Solution Designer

Join us as a Solution Designer to support the ongoing efforts to virtualize the banks' infrastructure in a controlled, quality-oriented, and repeatable manner.

The Solution Designer sits within The Service Delivery Team, based in Radbroke, UK, and Whippany. They are accountable for managing infrastructure demand and optimization on an ongoing basis, in addition to providing specialized support in various GTIS technologies split across both private and public cloud.

You will support the migration of applications to next-generation virtualized platforms.

You will work with stakeholders and application teams to understand functional/non-functional requirements, develop repeatable patterns, and innovative approaches to migrations. You will also feedback into engineering teams with requests for enhancements to ensure the platforms support a wide range of use cases.

To be successful as a Solution Designer, you should have experience with:

Essential Skills

• Experience with VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) products; SDDC, VMware vCenter, ESX 6.x, 7.x, VRA, VRO, vROPs, and others.
• Ability to troubleshoot technical issues.
• Strong documentation skills using Confluence and other repositories.

Additional highly valued skills include:

Desirable Skills

• Good understanding of network technologies, including VMware NSX-V & NSX-T.
• VMware Data Center Virtualization (VCP6.5-DCV) or equivalent certification.
• VMware Network Virtualization (VCP6-NV) certification preferred.
• Experience with containerization (OpenShift, Kubevirt, Harvester).

You may be assessed on key skills such as risk and controls, change and transformation, business acumen, strategic thinking, digital and technology skills, and job-specific technical skills.

Location: Knutsford

Purpose of the role

Design, develop, and implement solutions to complex business problems, collaborating with stakeholders to understand their needs and design solutions that balance technology risks with business delivery, driving consistency.

Accountabilities

• Design and develop solutions as products that can evolve, meeting business requirements with modern software engineering practices and automated delivery tooling, including technology and platform selection.
• Apply workload placement strategies to maximize cloud benefits like elasticity, serverless, and containerization.
• Design best practices incorporating security principles such as defense in depth and reduction of blast radius, meeting resiliency expectations.
• Create solutions that balance risks and controls to deliver business and technology value.
• Adopt standard solutions where applicable, contributing to their evolution when necessary.
• Support operational teams with fault finding and performance issues, leveraging available tooling.
• Assess solution impact in terms of risk, capacity, and cost, including project change and ongoing run costs estimation.
• Develop architecture artifacts required for governance processes, including design documents for architecture, privacy, security, and records management.

Vice President Expectations

• Contribute to strategy, requirements, and recommendations for change; plan resources, budgets, and policies; manage and improve policies/processes; escalate breaches.
• If managing a team, define roles, plan for future needs, counsel on performance, and contribute to pay decisions. Lead specialists to influence operations, and ensure strategic alignment.
• Demonstrate leadership behaviors: Listen, Energize, Align, and Develop others.
• For individual contributors, serve as a subject matter expert, guide technical direction, lead long-term projects, and mentor less experienced staff.
• Advise stakeholders on impact and alignment across functions.
• Manage risks through assessment, supporting governance and control agendas.
• Demonstrate leadership and accountability for risk management and controls.
• Understand organizational functions to contribute to business goals.
• Collaborate across support areas, keeping abreast of business activities and strategies.
• Develop solutions through analytical thinking, comparing complex alternatives, and incorporating research outcomes.
• Build and maintain relationships with internal and external stakeholders, using influencing skills to achieve objectives.

All colleagues are expected to embody the Barclays Values: Respect, Integrity, Service, Excellence, and Stewardship, and to demonstrate the Barclays Mindset: Empower, Challenge, and Drive.