Group Enterprise Architect – Remote

In 2019, Ticketer, the UK’s market leader in bus ticketing technology, joined forces with FARA, the Nordic market leader, bringing together two companies with a strong joint mission; to make travel easy. Over the next few years, we will be transforming the transport ecosystem by enabling customer efficiency through operational insight, leading the way in local and national mobility and delivering first-class, frictionless travel experiences. 

Together, the Group is able to offer customers the very latest technology in intelligent transport ticketing, back-office software and passenger-facing apps, focusing on providing Real Time Information for use on board, online and on mobile to increase usage of public transport facilities. And today’s numbers are impressive, with our equipment on over 30,000 buses across Europe, over 5.5 million daily passengers using our ticketing system and with 3.5 billion tickets being issued in the UK alone. 

The Group is at a very exciting stage of their growth with a new CEO joining at the end of 2020. This has kicked off significant investment in new systems, processes, and products to capitalise on an already market-leading position.

About the role:

We’re now looking for a top-notch Enterprise Architect to lead the technical evolution of our systems and products. You will be responsible for architecting the evolution of many important software projects, including powerful public facing websites, APIs, back-end services, IOT and infrastructure projects. You will be part of the organisation delivering the core technology that supports bus and ticketing operations in UK, Norway, and beyond. We’re high volume, mission critical, and always innovating. 

You must have the ability to come to understand large, complex systems and their interactions. Being insatiably curious, you’ll relish the process of working out how things currently work, across different teams, different projects, and different technologies. Having done similar work before, you’ll work closely with the product teams to understand their goals and feature directions. Your job is to turn those product ambitions into reality, by plotting a savvy technical path from here to there. Being deeply technical, you’ll work closely with the development teams and product architects to co-create the best possible versions of those plans. The outcome will need to be products and systems that delivery today’s business value, cater for tomorrow’s, all whilst being scalable, efficient, and secure. 

Responsibilities: 

• Your key responsibility is to define the overall structure of systems and their interactions, iterating them as needed. But this is no ivory tower position - your daily involvement may include all parts of the lifecycle - from proposals through to the design and delivery 

• This is a design and governance position. Whilst hands-off regarding implementation, you will work closely with developers, team leads and other architects reporting to you, to deliver both green and brownfield systems. 

• You will also work closely with product and business analysts to understand the goals and constraints of products across the group. 

• You will become the subject matter expert on a variety of system areas, and be called upon for impact and effort analysis 

• You will determine the best way for systems to integrate, determine what new systems should be built, and be at the forefront of technical design decisions across the group 

• You’ll be responsible for the architecture governance process and its implementation, covering all product areas and all development teams. This will involve overseeing all architecture and design work to ensure that implementation is in line with architectural goals 

• You’ll bring to bear your broad range of experience and problem-solving skills to help the team with any technical challenges. If you don't know the answers, then you’ll have a good idea of how to get them. 

• You will sometimes work as a technical facilitator -researching, leading or guiding others to bring forward approaches/solutions/vendors that could provide the missing pieces. 

• You will provide leadership and advisory for architecture for all product areas and development teams, identifying and staying on top of technical risk 

• You will help with sequencing projects and other technical efforts to maximize reuse and optimise development efforts. 

• You will bring a passion for enthusiastically identifying trends and technical enablers that contribute to a culture of continuous innovation. 

Key skills, attributes and experience: 

• At least 10 years proven track record as a Systems/Solutions/Enterprise Architect (or similar) in a commercially run product centric organization. You will have designed and then helped deliver complex and prominent projects successfully, in a way that your colleagues admired. 

• You will have been a software developer in the past, with a solid understanding of the technical aspects of software engineering and development dynamics. 

• Possess a very broad range of technical knowledge and awareness (databases, cloud, on-premise, languages, SDLCs, technology architecture, etc.). 

• Be very strong in designing systems, infrastructure, database schemas, messaging interfaces, and have the ability to clearly and effectively document and communicate those ideas. 

• Understand how to meet reliability, scalability, and high availability concerns. 

• You will understand the strengths and trade-offs on various technical issues and know best practices from direct experience. 

• Possess superb verbal and written communication skills. 

• Self-organized, methodical, and promoter of ‘we can do anything’ mind-set. 

• A problem solver, pragmatic, ambitious, and a team player 

• TOGAF / similar qualification 

Exceptional to haves: 

• Knowledge of and experience with payment systems 

• Industrial Security key management experience 

• Demonstrated experience and success in M&A integration and leverage 

• Relevant industry, big data and embedded devices experience