Senior Infrastructure Architect

Job description / Role

INSPIRE | EXHILARATE | DELIGHT

For over six decades, Chalhoub Group has been a partner and creator of luxury experiences in the Middle East. The Group, in its endeavour to excel as a hybrid retailer, has reinforced its distribution and marketing services with a portfolio of eight owned brands and over 300 international brands in the luxury, beauty, fashion, and art de vivre categories. More recently, the Group expanded its expertise into new categories of luxury watches, jewellery, and eyewear.

Every step at Chalhoub Group is taken with the customer at heart. Be it constantly reinventing itself or focusing on innovation to provide luxury experiences at over 750+ experiential retail stores, online and through mobile apps, each touch point leads to delighting the customer.

Today, Chalhoub Group stands for 14,000 skilled and talented professionals across seven countries, whose cohesive efforts have resulted in the Group being ranked third in the Middle East and first in Saudi Arabia as a Great Place to Work®.

The role

Here at Chalhoub Group Technology, we pride ourselves on product innovation and technical excellence and are constantly adding new applications and new functionality to our product suite, used by a leading Luxury Group in the GCC region. Having recently accelerated and transformed our Infrastructure solutions and as part of the transformation that Tech is executing, we are now in a period of dramatic growth that will see our services and product suites grow considerably over the coming year.

The Senior Infrastructure Architect is responsible for providing technical leadership to define the strategy, roadmap, standards and blueprints for Infrastructure platforms and services as well as design and build fit-for-purpose, qualitative and robust Infrastructure Technology Solutions to support the delivery of business and Technology programmes and projects to meet business and non-functional requirements.

What you'll be doing

- Drive the definition of infrastructure architecture and roadmap including: architectural vision, principles, standards (including standard products and platforms) and policies; target state blueprints and roadmap for infrastructure architecture strategy
- Maintaining and facilitating the process for infrastructure lifecycle management
- Define and champion the use of the infrastructure standards, procedures and best practice within the team
- Work closely with Architects to align the infrastructure strategy with the enterprise architecture (all technology domains) and business strategy
- Socialise and secure support for infrastructure architecture strategy and roadmap from key stakeholders, most notably the heads of Technology for each domain in Group Tech
- Ensure the infrastructure team fully understands, follows and champions the technology standards and patterns as defined by infrastructure architecture
- Lead the analysis of the current Infrastructure environment to detect critical deficiencies and recommend solutions for improvement
- Monitor and ensures compliance to Group Technology standards for quality and security
- Coordinate and ensure consistency in process and content across infrastructure architecture
- Participate in relevant solution design review activities to ensure alignment to infrastructure architecture, infrastructure strategies and architecture principles
- Participate in architecture governance forums and review proposed infrastructure designs
- Support Infrastructure and Solution Architects and technical teams in identifying and assessing options
- Lead analysis of technology industry and market trends to determine their potential impact on the infrastructure architecture
- Provide technical leadership and escalation support for the resolution of defects, incidents and problems during the testing, implementation and transition phases of the programmes and projects
- Proactively draw out all types of requirements on the Technology Infrastructure from stakeholders by using a variety of elicitation techniques (e.g. interviewing, modeling, and surveying)
- Critically evaluate information gathered from multiple sources, reconcile conflicts, decompose high level information into details and distinguish users requests from the underlying business problems
- To provide technical advice on the use of the Technology Infrastructure and integration of various business applications on to Group Technology Infrastructure where needed
- Ensure infrastructure architecture competencies and capabilities are kept in line with industry developments
- Keep abreast of the Group Technology strategy, business plans and latest industry trends.

What you'll need to succeed

- University Degree in Computer Science, Information Systems or related disciplines.
- Minimum of 10 years of Technology experience with at least 8 years in infrastructure strategy and architecture design.
- Well-developed analytical, problem-solving, decision-making and critical thinking skills, leveraging both logic and creativity; strong troubleshooting and root cause analysis skills; ability to identify patterns and generate informed ideas.
- Proven technical management and specialist experience of working in a complex Technology infrastructure environment.
- Professional competency in at least three technical specialisations, with a broad understanding of other current and emerging technologies.
- Experience of developing solutions and making decisions for a team with only minimal management guidance and supervision.
- Experience of building and maintaining relationships at a senior level and have an ability to influence at all levels.
- Knowledge of how to lever technology to reduce operational costs and delivery business innovation in a fast moving and dynamic industry sector. Ability to listen and articulate ideas verbally, and in the written form, to a broad range of audiences; ability to ask probing questions and deliver presentations.
- Ability to work well with others and as part of a technical team. Focus on the business and customer's needs; ability to set expectations and understand end user behaviour.
- Ability and willingness to proactively accept and drive change to accomplish positive collective outcomes.
- Ability to understand strategy and align tactical and strategic work in a well-balanced way to achieve results.
- Retail Technology knowledge is advantageous.
- TOGAF certification is preferred.
- Strong knowledge of different cloud platforms (AWS) & services (i.e., SaaS, PaaS, IaaS - terraform, terragrunt).
- Experience of containerization such as Kubernetes, Docker; knowledge of serverless technology and digital hosting systems (Fargate, AWS Lambda, GCP Cloud Run, GCP).

Requirements

What we can offer you

With us, you will turn your aspirations into reality. We will help shape your journey through enriching experiences, learning and development opportunities and exposure to different assignments within your role or through internal mobility. Our Group offers diverse career paths for those who are extraordinary, every day.

We recognise the value that you bring, and we strive to provide a competitive benefits package which includes health care, child education contribution, remote and flexible working policies as well as exclusive employee discounts.

We Invite All Applicants to Apply

It Takes Diversity Of Thought, Culture, Background, Differing Abilities and Perspectives to truly Inspire, Exhilarate and Delight our customers. At Chalhoub Group, we are committed to inclusion and diversity.

We welcome all applicants to apply and be part of our exciting future. We ensure equal opportunity for all our applicants without regard to gender, age, race, religion, national origin or disability status.

About the Company

The Chalhoub Group is the leading partner for luxury across the Middle East since 1955. As an expert in retail, distribution and marketing services based in Dubai, the group has become a major player in the fashion, beauty and gift sectors regionally.

By blending its Middle East expertise and intimate knowledge of luxury, Chalhoub Group is building brands in the region, by offering service excellence to all its partners and a unique experience to its customers through its passionate teams.

With a growing workforce of more than 9,000 people, implemented in 14 countries, as well as the operating of over 470 retail outlets, the group's success is attributed to its most valued asset of highly skilled and dedicated teams. Professionalism and passion are what fuel the Chalhoub Group's competitive edge in today's market.

By being committed to implementing sustainable practices into their business, the Chalhoub Group has been awarded in 2013 the CSR Label from the Dubai Chamber of Commerce.