Cloud Solutions Architect - GM Protection

JOB DESCRIPTION

Why GM Financial?

GM Financial is the wholly owned captive finance subsidiary of General Motors and is headquartered in Fort Worth, U.S. We are a global provider of auto finance solutions, with operations in North America, South America and the Asia Pacific region. Through our long-standing relationships with auto dealers, we offer attractive retail financing and lease programs to meet the needs of each customer. We also offer commercial lending products to dealers to help them finance and grow their businesses.

At GM Financial, our team members define and shape our culture - an environment that welcomes new ideas, fosters integrity and creates a sense of community and belonging. Here we do more than work - we thrive.

Our Purpose: We pioneer the innovations that move and connect people to what matters

GM Financial is targeting significant growth as it transforms the Protection/Insurance Products into a full captive platform. Our team is responsible for bringing the branded General Motors F&I products to market and we work hands on with our dealer partners to improve performance in their F&I department. In order to provide the most competitive products and business insights, we are building advanced data and analytics capabilities.

RESPONSIBILITIES

About the role:

• Manage the enterprise-wide cloud strategy, develop the architecture governance framework and define architecture foundations

• Serve as a trusted advisor to global technology leaders

• Stay abreast of new industry trends and provide subject matter expertise in cloud technologies, providing consultation to leadership

• Research, analyze, design, propose and support the delivery of solutions that are appropriate for business and technology strategies

• Understand, advocate and support IT enterprise strategies and act as a visionary to proactively assist in the direction for future strategies

• Recommend best-fit cloud solutions based on need and risk appetite

• Lead the identification and analysis of enterprise business drivers to develop architecture requirements

• Participate in the development and ongoing management of enterprise architecture governance structure based on business and IT strategies

• Lead and facilitate the creation of governing principles to guide infrastructure decision-making

• Manage the budget for the teams that you are responsible for and the related infrastructure & services

• Supervise day to day operations, guiding the team to provide internal and external customers with excellent customer service while striving to provide world-class service

• Effectively communicate the status of all projects, problems, and issues to the IT senior management team

• Must have high attention to detail, be well organized and be a self-starter

• Must be able to work with limited direct supervision

• Regularly communicates project health and identifies risks to project and program stakeholders, sponsors, and management

• Resolve most conflicts between timeline, budget, and scope independently but intuitively escalate complex or consequential issues to management

• Identify and direct changes through appropriate review and approval mechanisms

• Define cloud standards, DevOps, Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) tool chain and Standard Operating Environment (SOE)

• Define, implement and enforce the cloud standard operating environment, cloud standards, and associated tools/platforms/frameworks for the GMF application portfolio, in coordination with IT-wide efforts and Technology Architecture and Planning

• Drive Proof-of-Concepts and implementation, with hands-on involvement as SME, for new SOE items: build deployment automation pipelines, build automated next gen CI/CD pipelines partnering with development teams, build and integrate new technologies like containers enabling multi-cloud and preventing cloud provider lock-in

• Contribute to, and influence IT-wide definition and enhancements of Azure and other public cloud platforms customization, standards and best practices for GM Financial

• Represent GM Financial externally in conferences and summits. Build partnerships and network with other external vendors to understand tool offerings, how we can integrate and benefits to GM Financial

• Understand and build on emerging industry trends and how they work with GM Financial

• Define and execute the IT application portfolio strategy for public and private cloud migrations, data center consolidation and on-premises evolution, in alignment with overall IT strategy and directions

• Plan and drive public cloud migration: Total cost of ownership including projections and budgets, application assessment, security concerns and resolution, network concerns and resolution, review checklists with application owners, operations teams, development and testing, DBA's, appropriate migration paths, etc.

• Define and enforce Cloud architecture best practices: availability; redundancy schemes, performance, Disaster Recovery, DB and Interfacing Systems, etc.

• Educate teams about Cloud standards, migrations and SOE

• Drive training sessions, curriculum and code labs in our Cloud Dojo with dev teams

• Be SME and expert across the business for all Cloud technical hands-on questions, with an initial focus on Azure and Cloud Native, 12 Factor Software development

• Deep understanding of cloud computing technologies, business drivers and emerging computing trends

• Knowledge and understanding of industry trends and new technologies and ability to apply trends to architectural needs

• Knowledge of enterprise platforms and operating systems as well as knowledge of key business functions and processes

• Working knowledge of Agile development, Scrum and Application Lifecycle Management

• Demonstrated ability to provide leadership, management, and mentoring to team members

• Demonstrable experience leading software developers, systems or process analysts

• Demonstrated excellent communication (verbal and writing), influencing and negotiation skills

• Ability to interact with and provide architectural design guidance to project teams made up of employee and/or supplier resources

• Ability to effectively communicate with other senior leaders of IT on program strategies and plans and negotiate quality solutions

• Ability to break down complex topics into simple to digest information and data points, adjusted to audiences at various levels

• Ability to create system and process flow diagrams, data flow diagrams, sequence and UML diagrams, inter and intra system dependencies within the functional domain and across them

• Ability to facilitate group meetings/discussions

• Ability to broker solutions for issues between functional domains, senior leaders

• Demonstrated strong analytic and problem-solving abilities

• 5-7 years of systems design experience with at least three or more years of experience with cloud like technologies such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Pref

• Deep technical experience in one or more of the following areas: software design or development, application design, systems operations/management, database architecture, virtualization, IP networking, storage, IT security and Linux system administration Pref

• Experience with the following: Azure Eventhub, Azure Virtual Machines, Azure Kubernetes Service, Blob Storage, Azure DNS, Virtual Networks, Redis Cache and Azure App Service, Containers Pref

• Experience in articulating the business drives and architectural approach/trade-offs during discussions for solution buy-in at various levels and gain consensus Pref

• Experience in driving new infrastructure technologies from proof-of-concepts to full production implementation Pref

• Experience in driving cloud migration and strategy initiatives Preferred

• Bachelor's Degree in related field or equivalent work or military experience Preferred