Chief Architect

Chief Architect

Springer Nature is one of the world’s leading global research, educational and professional publishers. It is home to an array of respected and trusted brands and imprints, with more than 170 years of combined history behind them, providing quality content through a range of innovative products and services. Every day, around the globe, our imprints, books, journals and resources reach millions of people, helping researchers and scientists to discover, students to learn and professionals to achieve their goals and ambitions. The company has almost 11.000 staff in over 50 countries.

Springer Nature is seeking to hire a Chief Architect (CA) to proactively and holistically help guide the enterprise through transformation and optimization initiatives and support the formulation of future strategy. The CA’s scope of activities includes helping the organization achieve targeted business outcomes related to growing revenue, optimizing costs, mitigating risks and optimising innovation. They will be focused on building relationships with business and technology stakeholders, communicating the value of core architectural approaches, and joining technical platforms and solutions with business goals and outcomes. 

The CA’s focus is to:

• Engage business and IT stakeholders, creating and building relationships through the delivery of a business architecture capability and thus facilitate alignment between business and IT, across the democratized IT landscape 
• Work to engage the full range of architects across Springer Nature Technology in a joint agreed approach to the formal development of architectures in all of the domains (Development teams dedicated to specific products or services). This is expected to be via
  • Definition of an architecture framework with associated mandatory processes and artifacts
  • Establishment of an Architecture Community for cross domain communication, knowledge sharing and authorization
  • Delivery of training and advice to lead architects in their respective domains to enhance the quality of architecture deliverables
• Manage a small core EA team oriented around an internal management consulting and including regular rotated co-opting of architects from the architecture community
• Act as the ultimate escalation and decision point for all architectural issues and challenges 
• Drive the evolution of the EA teams services and operating model

The CA will require a background and experience that will allow them to easily traverse the various technical disciplines across Springer Nature Technology. This will mean experience in digital product development lifecycles, experience in the areas of bespoke production systems, and also experience in the various areas of business systems e.g. finance, marketing, supply chain as well as enabling technologies to build a foundation for all of this (e.g. IT Operations, Engineering Enablement, Cloud services). Being able to communicate in the vernacular of each of the differing architecture domains while bringing them together to enhance the delivery across the full landscape is essential to the success of this role. Delivering quality assured governance across all these groups will be an initial central focal point for the CA. 

The CA will additionally be central to fostering  innovation at Springer Nature using continuous foresight to identify and assess probable disruption and develop strategic responses to successfully bring the organization into the future.

Scope of Activities

The CA will demonstrate competencies across five key dimensions.

•  Manage the EA Practice and facilitate the wider architecture community
  • Develop the Architecture Practice through promotion of architecture practices
  • Develop the wider Architecture Community through cross domain communication
  • Recruits and develops the critical skills, competencies and career paths for the EA team
  • Coaching and mentoring members of the architecture community
• Formulate strategy and guiding execution
  • Work with business and leadership stakeholders to develop strategy
  • Connect the work with portfolio management practices
  • Connect company strategy to help delivery teams to connect strategy to execution
• ​Orchestrate the delivery of business outcomes
  • Evolve the Business Architecture practice 
  • Guide the cultural and organizational transformation to move the as-is-capability landscape into the future-desired state and drive business outcomes
  • Ensures the architecture practices and community processes lead to a more efficient and effective business and IT operating model, significantly improving results 
• ​Facilitate Innovation
  • Collect, analyze, review and refine Innovations, trends, disruptions, opportunities or ideas
  • Working with business leaders, develop, track and manage execution of innovation activities
• ​Evolving the Technology Portfolio and Technical Ecosystem
  • Leads analysis of the IT environment to detect critical deficiencies and recommend solutions for improvement.
  • Guide portfolio modernization and roadmap development activities
  • Support solutions delivery in applying architectural standards, clarifying accountability, enabling technical decision-making and ensure consistency across the organization

Credentials and Experience

• Master’s or bachelor’s degree in business, computer science, computer engineering, electrical engineering, system analysis or a related field of study, or equivalent experience.
• Extensive business experience in strategic and operations planning and/or business analysis.
• Extensive experience in at least three disciplines, such as business, information, solution or technical architecture, application development, middleware, information analysis, database management, or operations in a multitier environment.

Skills

• Knowledge of business ecosystems, SaaS, infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), service-oriented architecture (SOA), APIs, open data, microservices, event-driven IT and predictive analytics.
• Knowledge of business models, operating models, financial models, cost-benefit analysis, budgeting and risk management.
• Familiarity with information management practices, system development life cycle management, IT services management, agile and lean methodologies, infrastructure and operations, and EA and ITIL frameworks.
• Understanding of the different types of agile principles, methodologies, and frameworks, and the ability to operate in a multi-methodology environment 
• Understanding of existing, new and emerging technologies, and processing environments.
• Strong leadership skills with exceptional soft and interpersonal skills, including teamwork, facilitation, persuasion and negotiation.
• Strong consulting skills such as targeted communications, engagement management, stakeholder management, and business development. 
• Knowledge of all components of enterprise architecture, business, and IT principles and processes.
• Familiarity with basic graphical modeling approaches, tools, and model repositories.
• Excellent analytical, planning, and organizational skills.
• Excellent written, verbal, communication, and presentation skills with the ability to articulate new ideas and concepts to technical and nontechnical audiences.

Competencies

• Organizationally savvy, with situational and contextual intelligence of the political climate of the enterprise and how to navigate obstacles and politics.
• Balances the long-term (“big picture”) and short-term implications of individual decisions and organization goals.
• Estimates the financial impact of architecture alternatives and applies multiple solutions to business problems.
• Rapidly comprehends the functions and capabilities of new technologies.
• Ready to think, behave and act in an innovative consulting manner to drive the organization’s digital business strategies.
• Understands and speaks the language of the business.
• Understands and speaks the language of the different technical communities across the technical landscape

Characteristics

• Trusted and respected as a thought leader who can influence and persuade business and IT leaders.
• Comfortable, experienced and accomplished at working with business executives, and able to push back in a professional and diplomatic way.
• Highly collaborative and supportive of business and of its ideals and strategies.
• Highly innovative with aptitude for foresight, systems thinking and design thinking.
• Vendor- and technology-neutral — more interested in achieving targeted business outcomes than in personal preferences, or invested personal preferences of other business and IT leaders.
• Composed in the face of opposition to architectural principles, governance and standards.
• Practical in approach to problem solving and decision making.
• Takes an evangelistic approach to improving technical practices and a focus on promoting collaborative ways of working.

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