WHAT DOES A DOMAIN ARCHITECT DO?

Published: Dec 09, 2024 - The Domain Architect provides technical expertise in products and solutions, engaging with customers to tailor architecture and ensure compliance with standards. Leads project teams in installation and customization, offering technical support and conducting product demonstrations. Estimates efforts and evaluates the technical feasibility of proposed solutions, contributing to successful deployments and strategic consultations.

A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for Domain Architect

1. Domain Architect - Cybersecurity Duties

  • Strategic Planning: Work with EA and CISO to develop supplemental EA resource plans.
  • Project Management: Apply CISO’s final selection of vendor/product/service to develop a detailed deployment plan over a rolling 18-month cycle to achieve To-Be architecture.
  • Technology Integration: Translate vendor technology roadmaps into domain roadmaps to ensure continuous improvements to domain operations, including cost-to-serve and other financial KPIs.
  • Vendor Management: Maintain a collaborative relationship with key/anchor vendors whose products/services are critical to the domain's ability to achieve service SLA/OLA.
  • Workforce Development: Help CISO develop workforce strategy, including strategic sourcing, flexible talent pools and upskilling, required to achieve target state over a 3-year period.
  • Operations Management: Help the CISO develop and maintain lifecycle management and operations practices for the domain to achieve target KPIs.
  • Incident Management: Influence the planning and execution of incident response and postmortem exercises, with a focus on creating measurable benchmarks to show progress (or deficiencies requiring additional attention).
  • Cybersecurity Optimization: Drive security efficiencies, enabling cybersecurity team members to work on more advanced tasks.
  • Performance Testing: Perform engineering performance testing to stress the limitations of cybersecurity solutions while at the same time ensuring business innovation and day-to-day processes are not negatively impacted.
  • Engineering Leadership: Balance EA priority and domain operations considerations to fulfill level 3 engineering responsibilities, including creating low-level diagrams, in the event of over-utilization or absence of engineering roles for a given duration.
  • Technical Support: Provide expert guidance during major incidents and help resolve implementation issues encountered with new and existing technologies.
  • Mentorship and Coaching: Coach and mentor engineering and operations staff on technology, standards development, and best practices for domain operations maturity.
  • Financial Analysis: Help CISO to conduct operations and financial analysis, domain maturity assessments and next steps to achieve target state in Q3 of each annual budget cycle.
  • Cross-Domain Collaboration: Collaborate with architects within EA practice to provide cross-domain rationalized input to CISO’s 3-year investment portfolio.
  • Budget Management: Budgeting in Q4 of each annual budget cycle.
  • Practice Improvement: Effectively contribute to improvement efforts within EA to mature the practice, develop architecture expertise and promulgate EA thinking and use across IT.

2. Domain Architect Details

  • Collaboration: Work collaboratively with business and technology teams to build digital ecosystem capability.
  • Technology Design: Built simple, approachable, and accurate technology architecture and roadmaps in clear alignment with technology and business strategies.
  • Technology Analysis: Analyze technology and complete evaluations on an ongoing basis to increase the Digital Ecosystem’s online visibility, and enhance the competitive advantage and profitability of the organization.
  • Governance: Provide governance across all platform architecture related matters, including participating in internal architectural governance forum to ensure appropriate design decisions are made.
  • Digital Transformation: Be part of Group Procurements prioritized digitization journey as part of the supporting BIO organization within CFO Office.
  • Solution Architecture: Draw best in class solutions and see them be developed by highly skillful teams.
  • Team Leadership: Be part of the values streams strong management team.
  • Strategic Engagement: Actively engage in business plans, initiatives and ensure that the solutions meet international standards and the Target Architecture.
  • Architectural Recommendation: Be responsible for appropriate architecture recommendations during studies and project execution at functional, applicative and data levels.
  • Solution Implementation: Be involved in the implementation of Marketing, Sales, Quotation, Service, Portal, and e-Commerce solutions.
  • Integration Management: Integrated with Order Fulfilment solutions and Invoicing solutions, his focus being for this position at the Customer and Front related capabilities.
  • Communication Facilitation: Use the communication skills to facilitate dialogue between business teams, IT teams, and external IT partners.
  • Solution Alignment: Provide adequate and reliable business-IT solutions and alignment between the major stakeholders.
  • Project Collaboration: Work closely with internal and external implementation teams, with the business analysts, developer and IT Project Manager.
  • Security Architecture: Own, communicate and collaboratively develop the Enterprise Security Architecture.
  • Business Analysis: Recognize, analyze the customer's business needs and translate them into a suitable solution.

