Solution Architect

As an IT Solution Architect for Katoen Natie, a global leader in logistics, you will be responsible for building and implementing IT system architectures that meet set business requirements.  As part of your project assignments you will use your “Architectural Thinking” to evaluate all requirements and come up with solutions in the form of solution building blocks, application services and/or integrations between them.  Once you are given a problem, you are not only in charge of finding answers, but also of actively leading the technical solution implementation to successful “go live”.

As a technical leader you will use and develop your wide-ranging mix of IT technical skills, business domain knowledge, and communication skills to ensure project success.  Besides defining solutions for your projects, you also contribute to the overall architecture community of practice, by establishing reusable solutions, patterns, blueprints and overall ideas for architectural continuous improvement.

You will have the chance to work in a diverse IT technology landscape consisting of a hybrid cloud environment, made up of Microsoft & Oracle business applications (both on premises and SaaS), Azure, .NET custom developed apps, Biztalk, API management, iPaaS, IAM, opensource, VMWare virtualized, containerized workloads, etc… and all this on a global scale within a DevOps culture.

Solution Architect responsibilities:

• Be the architecture authority member of the project team from project inception to completion
• Ensure business requirements are gathered, and co-validate project scope with project manager
• Develop and document Solution Architecture covering functional and non-functional req’s
• Follow up solution implementation through the different deployment stages (SDLC)
• Ensure proper and relevant solution communication with business & technical stakeholders
• Work with other architects and SME’s to (re)define and compose technical building blocks
• Contribute to and comply with architecture frameworks, reusable patterns and other artifacts
• Account for possible project challenges on constraints incl. risks, time, resources, and scope

Knowledge and skills:

Overall experience in software and/or infrastructure engineering and solution architecture. Practical experience with cross (technical)domain projects. Knowledge of hybrid cloud and enterprise integration.

• Project management and leadership skills are essential
• Positive outlook in meeting challenges and working to a high level of standard
• Advanced understanding of business/functional analysis techniques and processes
• Cross (technical) domain experience in developing IT solutions
• Best practices regarding system security measures (e.g. NIST, CIS, OWASP)
• Architect, design and implementing application and data integration projects
• Understanding of modern Data architectures and Data management (incl. MDM)
• API development and (micro)services architectures.
• Applying enterprise integration design patterns and styles.
• Knowledge of REST, ESB, Messaging, Web services, Modern Programming Languages, Event sourcing, Cloud(SaaS, PaaS, IaaS), data caching, SQL/NOSQL, Infrastructure(Server, Network, Storage), Security & IAM(OAuth, SAML, AD), Devops, CI/CD, Virtualization, Kubernetes, etc…
• Experience with business applications (ERP, SCM, HR, Finance, Logistics, etc…)

Keywords: Solution Architect, Integration, Cloud, Enterprise architecture, API, Data architect, Integration architect