Product Architect

Product Architect 

Wilmington, DE or Remote

Monday – Friday

CSC is looking for a Product Architect (PA) to join our team and help build a Product discipline,guiding the development and implementation of our future technology platforms. These platforms will help enable our significant programs and transform Enterprise Technology (ET)so that IaaS & PaaS can be delivered services to serve our business partners. 

The Product Architect provides consultative enterprise architecture services to agile product teams. They will be responsible for the establishment and maintenance of the architecture, principles, and guidelines to guide ET’s effective design, delivery, and operations of ET products.  The PA will also provide a broad range of services to the teams from supporting product strategy to providing guidance on individual architectural decisions. 

Leadership/Supervisory Role: They help product teams proactively identify technical roadblocks, identify appropriate resolutions to those roadblocks and coordinate with delivery teams to ensure delivery of value to the business. ThePAensures alignment between the business goals of the product and the technical architecture that supports it.  They support distributed architecture decision making through regular consultation with product teams, identifying architecture decisions to be made and providing guidance on interpreting the reference architecture.  

The PA also coaches and mentors product team members on architecture thinking. 

Strategy: The PA collaborates with product (portfolio) owners, product managers and other product stakeholders to create a product strategy, identify investments and create roadmaps that support business goals and align to the minimum viable architecture (MVA).  They work with product team(s) to define and maintain the high-level target product and product portfolio architecture. The PA works with enterprise and business architects to document the business architecture that the product or product portfolio supports, including business capabilities, value streams and business processes. 

Collaboration: The PA plays a highly collaborative role where he works closely with product owners, product stakeholders, and enterprise architecture team members in defining long-term strategies, roadmaps, products aligned to our future state aspirations.  

• Work with product owners and product stakeholders to identify needed products and features. 
• Work with Architecture to influence strategy and architecture roadmaps. 
• Work with the cross-functional team to create, execute and govern product guidelines,standards and best practices. 
• Collaborates in the design of MVA as required to support product strategies. 
• Collaborates in the selection, acquisition, and adoption of new technologies.  

Knowledge: The PA musthave a broad understanding of architecture domains (business, information, application, technology, etc.) and know how to apply concepts from those domains to the specific needs of their product team(s) while respecting the architecture principles and guardrails of the enterprise. 

Some things you will do: 

• Build and grow strong and effective relationships within ET Leadership, CSC and its business units.  
• Work with enterprise and business architects to document the business architecture that the product or product portfolio supports, including business capabilities, value streams and business processes. 
• Collaborates with product (portfolio) owners, product managers and other product stakeholders to create a product strategy, identify investments and create roadmaps that support business goals and align to the minimum viable architecture (MVA). 
• Define and maintain the high-level target product and product portfolio architecture. 
• Integrate technology innovations by identifying opportunities for proof-of-concept work to deploy new technologies that would support, enhance, improve, or replace the product or product functions or features. 
• Identify critical architecture decisions that require alignment to reference architecture. 
• Provide guidance on architecture decisions based on enterprise guidance from reference architecture when available. 
• Work with domain architects (information, application, security, etc.) when deeper domain knowledge is necessary to support decision making. 
• Coach and mentor product team members on architecture thinking. 
• Work with architecture community of practice to familiarize self with current enterprise guidance. 
• Maintain high-level knowledge of enterprise application and technology portfolio to support contextual decision making. 
• Collaborate with other architect roles that support product management. 
• Work with product teams to identify needed capabilities and features to enable product development. 
• Collaborates with product owners and product managers to coordinate implementation of product-specific enablers. 
• Coordinates with enterprise architects and portfolio managers to prioritize development of needed enterprise enablers. 
• Serves as a member of architecture community of practice. 
• Contributes principles, guidelines, standards, and solution patterns to the MVA based on feedback and lessons learned during product development. 
• Escalates product architecture decisions that are not compliant with MVA. 
• Works with enterprise architects and other product architects to coordinate dependencies and shared capabilities across product lines.  

What technical skills, experience, and qualifications do you need? 

• Highly self-motivated and directed 
• Ability to translate broader business initiatives into clear team objectives and concrete individual goals, aligning appropriately with other groups for efficient, coordinated action 
• Ability to understand the long-term ("big picture") and short-term perspectives of situations. 
• Motivated and driven by achieving long-term business outcomes. 
• Good understanding of product management, agile principles and development methodologies and capable of supporting agile teams by providing advice and guidance on opportunities, impact, and risks, taking account of technical and architectural debt. 
• Good understanding of strategic and emerging technology trends, and the practical application of existing and emerging technologies to new and evolving business and operating models. 
• Experience developing architecture blueprints, strategies and roadmaps. 
• Minimum of five years of experience in at least two IT solution development disciplines, including technical or infrastructure architecture, network management, application development, middleware, database management or cloud development. 
• Knowledge of financial models and budgeting. 
• Understanding and knowledge of system development life cycle methodologies. 
• Understanding of IT standards and controls. 
• Excellent analytical, planning, organizational and technical skills. 
• Ability to coach and mentor technical skills, methods, and critical thinking. 
• Excellent listening, interpersonal, written, and oral communication skills 
• Value-based & Principle-based decision making 
• Ability to exercise independent judgment and take action 
• Logical and efficient, with keen attention to detail  
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to build strong relationships with stakeholders and work collaboratively across teams and organizational lines. 
• Ability to contribute to organizational strategic thinking beyond area of responsibility. 
• Demonstrated experience in working with a geographically dispersed team 

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