Solution Architect - Guidewire - Berkley

Berkley Technology Services (BTS) is the dynamic technology solution for W. R. Berkley Corporation, a Fortune 500 Commercial Lines Insurance Company. With key locations in Urbandale, IA and Wilmington, DE, BTS provides innovative and customer-focused IT solutions to the majority of WRBC’s 60+ operating units across the globe. BTS’s wide reach ensures that ideas and opinions are considered at every level of the organization to guarantee we find the best solutions possible.  

Driven by a commitment to collaboration, BTS acts as consultants to our customers and Operating Units by providing comprehensive solutions that not only address the challenge at hand, but proactively plan for the “What’s Next” in our industry and beyond.  

With a culture centered on innovation and entrepreneurial spirit, BTS stands as a community of technology leaders with eyes toward the future -- leaders who truly care about growing not only their team members, but themselves, and take pride in their employees who shine. BTS offers endless ways to get involved and have the chance to grow your career into a wide range of roles you'd never known existed. Come join us as we push forward into the future of industry leading technological solutions.  

Berkley Technology Services: Right Team, Right Technology, Simple and Secure. 

The Solution Architect helps lead the organization in the planning, development, and application of solution architecture to achieve business objectives and strategies.  They align technical initiatives, principles, and practices with WRB’s strategic vision, goals, constraints, technologies, and tools.  They span business and technical strategies as well as provide detailed design recommendations to individual solutions.  This role understands the relationship between business processes and enabling technologies over a multi-year time horizon so that better recommendations and better decisions can be made. 

A Solution Architect is also an active member of the WRB Architecture Community.  They are aware of and engage with other architects for consultation on projects or efforts.  They are also aware of and contribute to patterns, standards, best practices, proofs-of-concept, tool evaluations, mentoring, and continuous improvement

Technical Strategy:

• Provide feedback to overall 3-5-year solution strategy, including technology investment and lifecycle goals.
• Contribute to the development, management, and ongoing maintenance of a business and technical capability model.
• Build target and reference architectures to contribute to WRB’s multi-year architecture strategy.
• Maintain contact with vendors, industry peers, and professional associations to keep informed of existing and emerging industry trends, standards, and technologies.
• Able to create supporting architecture documentation and artifacts on a consistent basis. 

Consulting/Guidance:

• Provide consulting and guidance services to development and infrastructure teams as well as other architects in the development of solutions.
• Present recommendations and solutions clearly and concisely to multiple audiences (including program leadership, including technical and business leaders); emphasizing capability development and value creation over technology specific results.
• Participate in technology and tool evaluations, including some hands-on engineering and proof-of-concept work.  

Leadership 

• Build relationships with business partners, technical groups, and management on technical strategy, priorities, and timelines.
• Lead program and large solution adoptions across BTS and WRB; effectively manage change management for impacted groups.
• Be visible and inspire others to engage with and follow WRB’s technical strategy. 

Patterns and Standards Development

• Identify pattern and standard gaps and determine potential options to address.
• Research, develop, and drive the adoption of design patterns and standards.
• Perform technology and tool evaluations, including proof-of-concept and feasibility analysis.
• Contribute to a catalog of design patterns and standards and socializing them with the architecture community. 

Governance

• Participate in the architecture review process for patterns, standards, and solutions.
• Rationalize technology and tool recommendations.
• Is aware of and an advocate for patterns and standards (esp. in Infrastructure, Data, and Security domains). 

Community of Practice

• Contribute to the architecture community by participating in online forums, developing standards, patterns, solutions design documentation, and white papers which are shared across the community.
• Develop strong relationships with other business and technical teams and mentor less experienced developers and/or engineers in the development of their skills. 

• 10+ years progressive engineering experience developing/engineering solutions and leading multiple cross-domain technical or engineering initiatives.
• 6+ years in Guidewire Architecture domain leading large-scale architecture initiatives
• At least one (1+) commercial Guidewire PolicyCenter implementations, leveraging SBT and APD across 5+ lines of business
• Significant hands-on technical base across multiple technical domains
• Ability to thrive and produce results with little or no supervision in a fast-paced, entrepreneurial environment.
• Ability to independently come up with solutions that effectively address business and IT issues through technical analysis, troubleshooting, research, evaluation, and communication.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills with ability to interact seamlessly at all levels with both technical and business stakeholders.
• Strong customer service focus and sense of urgency.
• Ability to quickly adapt and learn modern technologies and systems.
• Superior problem solving and analytical skills.
• Ability to create an atmosphere of teamwork and collaboration.
• Ability to look at the “big picture” and see opportunities for improvement.
• Ability to break opportunities for improvement down into bite-sized chunks that can be pursued on a project-by-project basis. 

Preferred 

• 1+ Tier1 Guidewire PolicyCenter implementations
• 3+ years using Agile development methodologies.
• 4+ years Arhictect experience at a product company.
• 2+ years in a management or leadership role.
• Work history in the financial services or insurance industries. 

The Company is an equal employment opportunity employer.