Enterprise Architect - Supply Chain

The Enterprise Architect role involves contributing to global strategic initiatives and making technology decisions for both in-house and vendor solutions to modernize Ford's Supply Chain.

Responsibilities

• Define business and technical architecture solutions to modernize Ford's Supply Chain.
• Address diverse challenges in N-Tier supplier collaboration, transparency, sustainability, and risk management.
• Work with technologies like Google Cloud Platform, Pega, E2Open, and Resilinc.
• Identify key portfolio capabilities and map global system strategy.
• Evaluate vendors and make buy-vs-build decisions.
• Modernize Ford in-house applications to Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
• Provide enterprise architectural services for Supply Chain Management products.
• Design and consult on solution architecture.
• Develop architectural Points of View for proposed initiatives.
• Collaborate closely with product teams and business partners.
• Formulate strategy and support product lines through interaction with the business community, PDO teams, and other architects.
• Conduct hands-on evaluation of current supply chain operations to design customer-centric solutions.
• Partner with Business Leads, Software Delivery Leads, Product Managers, and Software Engineers in system design and technology evaluation.
• Provide support for application functional, performance, and availability issues.
• Participate in vendor solution evaluation processes.

Critical Functional Tasks

Deliver Business, Information and Solution Architectures

Business Architecture

• Understand Business Goals and Objectives
• Conduct Stakeholder Analysis
• Develop Business Capability Models:
• Map Business Processes
• Align IT and Business Strategies
• Create Business Architecture Documentation

Information Architecture

• Assess current data sources, types, and how data will be consumed for the solutions.
• Design Information Models
• Create conceptual, logical, and physical data models that represent the organisation's data structures and relationships.
• Design and propose solutions for integrating data from disparate systems to create a unified view of information.
• Document Information Architecture

Solution Architecture

• Collaborate with stakeholders to gather functional and non-functional requirements for the solution.
• Evaluate Technology Options: Research and assess various technology solutions and platforms that can meet the identified requirements.
• Create high-level architectural designs that outline the components, interfaces, and interactions within the solution.
• Ensure Alignment with Standards:
• Develop Prototypes or Proofs of Concept
• Document Solution Architecture

Work closely with development teams to ensure that the solution is implemented according to the architecture, providing guidance and support as needed.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, Engineering, or a related field.
• 3+ years of experience as an business and/or solution architect.
• Strong curiosity about technology and a self-starter attitude.
• Ability to conduct self-directed research and analysis.
• Team player with collaboration skills and knowledge-sharing mindset.
• Independent problem solver.
• Willingness to engage with business customers, PDO team members, ITO, and others.
• Strong presentation skills.
• Desire to become a well-rounded architect.
• Prior architectural experience is an asset but not a requirement.
• Experience with microservice architecture, REST APIs, and distributed cloud systems.
• Previous experience as a software developer/engineer.
• Experience with multi-team, large-scale projects and incorporating all levels of architecture development (Business, Solution, Application, Infrastructure).
• Good understanding of Agile development methodologies.
• Negotiation skills and ability to work with diverse stakeholders and customers.

Technologies and Skills:

• Google Cloud Platform, Kubernetes/Serverless hosting, Cloud SQL & NoSQL Databases.
• Vendor SaaS evaluations and management.
• Microservice architecture and REST APIs.
• Agile development methodologies.

Benefits:

• Immediate medical, dental, and prescription drug coverage
• Flexible family care, parental leave, new parent ramp-up programs, subsidized back-up child care and more
• Vehicle discount program for employees and family members, and management leases
• Tuition assistance
• Established and active employee resource groups
• Paid time off for individual and team community service
• A generous schedule of paid holidays, including the week between Christmas and New Year's Day
• Paid time off and the option to purchase additional vacation time.