Guidewire Architect - PolicyCenter -- W2 Only

Guidewire Architect - PolicyCenter -- W2 Only
Position Type: Contract
Location: Worcester, MA

The Senior Architect provides leadership and facilitation for project or program solution design, specifically focusing on the Guidewire Insurance Suite Policy Center application. This role involves guiding projects on their overall high-level solution approach, engaging with the broader project team, and representing the solution design at formal architecture review and approvals meetings. The Senior Architect is the owner of the project solution architecture process and solution architecture artifacts.

Responsibilities/Essential Functions:
At an expert level, the Senior Architect is responsible for:
Strategic planning and road mapping activities, particularly for Guidewire Policy Center implementations.
Driving technology and thought leadership across technical projects involving Guidewire applications.
Ensuring project documentation for the Architecture Review Board, including Technical Approach and Technical Design.
Managing the tenants of the project's architecture (business, application, information, and technology architecture).
Promoting reuse of technologies and processes across technical projects.
Developing reference architecture, compliance rules, and principles for use across the portfolio and sharing them across the enterprise.
Managing technical risk for all technical decisions and any platform dependencies.
Leading the evaluation process of the architecture components of the project.
Planning and integrating new technologies into projects for effective execution.
Communicating enterprise application platform vision and strategy for software architecture and application capabilities, software platforms, and shared solutions.
Ensuring software portfolio conformance within the division (Get Current/Stay Current).
Mentoring Solution and Senior Solution Architects to further their growth.

Key Measures of Success:
Delivering technical design and approach.
Providing position statements and solution patterns.
Measurable roadmaps with clear milestones

Required Skills & Competencies and Experience:
· Demonstrated ability to lead architecture and vendor discussions, articulate technical designs and trade-offs, and provide clear technical direction with minimal supervision.
· Ability to synthesize information from multiple stakeholders and quickly develop recommendations, architectural patterns, and solution options.
· Proven ability to drive decisions, challenge assumptions, and communicate architecture rationale to both technical and non-technical audiences.
At an expert level, uses core solution architecture skills:
Excellent interpersonal skills in areas such as teamwork, facilitation, and negotiation.
Excellent planning, facilitation, and organizational skills.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
Ability to understand the long-term ("big picture") and short-term perspectives of situations.
Ability to translate business needs into solution architecture requirements.
Ability to estimate the financial impact of individual solution architecture alternatives.
Ability to define multiple solution options to business problems.
Ability to identify, analyze, and resolve performance bottlenecks across PolicyCenter, integrations, batch processing, and database interactions.
Knowledge of key aspects of business.
Expert knowledge of information principles and policies.
Understanding of application development methodologies.
Understanding of SOA, object-oriented analysis and design, or client/server systems.
Ability to quickly comprehend the functions and capabilities of new technologies.

Competencies:
Conceptualization: Visualize the solution, process, or infrastructure required to satisfy the business requirement.
Innovation: Improve organizational performance through the exploration and introduction of new opportunities that add to the business value proposition or reduce costs.
Results-driven Attitude: Deliver appropriate solutions based on Enterprise Architecture principles and compliance rules within required timeframes.
Enterprise Perspective: Understand the broader implications of strategy across all business units while visualizing the project-level implications.
Foresight: Manage short-term, medium-term, and long-term planning horizons concurrently.
Consensus Building: Enable a group of people with diverse backgrounds to accept a majority or common conclusion without damaging relationships.
Facilitation: Guide a debate without forcing a conclusion while ensuring all participants have an opportunity to voice ideas and opinions.
Leadership: Influence a broad audience to adopt a particular path and be respected as a leader regardless of position/role in the organization.
Logic: Select the best solution from a range of options to resolve an issue or seize an opportunity.
Communication: Effectively convey the results of the architecture, the process to develop it, and the value it provides by demonstrating the applicability of technology to the business.


Experience:
Bachelor's degree in computer science, system analysis, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
Minimum of 10 years in the industry with at least 5 years as a Senior Solution Architect with increasing development responsibility.
Exposure to multiple, diverse business systems, technologies, and processing environments.
Solution design and development experience.
Specific experience with Guidewire Insurance Suite Policy Center application.
Experience with Guidewire PolicyCenter Cloud migrations, ISO Rating, Standard Base Template (SBT), data integration, APIs, MFA, SSO, and performance tuning.
Demonstrated ability to identify and resolve performance bottlenecks across PolicyCenter transactions, integrations, batch processing, and database interactions.
Deep experience designing enterprise integration architectures, including REST APIs, event-driven integrations, integration resiliency patterns, monitoring, versioning strategies, and operational supportability.
Insurance Industry & Product Knowledge:
Broad understanding of Property/Casualty systems & applications.
Understanding of how changes/updates affect not only the specific domain but also other systems in the assigned business unit.