API Ecosystem Architect, Senior Manager, FS

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Job description

About PwC
PwC is the leading global professional services firm and acclaimed as one of the world's leading employers and provider of technology transformational services. We offer diverse and rewarding experiences for our people: through the variety of clients we engage with and innovative projects we deliver; the calibre of our teams; and the exceptional training and career development opportunities we provide.

PwC is working with a broad spectrum of clients who are increasingly responding to the challenges and opportunities of operating in the digital age, underpinned by a Cloud-first agenda. PwC provides independent advice and extensive capability to help our clients deal with the impact of digital disruption on traditional ways of doing business. We help our clients with assessment and identification of transformational opportunities, road mapping, design, and execution, supported by our Strategy, Operations and Technology teams alongside the appropriate delivery partner ecosystems.

About the role
There is a significant shift in how Financial Services are thinking about their digital transformations, leveraging a vibrant ecosystem of Fintech and partners, enabling fast time to market and new revenue streams. This shift in architecture thinking is primarily driven by the following factors:

• Banks are now looking to transform using business led, cloud based ecosystem solutions that can be configured, deployed and adapted quickly.
• Banks have spent years on developing digital apps, but not digitised their underlying platforms. Cost reduction and need for agility is bringing this to the top of the agenda
• It is generally acknowledged that 'custom build' digital banks by incumbents is not a good strategy and that traditional 'core banking replacement' programmes destroy value.
• Covid has brought channel shift and digital capabilities front and centre. Migration to digital banking just accelerated this shift by 3-4 years

PwC has developed a unique and innovative set of assets, platforms and ecosystem partnerships to support our clients capitalising on that growth.
Working with our clients' leadership teams, our API Ecosystem architect will lead the architectural design and solution components of highly complex, often business critical multi-application environments to enable and unlock new value streams within the client's technology base. They will have a wealth of experience in hands on delivery of multi-year technology delivery programmes at global, multinational clients or worked at tier 1 technology firms to implement their solutions to clients. They have a broad understanding of the capabilities, technology and vendor landscape in financial services in either capital markets, retail or commercial banking.

Our API Ecosystem architect has deep understanding of the technology trends in financial services and several years of experience architecting and delivering cloud native, API enabled architectures for this Industry. They are able to articulate the business and technological value of an ecosystem architecture, brings a broad awareness of the Fintech capabilities available in the market and understands how modern technologies can deliver and manage efficient partnerships with ecosystem players.

They set themselves apart in being able to develop solutions for both emerging and often cloud based technologies and client legacy systems in a way that delivers value to the client and enables the client to move to an agile technology estate. They will work with partners to make appropriate software and vendor choices to support this plan and apply several best of breed technologies to create an overall solution. Ultimately working with clients to grow revenue, remove complexity, scale globally, reduce costs and set our clients for success in the digital age.

Additional information

• Opportunity for working from home? (Yes)
• Amount of time client based (70%+)
• Opportunity for job sharing? (No)
• Need to travel/overnight stays away from home (Yes)
• Opportunity for flexible working (hours)? (Yes)
• Typical amount of time PwC office based (20%)

Requirements
The API ecosystem architect will have a proven track record in helping Banking & Capital Markets clients transform their organisations through leading on business case development, taking lead roles in developing solution and technical architectures. Furthermore, the ideal candidate will:

• Have extensive examples of leading the development of solution architectures of large technology enabled business transformations encompassing the wide range of multi-disciplinary skills required to deliver change through emerging technologies;
• Be a trusted adviser, with a track record of advising senior executives and company boards on executing value led technical transformation within leading organisations;
• Have 10+ years' experience as a technical/solution architect - with a successful track record of designing and delivering complex projects including emerging technologies underpinned by cloud components, in one or more industries The candidate will have experience in all of the following areas:
  • Industry Knowledge: Experience and understanding of the Financial Services industry, including knowledge of the technological capabilities required, challenges and vendor landscape.
  • Emerging Technology: Understand technology trends around emerging technologies such as AI, RPA, Drones, Robotics, Blockchain, etc.
  • API and Integration: extensive experience in API and ecosystem integration architectures, design patterns, API platforms and technology landscape.
  • Digital Architectures: Architecting end to end digital solutions for business and operational teams leveraging DevOps capabilities
  • Industry recognised front and back office applications: Broad understanding of front to back technologies in Financial services (e.g. SAP, Oracle, Salesforce, Workday) and a level of functional knowledge
  • Transformational Enterprise Architectures: Integration/middleware solutions, Open API's, Microservices/Containerisation, etc.
  • Enterprise cloud vendors: Migration to cloud using either Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform or any other large cloud providers
• They will have market presence, having a personal significant track record of delivering impactful results across a large network of clients;
• An inspiring team leader, able to rapidly establish and lead high-performing, multi-disciplinary teams, drawn from across PwC, our clients' staff and third party organisations;
• Be accomplished in building effective relationships with third-party delivery organisations through the process of sourcing selecting, and managing the technical engagement with vendors/software providers;
• A confident and impactful communicator, both written and verbal, able to clearly explain solution design to non-technical audiences, and technical design to technical audiences;

Consulting
In Consulting we deliver practical, far-sighted advice that gets straight to the heart of clients' business issues and delivers amazing results by helping our clients improve the way they operate, reduce costs, manage risks, leverage talent or fundamentally change the way they do business, the work you do will be all about helping organisations of all shapes and sizes work smarter and grow faster. You could find yourself working with household names in a diverse range of industries - everyone from big-name broadcasters and high-street banks to multinational telecoms operators and energy companies.

The skills we look for in future employees
All our people need to demonstrate the skills and behaviours that support us in delivering our business strategy. This is important to the work we do for our business, and our clients. These skills and behaviours make up our global leadership framework, 'The PwC Professional' and are made up of five core attributes; whole leadership, technical capabilities, business acumen, global acumen and relationships.
Learn more here:

The Deal
We want all of our people to feel empowered to be the best that they can be, which is why we have 'The Deal'.
Find out more about our firmwide Employee Value Proposition:

Diversity
Valuing Difference. Driving Inclusion.
We work in a changing world which offers great opportunities for people with diverse backgrounds and experiences. We seek to attract and employ the best people from the widest talent pool because creating value through diversity is what makes us strong as a business, enabling us to solve important problems and deliver value to our clients. We encourage an inclusive culture where people can be themselves, are valued for their strengths and are empowered to be the best they can be. As an organisation with an increasingly agile workforce, we also support different ways of working offering flexible working arrangements. Learn more here about our work to support an inclusive culture.