3. MDM Domain Architect Responsibilities

  • Solution Architecture: Led design and execution of high performance, integrated, and scalable solutions for one or more master data domains and contribution to overall MDM roadmap to address domain specific needs and mature capabilities.
  • Data Management Standardization: Adopt the Master data management framework to achieve standardization, ensure data security and privacy needs are met and leverage tool capabilities to drive efficiencies in the development process.
  • Agile Collaboration: Collaborate across the MDM Agile Product teams to understand and deliver to business requirements, which are dependent on relationships between various master data entities.
  • Data Governance: Understand and adopt data governance policies and processes, as applicable to area.
  • Proof of Concept Development: Develop and conduct Proof of concept for new capabilities offered by the data management tools or customized capabilities to meet business needs collaborating to ensure the company is achieving the maximum value for its technology investments while achieving business results.
  • Data Literacy Promotion: Work closely with the MDM Lead, MDM Capability Architect, MDM Product Owner, Data Quality Technical Lead to drive literacy and awareness around master data management and data quality efforts across the company and to develop and establish key metrics and reports to measure success of Master data and Data Quality.
  • Software Rationalization: Collaborate with Global IT to rationalize the MDM, RDM, and DQ software (Informatica, SAP MDG, Sparesfinder, Aravo, Infosteward) across the Cargill landscape in order to ensure Cargill is achieving the maximum value for its technology investments while achieving business results.
  • Domain Expertise: Provide subject matter expertise in master data domain area/s and work with limited direction, using additional research and interpretation to identify issues or problems.

4. Domain Architect Accountabilities

  • Technical Expertise: Provide technical subject matter expertise in products and solutions.
  • Customer Engagement: Engage with customers to understand, analyze the deployment requirements and provide technical guidance to formulate the solution architecture.
  • Compliance Assurance: Ensure technology solutions comply with architectural standards through participation in the architecture discussions.
  • Solution Evaluation: Evaluate and recommend technical feasibility and effort estimates of proposed product solutions.
  • Effort Estimation: Provide level of efforts estimates for new feature requests and change controls in order for projects to be evaluated, budgeted, and implemented for the success of the deployments.
  • Design Development: Create high-level design and detailed design as per customer requirements.
  • Project Leadership: Lead the project teams to install, configure, customize security functionality.
  • Product Demonstration: Conduct product demonstrations and lead technical discussions.
  • Technical Assistance: Provide technical assistance to colleagues and assist in resolving deployment reported problems.
  • Policy Consultation: Provide security policy and compliance consultation support and guidance.
  • Solution Design: Engage with external and internal providers to design solutions that meet not only the business requirements but also non-functional, security, or legal requirements as well as any budgetary constraints for key stakeholders (Domain Manager, Principal Architect).
  • Technical Oversight: Oversee the technical delivery of solutions within the domain ensuring that solutions are implemented as designed and any deviation deliberate and implications understood and communicated to relevant stakeholders.

5. Retail Domain Architect Functions

  • Architecture Design: Propose key architecture principles adapted to the Retail systems context.
  • Improvement Identification: Identify areas of improvement and propose solutions to make the system robust and scalable.
  • Global Integration: Leverage global services when possible and avoid siloed architectures.
  • Documentation Management: Build and maintain the systems documentation to have an up-to-date description of the data model, data flow, features, and integration mechanisms.
  • Strategic Support: Supports the teams in the development of the overall solution strategy and roadmap in the Retail domain.
  • Project Planning Support: Support the project teams to develop business cases, formulate plans, estimate resources, and identify timing for execution.
  • Project Scoping: Help to define and scope the necessary projects and initiatives, particularly for the System Architecture and Design part.
  • Project Execution Support: Support the execution of all build phases of domain projects.
  • Requirement Analysis: Analyze requirements coming from the Product Owner and external partners.
  • Solution Input Provision: Provide input to Software Architects for solution creation.
  • Documentation Development: Create, update, and maintain design documentation.
  • Team Collaboration: Closely cooperate with all the teams (development, integration, operation).