Platform Technical Architect

We having an exciting opportunity for a Platform Technical Architect on a contract basis for 5 - 8 months. Main purpose of the role & responsibilities in the business: As a Platform Technical Architect (Consultant) in Kainos, you’ll be responsible for leading teams developing high quality solutions on public cloud which delight our customers. As a technical leader on a project, you’ll work with customer architects to design, automate, build and support modern digital service platforms, advising on estimated effort and technical implications of user stories and decisions. It’s a fast-paced environment and you’ll be trusted to make sound, reasoned decisions as you continually learn and apply new technologies and approaches with talented colleagues.

Your key responsibilities will include:

• Working as part of a wider team - You’ll provide leadership working alongside colleagues in engineering, testing, consulting, product management and security capabilities to design solutions of the highest quality which meet all non-functional requirements.
• Using technology for positive impact – You’ll keep appraised of the latest technologies and ensure we employ them appropriately for maximum user and business benefit.
• Being objectively opinionated – As a respected voice within Kainos and beyond, you’ll offer your opinion and critique to improve our solutions. You’ll proactively share knowledge internally within Kainos and more widely in industry.
• Developing Kainos as a Business – You help Kainos to qualify and win new opportunities.
• Providing technical leadership – You’ll provide technical leadership on delivery and support projects which may sometimes require you to be hands-on and to take difficult, but necessary decisions.
• Being a role model – You’ll support your colleagues and foster a DevOps culture in all that you do by embodying the Kainos values. You’ll be the person people look up to – people trust your decisions because they are transparent and justified. You’ll be passionate and committed to ensuring Kainos projects are successful.
• Putting people first & developing others – You’ll manage, coach and develop a small number of staff, with a focus on managing employee performance and assisting in their career development. You’ll also provide direction and leadership for your colleagues as you solve challenging problems together.
• Being Adaptable – You’ll mould yourself to customer engagements and stretch to learn new skills as needs arise; through this you’ll be supported by talented colleagues across Learning & Development and Architecture.

MINIMUM (ESSENTIAL) REQUIREMENTS

• Strong verbal and written communications skills, with the ability to simply and clearly communicate technical design in conversation, documentation and presentation to a technical and non-technical audience.
• We all work in teams here in Kainos – You’ll need a proven experience of team leadership and supporting a DevOps culture in delivering complex projects.
• We are passionate about developing people – a demonstrated ability in managing, coaching and developing junior members of your team and wider community.
• Demonstrable personal ownership of:
• Building and operating modern digital service platform (or significant portions thereof) including architecture, estimation, planning, non-functional requirements and Continuous Improvement activities using modern agile techniques.
• Implementing robust security controls and monitoring solutions across infrastructure and application components.
• Making effective decisions within fast-moving delivery environments.
• Significant expertise in:
• Designing, building, testing, automating, monitoring and supporting modern digital service platforms in production environments.
• Utilizing the latest Continuous Delivery techniques for releasing operationally ready software to production.
• Use of automation tooling and proficient in one of the following: Powershell, Bash, Python, Ruby, Go, Groovy.
• Using public cloud platforms - including SaaS or PaaS offerings - to solve business problems (AWS or Azure).
• Demonstrable experience in:
• Using the latest container orchestration platforms including Kubernetes.
• Applying configuration management, infrastructure provisioning and automation tooling to solve business problems.

DESIRABLE

• Third level – or equivalent - qualification in a related discipline.
• Obtained certification with a public cloud provider (AWS/Azure).
• Obtained certification relating to a particular area of specialisation e.g. Kubernetes CKAD.
• Experience of Cloud Native Tooling and Approaches.
• Active participation in both internal and external communities of practice.