanced model.  
• We have a mix of hosted and SAAS products which are either standalone or integrated; there is a need to integrate more of our environment

Purpose

• We are looking for an experienced solutions architect to complement our existing team. working closely with the Head of Architecture 
• The ideal candidate will have significant experience in Microsoft environment as well as systems integration technologies, including APIs, general data interchange formats, principles and processes.

Responsibilities

• Reporting to the Head of IT Architecture, design end to end architecture solutions for both IT and Business led initiatives adhering to accepted architecture standards. These must be robust, secure and scalable. This includes recommending architectures for entire solutions and ensuring that they meet all technical and business requirements.
• Help evolve the technology stack and lead any required technology evaluations or POC. The focus will be on design and integration. When required, chair the Technology Boards
• Produce the relevant architecture documentation to ensure that we deliver the best possible solutions, adhering to accepted architecture patterns and standards.
• Oversee the technical implementation of solutions, manage any changes, and deal with any issues that arise ensuring successful delivery and a smooth handover to production teams
• Work closely with key stakeholders including IT teams and ,where appropriate, business sponsor; you will be required to communicate widely with other stakeholders.
• Provide specialist advice where required

The candidate

Background, skills, aptitude

• Direct experience in delivering business-critical end-to-end solutions in an Azure cloud environment.
• Expertise in Azure cloud services / Microsoft Fabric, including different storage services/technologies, relational databases and NoSQL offerings, compute services, middleware components, serverless compute, alerting and notification services, audit and security services and using scale-out architecture.
• Experience in Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployments, eg GitHub, Jenkins
• Knowledge of Cloud Security (ZeroTrust, IAM, Azure Key Vault, network security).
• Knowledge of Financial systems
• Knowledge of relevant best practice frameworks such TOGAF, Agile and DevOps.
• Experience of working with rest-APIs.
• Previous experience in a similar post is preferable, ideally within a Financial Services (Private Equity / Investment Management / Investment Banking) or NGO organisation.

Desired skills including:

• Infrastructure as Code (IaC), eg Terraform & ARM/Bicep toolset experience
• Containerisation experience such as Docker or Kubernetics
• Synapse/Databricks/Spark experience
• Monitoring and observability toolset experience
• Strong communication skills, capable of communicating equally well with business users and technical professionals at all levels.
• Willingness to challenge requirements and always focus on the business outcomes of change, constantly balancing the desired state against risk and constraints.
• Leadership qualities that engender confidence.
• Strategic thinking as well as day-to-day problem-solving.
• Prior experience working with internal and external stakeholders to deliver the best solutions.
• Candidates should be strongly motivated by BII’s development mission and ideally demonstrate some commitment to development or social goals through previous executive or non-executive activity.

Our cultural values

We look for team members who aspire, as we do, to work at our best and to be:

• Impact-led, commercially rigorous
• Tenacious in the face of challenges
• Collaborative and caring

British International Investment is committed to diversity and inclusion and welcomes all applicants regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation or educational background. 

Please provide a cover letter with your application