Solutions Architect - Full-time / Part-time

Position Purpose & Summary

The Solution Architect supports the comprehensive high level architecture, functionality, economics and architecture compliance of solution options for the Strategic Pricing capabilities of Configure, Price Quote (CPQ), Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM), revenue and rebate management and other related solutions. This position works closely with the global Strategic Pricing Product Owner, Regional Solution and Application Architects, Enterprise Architecture and key stakeholders to determine requirements for solution planning and development. This position develops prototypes, proof of concepts and solution architecture, at an enterprise and product level in collaboration with other architects including Enterprise Architecture, portfolio teams and subject matter experts from Cargill's business units.

Primary Responsibilities Include:

• Perform hands-on solution design, solution architectures, architecture roadmaps, prototyping, proof-of-concepts, and development tasks as required in support of current and new projects
• Ensure solution is scalable and meets overall business requirements
• Act as a liaison between Technical team, Functional team, Business Functions, and System Integrators to drive implementations
• Be recognized as a functional expert in Strategic Pricing and Contract Management CLM domain
• Conduct Solution Architecture reviews with project teams prior to design and development activities and ensure solution is scalable, is aligned with internal product roadmaps and meets customers' business requirements
• Guide technical team to deliver a flexible and scalable solution
• Provide mentorship and supervise developers
• Work with offshore teams as required

The Solution Architect understands both technical and functional design and brings perspective from all architecture domains (process, application, data, technology and security) into the solution design in support of CPQ platform capabilities. Utilizing a strong expertise in commercial business processes and applications that support these processes, this position ensures solutions developed are aligned to enterprise architecture standards and principles, leverage common solutions and services, and meet the financial targets (cost and benefits). This position is accountable for solution evaluation and early-phase project estimates which contribute to the business case.

The Solution Architect position is also responsible for staying current with emerging business and technology trends, promoting the 'art of the possible', and driving innovation investments throughout the portfolio. This role is able to facilitate the difficult conversations involving balancing corporate strategies and local business requirements. This requires an ability to see multiple perspectives, steer discussions towards fact-based comparisons, and drive significant net value for the enterprise.

The Solution Architects, as a team, own the integration, maintenance and integrity of the platform architecture for all global or enterprise instances/solutions, encompassing global business capabilities enabled by enterprise application landscape.

Principal Accountabilities

40% Architecture Planning and Development

• Develops and maintains solution architecture by leading solution definition, solution architecture reviews, and solution selection efforts
• Acts as part of the broader Cargill Architecture community to define and execute architecture processes.
• Develops and maintains the Conceptual Architecture for the Strategic Pricing platform and ecosystem of core capabilities
• Owns the Logical Architecture for a Portfolio (describing flow and high level physical arch)
• Responsible for understanding the strategy across enterprises on the capabilities provided within their portfolio and translating that into an architecture plan (In partnership with the Connected Sales & Service Product Owner and other Architects)
• Responsible for the application architecture for all capabilities within the Salesforce capabilities portfolio (meaning the application/tech portfolio, key APIs, transactions, etc.) and the associated roadmap Responsible for the data landscape for PROS, Zilliant and emerging instances/platform products
• Responsible for the data landscape for PROS, Zilliant and emerging instances/platform products
• Responsible for all buy vs. build for the portfolio
• Responsible for governance to the architecture plan
• Ensures portfolio architecture aligns with Enterprise Architecture standards/principles
• Responsible for lifecycle planning for applications within the global portfolio
• Provides strategic consultation and recommendations for business process design, business intelligence design, software development design/architecture, application frameworks, and/or interfaces during the design and ongoing care of solutions.
• Provides support and consultation for detailed design, deployment and production support.
• Primary contact for vendors providing technology solutions within Strategic Pricing portfolio
• Responsible for ensuring Cargill roadmap items are included in vendor roadmap

40% Business Partnership

• Work with businesses to establish clear connections between business goals and strategies and the process data, and technology investments required to achieve them.
• Partner with business leadership to understand how data will be leveraged as a competitive advantage and promote architectural methods and solutions to enable business value (e.g. using big data to drive predictive analytics and improve customer experience).
• Provide consultation and recommendations for business capabilities, business process design, business intelligence design, software development design/architecture, application frameworks, and/or interfaces during the design and ongoing care of solutions.
• Regularly interface with other architects, analysts, process designers, application portfolio managers, business relationship managers, and enterprise subject matter experts to understand and evaluate portfolio capability needs.
• Assist in the definition of the architecture and technology opportunities of the portfolio based on new and emerging technologies. Independently establish priorities and strategies, ensuring they are consistent with business goals and economic viability.

10% Architecture Assurance

• Manage adherence to defined standards throughout the design, development and implementation processes for the Portfolio including managing exceptions against the portfolio.
• Review new projects and architecture solutions, ensuring they are aligned with the enterprise architecture and meet financial targets.
• Champion data as a corporate asset, ensuring the value realization of the investments Cargill is making in the data and information areas are captured.

10% IT Innovation & Delivery

• Maintains extensive knowledge of industry trends, and utilizes this knowledge to educate the stakeholders on opportunities to build better target solution architectures that support and drive business decisions.
• Drives improvement of architecture methodologies and services. Supports implementation, improvements, and proper utilization of architecture tools. Ensures the quality of architecture assets, and keeps them up-to-date. Develops and maintains architecture metrics.
• Maintain knowledge of industry trends and utilize this knowledge to educate both IT and the business on opportunities to build better target architectures that support and drive business decisions.
• Drive the definition of the architecture and technology opportunities of the portfolio based on new and emerging technologies.
• Demonstrate deep knowledge of a wide variety of technology disciplines.
• Participates in routine and non-routine construction, automation, and implementation activities, ensuring successful implementation with architectural and operational requirements met
• Provides technical oversight and coaching to others resolving complex and severe technical issues.
• Designs new testing methods and resolves routine and non-routine technical issues with minimal assistance. With minimal guidance, monitors systems capacity and performance.
• Leads disaster recovery activities and contributes to disaster recovery planning.

This position is posted internally as well as externally

Equal Opportunity Employer, including Disability/Vet.

Minimum Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Computer Science or Management Information Systems; OR equivalent experience
• 10 years business experience with diverse operational, development and business roles
• 5 years experience with business process design and improvement; knowledge of CPQ capabilities
• 3 years experience in an architecture role
• Experience collaborating with regional and global project teams to define business requirements and deliver solutions that meet business goals
• Experience in developing integrated solutions involving process, data, and technology
• Experience with business case development
• Strong conceptual, strategic thinking, problem solving, technical and analytical skills
• Leadership and interpersonal skills including teamwork, facilitation and negotiation
• Ability to influence peers and leadership stakeholders
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• Excellent project management, planning and organizational skills
• Proven ability to work effectively within a large organization that operates using matrix management structures
• Knowledge and ability to support: translation of business needs into solution architecture requirements, application of multiple technical solutions to business problems, and estimation of the financial impact of solution architecture alternatives
• Ability to quickly comprehend the functions and capabilities of new technologies
• Ability to travel, including internationally, up to 20%
• Business fluency in English

Preferred Qualifications

• Business strategy development
• Knowledge of all components of enterprise architecture
• Industry certification (Examples include ITIL, APICS, six sigma, etc.)