Solution Architect - Stock Optimisation at Reply Limited, Reading, 3 Months, £Contract Rate

Key Responsibilities:

• Create, review, and contribute to documentation and processes (RFI, RFP, etc.) for selecting new technology to support business goals.
• Evaluate formal requirements documents for new projects, providing feedback on unresolved questions and gaps.
• Design comprehensive end-to-end solutions based on formal requirements, covering all domains (Process, Applications, Data, Technology, Service, Integration, Security). Prepare and review Solution Blueprints.
• Define current and future architectural designs, securing agreement on required changes and transition states.
• Ensure both functional and non-functional requirements are met by the proposed solutions. Facilitate alignment between business and IT priorities.
• Obtain approval for solution blueprints from the design council and communicate the architecture to key stakeholders.
• Either perform or engage specialist architects to prepare low-level designs. Oversee the systems integrator's application solution design to ensure it meets requirements.
• Collaborate with systems integrators and other architects to resolve design issues and manage changes to the solution design, ensuring architectural impacts are understood and agreed upon.

Skills and Experience:

• Clear and effective communicator with excellent documentation and diagramming abilities.
• Proven track record of delivering solution designs in large-volume retail environments, preferably in fashion or general merchandise sectors, ideally at an international level, particularly for allocation and replenishment, stock optimization, and forecasting applications.
• Experience with planning platforms and store systems/operations.
• Essential understanding of retail supply chain processes.
• Ability to balance technical/strategic decisions with practical/achievable solutions.
• Expertise in building relationships at all organizational levels and influencing without authority.
• Experience in large-scale IT-enabled transformation programs with a solid understanding of the systems development life cycle.
• Experience with SaaS applications and retail ERP solutions (eg, Oracle).
• Ability to analyse and understand complex, interconnected IT systems.
• Certification or experience with architectural methods such as TOGAF, FEAC, or Zachman. Familiarity with architecture tools is desirable.
• Over 7 years of IT engineering/design experience in large multinational organizations.
• At least 5 years of solution architecture experience.