Solution Designer

Join us as a Solution Designer to support ongoing efforts to virtualise the bank's 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 responsible for managing infrastructure demand and optimisation on an ongoing basis, as well as providing specialised support in various GTIS technologies across both private and public cloud environments.

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

You will work with stakeholders and application teams to understand functional and non-functional requirements, develop repeatable patterns, and propose innovative approaches to migrations. You will also feedback into engineering teams for platform enhancements to 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, including SDDC, VMware vCenter, ESX 6.x/7.x, VRA, VRO, vROPs, and others.
• Capacity 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 or equivalent.
• Experience with containerisation technologies such as OpenShift, Kubevirt, Harvester.

You may be assessed on key skills relevant for success in this role, such as risk and controls, change and transformation, business acumen, strategic thinking, digital and technology skills, as well as job-specific technical skills.

Location: Knutsford

Purpose of the role

Design, develop, and implement solutions to complex business problems by collaborating with stakeholders to understand their needs and requirements, and create solutions that balance technology risks with business delivery, ensuring consistency.

Accountabilities

• Design and develop solutions as products that can evolve, meeting business requirements using modern software engineering practices and automated delivery tools.
• Apply workload placement strategies that leverage cloud capabilities like elasticity, serverless, and containerisation.
• Incorporate security principles such as defence in depth and reduction of blast radius into designs to meet resiliency standards.
• Balance risks and controls to deliver value.
• Use standardised solutions where appropriate and contribute to their evolution when necessary.
• Support operational teams with fault finding and performance issues using available tools.
• Assess solution impacts in terms of risk, capacity, and cost, including project change and ongoing operational costs.
• Develop architecture inputs to comply with governance, including design artefacts for architecture, privacy, security, and records management.

Vice President Expectations

• Contribute to strategy, requirements, and recommendations for change; manage resources, budgets, and policies; deliver improvements; escalate breaches.
• If managing a team, define roles, plan for future needs, counsel on performance, and contribute to pay decisions.
• Demonstrate leadership behaviours: Listen and be authentic, Energise and inspire, Align across the enterprise, Develop others.
• As an individual contributor, serve as a subject matter expert, guide technical direction, lead assignments, and mentor less experienced colleagues.
• Advise stakeholders and senior management on impact and alignment.
• Manage risks through assessment and support governance.
• Demonstrate leadership and accountability in risk management and controls.
• Understand organisational functions to support business goals.
• Collaborate with support areas to stay aligned with business strategies.
• Develop solutions based on complex analysis, using research and innovative thinking.
• Build and maintain relationships with stakeholders to achieve business objectives, using influencing skills.

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