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Solutions Architect

Cheltenham

Full-time

Business Unit: Customer Operations

Salary: Circa £60,000 (dependent on experience)

Overview:

UCAS is the organisation at the heart of connecting people to higher education in the UK. It has a unique role and expertise in matching the aspirations of hundreds of thousands of applicants each year to the right courses in higher education institutions.

With primary responsibility for providing shared admissions services for UK higher education institutions, UCAS has recently developed an ambitious five year strategy aimed at streamlining and enhancing its services to the sector at a time of unprecedented change. Employing over 400 staff, UCAS provides a range of services to complement the core admissions role as well as completing research, consultancy and advisory work for applicants, schools, colleges, careers services, professional bodies and employers.

The organisation now has a range of critical initiatives to deliver in order to support the sector through changes in the provision of higher education, the way it is funded and the consequences for admissions processes and applicant information.

The architecture function within UCAS is a multidisciplinary team providing architectural oversight, design and governance to the development of the UCAS IT estate.

Within the Architecture Team the solutions architects are responsible for delivery of solution options, blueprints and end-to-end designs in alignment with the UCAS architecture standards and practices.

Role responsibilities:

  • Producing options and where necessary conducting feasibility studies, for delivery of the business requirements and key non-functional requirements.
  • Designing architecture blueprints to be implemented in line with the UCAS reference architecture and strategy.
  • Estimating the cost of implementing requirements and advising on high cost/complex aspects where these could be omitted or where requirement change could result in a more cost-effective implementation.
  • Utilising the overall IT architecture strategy to recommend project delivery approach, typically re-use, package purchase, in-house build, or outsourced build.
  • Be accountable for the production of logical system designs, according to agreed design standards, and taking account of the differing requirements of in-house and out-source developments.
  • Set functional and architectural acceptance criteria and evaluate potential products against those criteria.
  • Provide consultancy services to the business teams to help enable the business to maximise the capability from current and future IT technologies.

Role requirements:

  • Educated to degree level in a relevant IT discipline, or equivalent relevant experience.
  • Demonstrable track record in the design of complex solutions that were successfully delivered into existing and new infrastructure.

Have knowledge and practical experience of:

  • Cloud based architectures including Microsoft Azure and Amazon web services.
  • .NET based applications development and integration.
  • J2EE based applications development and integration.
  • Oracle DB technology.
  • Microsoft SQL server technology.
  • Loose coupled integration.
  • Migration from legacy systems.


To apply, please send your CV and a covering letter (clearly stating your salary expectations) to jobs@ucas.ac.uk

UCAS values diversity and is committed to equality of opportunity

UCAS does not discriminate on grounds of age, nationality, race, ethnic origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation or disability