About Us

We're a truly international company, fourth largest in our industry and operating across 119 markets. An inclusive, innovative global FMCG business supported by 26,000 employees. As we embrace a new era of growth, we are transforming. Our ways of working and culture are driven by a challenger mindset, constantly questioning the status quo where people can bring their best selves to work. Our agility and collaboration are driving our ambitions, innovation and success all supported by our award-winning development programmes that creates exciting and rewarding career opportunities for all.

As we move forward, our consumers will be at the heart of what we do, evolving to needs and expectations and committing to a more meaningful contribution to harm reduction by building a successful NGP business. Integral to our long-term success is our sustainability strategy, behaving responsibly and supporting our ambitions, all underpinned by high governance.

Encouraging inclusion at local levels and supporting a developing and robust diversity agenda globally, we’re fully committed to creating and maintaining an environment that celebrates and respects difference.

The Role

The Solution Architect, within the Infrastructure Operations function, takes primary responsibility for the design and end-to-end solutions for project work, aligned to the Enterprise Roadmaps and Vision. The Solution Architect will champion best practices, feed their depth of knowledge and expertise into the enterprise roadmaps, and offer coaching and consultancy to the delivery teams. Solutions Architects will also take part in the governance forums to ensure the ongoing conformity to the enterprise roadmaps.

Specifically to Infrastructure/Technology, the Infrastructure Solutions Architect will provide the Delivery teams with design support and consultancy for each delivery; support quality and automation; work with the Service Owners and Engineers to ensure roadmap alignment; act as the bridge between the delivery teams and architecture, and ensure optimal use of enterprise assets.

International travel may be required.

The purpose of the Infrastructure Solution Architect role is to ensure that domain specific technology strategies exist and are deployed to satisfy technology strategy demands.

Key accountabilities

• Act as a lead in the development of fit for purpose solutions, ensuring end-to-end responsibility from how the users will be affected by the change, ensuring the correct technical choices (within the boundaries of the agreed enterprise assets), ensuring the scale, performance, security, and quality are designed in from the start;
• Work in tandem with the Enterprise Architects to understand the business goals and vision, and to contribute to the Enterprise Roadmaps;
• Assist in the decision-making process for delivery teams to ensure that system changes are in line with target architecture and that tactical decisions are being made appropriately and effectively;
• Producing documentation of a high-quality and to a detailed level. Also ensuring all Decision Points, Building Blocks, Design Principles, Design Rationale, and all interdependencies are understood, documented and communicated across IT, where appropriate;
• Proactively manage and address project risks and issues. Escalate high priority issues to management with suggested solutions;
• Act as a point of reference within the team to provide in-depth knowledge and technical expertise;
• Provide consultancy services to internal customers by offering technical guidance, and ensuring architecture principles, design standards and operational requirements are met;
• Provide a level of technical expertise and consultation at various levels across the organisation;
• Ensure delivery of projects on time and to budget, by adopting delivery focussed Imperial working practices and methodologies;
• Contribute to the architecture repository, using approved modelling tools and languages;
• Review requirements from products and lead discussions with stakeholders and Infrastructure team heads in order to get a solution defined, scoped and costs agreed;
• Architect, design, document and agree “standard” global infrastructure solutions’
• Help and guide IT infrastructure teams to review Infrastructure offerings, and work with vendors where new solutions would benefit Imperial Brands Group;
• Assist Infrastructure project managers with scope, approach and sign off;
• Create and maintain documentation as it relates to existing infrastructure offerings;
• Maintenance and forecasting of project budget lines;
• Contribute and adhere to appropriate governance processes to ensure compliance with all IT policies and frameworks;

Key accountabilities - Continue

• Attending Change Approval Board meetings to ensure governance and alignment;
• Keep up to date with developing and future technologies and services that may be used within the business;
• Create and maintain network of contacts with partners and vendors in the technology domain;
• Form and maintain understanding of as-is technology domain in use within the business;
• Conduct architecture compliance checks when required;
• Support the optimisation and consolidation of technologies, services and suppliers on a regional and global basis as appropriate;
• Evaluating infrastructure proposals against published standards, approval of requests to the continuity budget and escalation to the Technical Design Authority of those proposals not compliant with the standards; and
• Delivering technical training within Service Technology to ensure skill/knowledge retention;
• Point of escalation for Service Delivery project activity.
• Any other reasonable duties, aligned to role.

Skills and experience required

• The areas of technical knowledge for this role are based around architecting end-to-end infrastructure solutions primarily in Microsoft Windows and complementary systems. These include message & collaboration, desktops/mobile, data centre design, cloud infrastructures, storage, networks, security, virtualisation, system migrations/consolidations.
• An experienced technologist in a broad spectrum of technologies covering, infrastructure, applications and office automation in a heterogeneous environment with a good understanding of commercial costing and pricing for technology solutions.
• On-going awareness of infrastructure developments in the IT industry
• Previous experience in IS Service Delivery
• Demonstrable commercial awareness
• Good communication skills – both written and oral
• Proven knowledge and experience of tools, technologies and methods in your area of Global Service Delivery expertise
• Excellent IT people management skills with experience of managing teams spread across multiple locations
• Ability to manage key relationships with internal IS and business stakeholders
• Excellent analytical skills to be able to translate detailed technical information into service language
• Engaging, articulate and able to influence across Global IT and business stakeholders
• Prepared to undertake international business travel

Desired:

• Educated to degree level, ideally in Information Technology, Engineering Business, Economics or equivalent
• TOGAF certified
• Knowledge of the consumer products industry, with tobacco industry knowledge preferable

What we offer

Imperial Brands offer a competitive package of salary, bonus scheme, pension, full family medical care, car allowance, 25 day holiday (with an additional 4 days on top to cover the Christmas period and bank holidays).

Next Steps:

Interested applicants should apply with their CV highlighting their suitability for the role.