Chief Platform Architect

This job will provide you with an opportunity to further your career alongside some of the best and most passionate technology experts from around the world in a leading company within the test, measurement and data analytics industry. You will be a strong contributor collaborating closely with colleagues from various business functions.

At HBK, we live up to our three values: Be True, Own It and Aim High. We believe in absolute integrity – it’s how we win for stakeholders, the environment and each other. We believe in teamwork and keeping our promises – to ourselves and others. Finally, we believe in being bold and positive. This is how we perform at our best and achieve greater success.

Introduction:
Working as part of the Chief Digital Officer’s organisation and reporting to the Director of Digital Product, you will be responsible for setting the technical architectural vision for software products and digital solutions working in partnership with R&D engineering teams across the business.
As we digitally transform HBK, you will help to define our world-leading capability in relation to how we develop software and digital solutions. The strategy for how we transform our architecture to align with and enable our business objectives will draw on your extensive industry experience. You will provide unique, industry-grounded technical thought leadership to a burgeoning digital engineering team in India, as well as R&D engineering teams across the business.
HBK is a global business, working in 35 countries to support customers across 50 countries. As such we are a virtual remote working business first, with flexible working to accommodate cross time-zone working. The Digital Platform team are based in India and come together 4 times a year in Chennai, therefore the ability to travel to connect with leadership teams regularly in this region is essential. Some global travel may be required for key programmes/initiatives.

Role competencies:
Strategy for emerging technologies

• Able to set policies, standards, and guidelines for how the organisation should conduct strategy development and planning in relation to digital architecture
• Plans and leads the identification and assessment of emerging technologies and the evaluation of potential impacts, threats and opportunities.
• Creates technology roadmaps that align organisational plans with emerging technology solutions. Engages with, and influences, relevant stakeholders to obtain organisational commitment to technology roadmaps.
• Develops organisational guidelines for monitoring emerging technologies.
• Collaborates with internal and external parties to facilitate intelligence gathering.

Architecture

• Develops enterprise-wide digital architecture for products and solutions through processes to embed the strategic application of change in the management of the organisation.
• Leads the creation and review of a systems capability strategy that meets the strategic requirements of the business. Ensures the buy-in of all key stakeholders.
• Captures and prioritises market and environmental trends, business strategies and objectives, and identifies the business benefits of alternative strategies.  Develops and presents business cases for approval, funding and prioritisation of high-level initiatives.
• Sets strategies, policies, standards and practices to ensure compliance between business strategies, technology strategies, and enterprise transformation activities.

Digital engineering architecture

• Develops organisational policies, standards, and guidelines for software configuration design, deployment and refactoring.
• Leads the development of architectures for complex solutions ensuring consistency with agreed requirements.
• Establishes policies, principles and practices for the selection of solution architecture components at a HBK wide level.
• Manages trade-offs and balances functional, service quality and systems management requirements for Digital Engineering capability in HBK.
• Maintains a stable, viable architecture  at an enterprise level, and ensures consistency of design and adherence to appropriate standards across the enterprise portfolio

Digital Transformation Leadership

• Lead a virtual community of architects, engineers, R&D colleagues and partners- championing a culture of innovation and adaptability.
• Work with leadership to articulate the vision for digital strategy in relation to architectural engineering best practice and gain organizational buy-in.

Performance Measurement

• Establish the OKR framework to measure the success and impact of your team’s work in the business.
• Regularly assess and report on the performance of digital engineering  making data-driven recommendations for improvement.

Skills- Autonomy, able to:

• Work under broad direction, self-initiate and is fully responsible for meeting allocated technical and/or group objectives.
• Analyse, design, plan, execute and evaluate work to time, cost and quality targets.
• Establish milestones, assign tasks and/or responsibilities.

Skills- Influence, able to:

• Maintain a network of recognised experts (inside and/or outside the organisation) who can deliver expert advice in relevant areas.
• Influence the organisation, customers, suppliers, partners and peers on architecture for products and solutions within a digitally transforming business.
• Make decisions which impact the success of assigned work, i.e. results, deadlines and budget.
• Lead on user/customer and group collaboration throughout all stages of work.
• Build appropriate and effective business relationships across the organisation and with customers, suppliers and partners.
• Create and facilitate collaboration between stakeholders who have diverse objectives.
• Co-lead professional development planning across the architecture community to further the development of appropriate expertise.

Skills- Complexity, able to:

• mplement and execute policies aligned to strategic plans.
• Perform an extensive range and variety of complex technical and/or professional work activities.
• Undertake work which requires the application of fundamental principles in a wide and often unpredictable range of contexts.
• Engage and coordinate with subject matter experts to resolve complex issues as they relate to customer/organisational requirements. Understand the relationships between own specialism and customer/organisational requirements.

Experience, able to:

• Describe proven experience as a senior Architect in a Digital organisation, ideally in a variety of roles within global complex and fast-paced environments addressing technical debt. 
• Advise on available standards, methods, tools, applications and processes relevant to software and digital solution architecture in a global business, make appropriate choices and consider alternatives.
• Understand and evaluate the organisational impact of new technologies and digital services on the architectural roadmap for HBK’s digital products and solutions.
• Creatively apply innovative thinking and design practices in identifying solutions that will deliver value for the benefit of the customer/stakeholder.
• Excellent problem-solving abilities and a strategic mindset, with the ability to communicate complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.
• Clearly demonstrate impactful communication skills (oral, written and presentation) in both formal and informal settings, articulating complex ideas to broad and non-technical audiences.
• Take initiative to advance own professional learning, skills and identify and manage development opportunities.
• Security, privacy and ethics — proactively contributes to the implementation of appropriate working practices and culture in HBK.

Knowledge:

• Strong understanding of all cloud computing platforms (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) and experience in designing both on-premise and cloud solutions and working with re-factoring and re-platforming digital products and solutions at an enterprise level.
• Extensive experience with DevOps tools and methodologies, including CI/CD, automation, and container orchestration technologies like Kubernetes and Docker, alongside application security best practice.
• In-depth knowledge of enterprise applications, operating systems (Windows Server, Linux), and network infrastructure, with a strong focus on security and performance.
• Long-established familiarity with virtualisation tools and SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS architectures.