IM Senior Solution Architect Payroll (SAP ECP)

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Purpose of Job

• Senior Solution Architect of Payroll leads the technology strategy and technical evolution of the business capabilities in the scope of Payroll and regional focus. The role works closely with the business Product Owners and Solution Architects in their Product Team in linking IM and business through a strategic approach to discovery, planning, architecting, building, testing, deploying and maintaining the software that enable Payroll capabilities. The responsibilities of the role range from defining technology roadmaps and strategies with the Product Owner, Product Manager and IM Portfolio Lead.
• The Senior Solution Architect of Payroll manages the delicate balance between serving the short- and medium-term technology needs of their Product, building it towards the long-term vision of the whole Portfolio, all while navigating the group-wide technology roadmap. The role support in hands-on architecture work in especially complex solutioning of Product Features, or once-off Projects. The role works with different Platform Managers team to ensure the Platform capacity, capabilities, roadmap and contracts are aligned with the needs of the Portfolios and the Products. The role is required to also collaborate regularly with Technology Strategy and Architecture teams and other Portfolios to both inform them of the technology demands of the chosen business direction, and to promote buy-in and support necessary shared technology investments.
• One of the main strategic objectives of the Senior Solution Architect is the improvement of the quality and cost efficiency of the applications and platforms that their Product Team leverages, while controlling and reducing technology debt. Senior Solution Architects also help the Solution Architects in cases where they need to leverage other Portfolios’ assets, and in giving guidance and coaching of good architectural patterns and technologies. The Senior Solution Architect ensures that solution designs within the portfolio drive the value of technology capability re-usability by promoting and designing loosely coupled micro service based modular designs wherever feasible. This will directly contribute to improved speed and quality and will require the Senior Solution Architect to put in place the right governance and measures to manage this within their respective teams.
• The Senior Solution Architect of Payroll works closely with the Product Owner early in the Envisionto-Deliver process and brings in the technology and business analysis considerations and opportunities in the envisioning work and demand evaluation

Key Accountabilities

Payroll Technology Strategy:

• Facilitate the identification of current and future critical technologies and digital capabilities through regular technology and demand planning exercises together with the Product Owner, research on emerging technologies, market and competition trends, as well as strategically assess technology needed to support future business initiatives and requirements.

• Outline the direction and decisions regarding technology innovation and leadership in the core technologies of Payroll (e.g. leader or follower). Consider factors such as business value horizons, TCO and return on investment, resources availability, Portfolio’s risk appetite, the ability to contain trial and error impacts etc.

• Assess Payroll’s pipelines of strategic initiatives in terms of business value, strategic alignment, regional differences, resources needed and dependencies, and identify opportunities to include shared technology landscape (e.g. technology debt reduction) initiatives in them.

Payroll Architecture Management:

• Connect Payroll’s strategy to the business capabilities needed to enable and deliver the Product goals and objectives by aligning and modelling the connection between people, processes, products, technologies, and specific business outcomes.

• Design and model the enablers of the business architecture and capabilities: the business facing services, information, data, application, infrastructure, and security architectures.

• Participate in the governance processes of the design and implementation of the Product’s major business and technology solutions to ensure compliance and adherence to the architecture standards - manage non-compliances and remedial actions.

• Provide input and steer decision making regarding the evolution of Payroll’s future state architecture, ensure the right backlog of initiatives is created and that the right investment as well as re-investment decisions are taken.

• Participate in the governance and participate in the Portfolio’s cross-Product initiative alignment to ensure the Portfolio as a whole achieves the desired business outcomes while staying aligned with the technology roadmap.

• Define Product level guidance and standards aligned to the Portfolio’s and enterprise level standards relating to how architecture content is planned, developed and maintained, and how business and technology solutions are implemented.

Stakeholder Management:

• Create trusted relationships with both the Product’s business counterparts, and the IM organisation stakeholders in functional areas such as Enterprise Architecture, Technology Strategy, Business Enablement and User Experience.

• Define and map Service Level Commitments towards the Product Owners against each component of the product-to-technology hierarchy for the IM Portfolio Owner to manage.

• Make recommendations for target architecture, architecture strategy and vision as well as process changes, and gain acceptance and buy-in for them.

• Work closely with the Payroll Team to support them in clear and complete understanding of the requirements, design, architecture, and alignment to the vision.

• Work with developers to support clear and complete understanding of the designs as the solution is developed, and demo the system functionality after each iteration of incremental development to Product Owner.

• Work with the Quality Engineer to ensure all Non-Functional Requirements and other technical considerations are included in the test cases.

• Work with the BPM team and business process owners to design processes as required, to align with new solutions including determining the workflow, equipment needs and implementation requirements for the process at hand.

• Develop prototypes with the Payroll Team to evaluate solution options.

• Contribute to Sustainable Architecture Practices.

• Adopt key frameworks such as Portfolio Agile New Ways of Work, E2D, Sustainable Architecture and Business Analysis & Architecture Chapters, as well as IM tools such as ServiceNow ITBM and Azure DevOps when applicable.

Formal Education

University Bachelor’s Degree

Working Experience

Experience: 11+ relevant years

Competencies

• Business Leadership
• Partnership Leadership
• People Leadership
• Self-Mastery
• Strategic Leadership

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