Job vacancy: Solutions Architect, NHS South, Central and West Commissioning Support Unit, Bristol

Job summary

Main area: DDaT
Grade: Band 8b
Contract: Permanent
Hours: Full time - 37.5 hours per week
Job ref: 891-INT-016WH-A

Employer: NHS South, Central and West Commissioning Support Unit
Employer type: NHS
Site: NHS SCW Office Base (Hybrid)
Town: Bristol
Salary: £62,215 - £72,293 Per Annum
Salary period: Yearly
Closing: 02/01/2025 23:59

Solutions Architect

Band 8b

We want SCW to be a great place to work, where we all feel safe and can be our authentic selves. This means valuing and respecting everyone from all backgrounds and embracing equality, diversity, inclusivity & wellbeing across everything we do. We are committed to listening, learning and improving on our approach to ensure these principles remain at our heart, helping us all to thrive.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

For further information on our specific requirements for this role, please refer to the Job Description and Person Specification.

SCW is committed to our process of redeployment of at-risk members of our existing workforce to new roles. As such, all job adverts are subject to this policy and we reserve the right to close, delay or remove adverts while this process is completed. If you do experience a delay in the shortlisting stage of the recruitment cycle, please bear with us while this process is completed, and contact the named contact if you have any questions.

Person specification

Values & Behaviours

Essential criteria

Patient First – Customer Excellence
Aspirational
Collaborative
Insightful
Respectful

Education

Essential criteria

Educated to masters’ level or equivalent level of experience of working at a senior level in specialist area
Evidence of post qualifying and continuing professional development

Desirable criteria

Member of relevant professional body

Knowledge & Experience

Essential criteria

Experience in communications and stakeholder management
Experience of leading a team across multiple workstreams, managing conflicting priorities.
Experience of conducting staff performance reviews
Understanding of commercial awareness and approaches to service delivery organisations

Desirable criteria

Understanding of the public sector
A good understanding of the health and social care environment and roles and responsibilities within it

Skills & Capabilities

Essential criteria

Developed communication skills for delivering key messages to a range of stakeholders/customers both internal and external (including outside the NHS) to the organisation, some at very senior level
Good presentational skills for conveying complex concepts
Ability to make decisions autonomously, when required, on difficult issues, working to tight and often changing timescales and within financial constraints
Excellent customer service skills; Team working skills; Self-motivated; Ability to move between details and the bigger picture. Demonstrates honesty and integrity and promotes organisational values
Experience of delivering detailed design, documentation and successful implementation of new or changed operational processes through options appraisal techniques.
Ability to interpret contracts and SLAs to ensure effective delivery within the terms of the agreement
Must be able to provide and receive complex, sensitive or contentious information, negotiate with senior stakeholders/customers on difficult and controversial issues, and present complex and sensitive information to large and influential groups/customers
Excellent understanding of infrastructure management, backup methodologies and implementation.
Experience in hybrid cloud technologies and migration of on prem to Public Cloud services
Excellent understanding of data centre compute and storage technologies
Experience in technically architecting an enterprise scale routing and switching infrastructure
Experience in technically supporting enterprise scale data centre architectures and technologies
Experience of the design, documentation and successful implementation of new or changed enterprise architectures.
Evidence of managing large scale 3rd party contracts
Experience in supporting and implementing public Cloud services (Azure)

Desirable criteria

Evidence of commercial awareness ensuring solutions are commercially viable and deliver to Return on Investment forecasts

SCW offers agile and hybrid ways of working. Hybrid working is a type of flexible working where employees blend working from different locations. It offers the employee the ability to choose to work wherever and however they are most productive, whether it be in an office, at home, or a customer site. Office location can be flexible within the SCW estate and will be agreed upon offer of contract.

SCW staff that are in posts considered to be agile will not be expected to attend office space for general working but will be required on occasions to attend face to face meetings and collaborative working sessions that may require travel to their home base or other locations across the estate or customer sites.

Please feel free to contact the Recruiting Manager of this vacancy to discuss further the working arrangement.

Some of our sites have accessible parking provision which is free or paid for work purpose this not contractual entitlement.

We make every effort to contact all candidates to let them know the outcome of their application. However, if you haven't heard back from us within 2 weeks after the closing date, please assume that your application has not been successful.

This is an exciting time to join NHS South, Central and West.

SCW is an NHS support and transformation organisation that helps health and social care organisations deliver the best possible care to people. As partners of choice to more than 200 organisations that support millions of people, our mission is to help deliver the NHS Long Term Plan, improving the health and wellbeing of communities.

We’re supporting clients whose vision and quest for innovation requires us to be flexible, adaptable and open to adventure; giving us the freedom to work in new ways, looking at things from a different angle and challenging the norm.

We are an equal opportunities employer committed to attracting and retaining the best people in order to provide the best possible services to our customers. Our people enjoy challenging, rewarding roles, supporting our customers to improve their local health and care services.

We want our people to fulfil their potential so we offer a wide range of training, opportunities to gain qualifications, as well as access to coaching, mentoring schemes and employee wellbeing and support for a healthy work-life balance.

SCW were selected as an NHS Employers Diversity and Inclusion Partner for three consecutive years 2015-2018 and are now proud to be Alumni of this programme.

If you are successful in your application, we will value your experience, your contribution and we will give you the knowledge to succeed as part of your specialist team and as part of our organisation.

Our values

Patients First: our sole focus and inspiration is to help commissioners improve the quality of patient care, treatment and experience.

Aspirational: we deliver excellence, and celebrate innovation. This drives us towards becoming the best.

Collaborative: we build effective partnerships, whilst focusing on delivery. We work towards achieving shared goals.

Insightful: As experts in our fields, we understand the bigger picture and its complexities, we challenge convention, and we uncover opportunities.

Respectful: We treat everyone with respect and hope it will be returned. Recognising and valuing their knowledge, we involve our customers, teams and partners in decisions.

Please note SCW asks successful candidates to upload their Right to Work and Identity documents for digital verification. If you are unable to provide the required documents for the digital verification or do not have access to a smartphone or tablet, this will result in the verification being done face-to-face.