Purpose & Overall Relevance for the Organization:

Design and drive solution architecture for China Consumer Hub (CRM, adiClub and MAP) capabilities, enabling a unified consumer view and consistent omni-channel experiences across retail stores, eCommerce, and digital touchpoints. This role shapes end-to-end architectures and integration patterns spanning consumer identity, loyalty/membership, customer service, marketing journeys and personalization. In addition to technology components, solution architecture encompasses changes to service, process, organization and operating models. The role provides comprehensive guidance on new solution development and modifications to ensure alignment with relevant architectures, strategies, policies, standards and practices (including security), and ensures existing and planned components remain compatible, scalable and operable.

Key Responsibilities:

Specialist advice

• Actively maintains knowledge in one or more identifiable specialisms.
• Provides detailed and specific advice regarding the application of their specialism(s) to the organization's planning and operations.
• Recognizes and identifies the boundaries of their own specialist knowledge.
• Collaborates with other specialists, where appropriate, to ensure advice given is appropriate to the needs of the organization.

Research

• Within given research goals, builds on and refines appropriate outline ideas for research, including evaluation, development, demonstration and implementation.
• Applies standard methods to collect and analyses quantitative and qualitative data.
• Creates research reports to communicate research methodology and findings and conclusions. Contributes sections of material of publication quality.
• Uses available resources to update knowledge of any relevant field and curates a personal collection of relevant material. Participates in research communities.

Emerging technology monitoring

• Supports monitoring of the external environment and assessment of emerging technologies to evaluate the potential impacts, threats and opportunities to the organization.
• Contributes to the creation of reports, technology road mapping and the sharing of knowledge and insights.

Solution architecture

• Own end-to-end solution architecture for China Consumer Hub (CRM), covering consumer profile, consent/preferences, loyalty/membership, customer service and omni-channel engagement.
• Define target architecture, domain boundaries and API/integration patterns with eCommerce, POS/store systems, marketing automation, data platform and identity services.
• Identify and evaluate alternative architectures and trade-offs (cost, performance, scalability, availability, security) and ensure compliance with relevant standards and China market requirements.
• Produce architecture and component/interface specifications and support delivery via technical planning, design reviews and hands-on guidance to unblock complex implementation/integration topics.

Requirements definition and management

• Defines and manages scoping, requirements definition and prioritization activities for small-scale changes and assists with more complex change initiatives.
• Follows agreed standards, applying appropriate techniques to elicit and document detailed requirements.
• Provides constructive challenge to stakeholders as required.
• Prioritizes requirements and documents traceability to source.
• Reviews requirements for errors and omissions.
• Provides input to the requirements base-line. Investigates, manages and applies authorized requests for changes to base-lined requirements, in line with change management policy.

Software design

• Undertakes complete design of moderately complex software applications or components applying agreed standards, patterns and tools.
• Assists as part of a team in the design of components of larger software systems.
• Specifies user and/or system interfaces.
• Creates multiple design views to address the concerns of the different stakeholders of the design and to handle separately functional and non-functional requirements.
• Assists in the evaluation of options and trade-offs.
• Collaborates in reviews of work with others as appropriate.

Programming/software development

• Designs, codes, verifies, tests, documents, amends and refactors moderately complex programs/scripts.
• Applies agreed standards and tools, to achieve a well-engineered result.
• Collaborates in reviews of work with others as appropriate.

Data modelling and design

• Applies data analysis, design, modelling, and quality assurance techniques, based upon a detailed understanding of business processes, to establish, modify or maintain data structures and associated components (entity descriptions, relationship descriptions, attribute definitions).
• Advises database designers and other application development team members on the details of data structures and associated components.

Database design

• Develops and maintains specialist knowledge of database and data warehouse concepts, design principles, architectures, software and facilities.
• Assesses proposed changes to object/data structures, in order to evaluate alternative options.
• Implements physical database designs to support transactional data requirements for performance and availability.
• Implements data warehouse designs that support demands for business intelligence and data analytics.

Systems integration and build

• Defines the software modules needed for an integration build and produces a build definition for each generation of the software.
• Accepts completed software modules, ensuring that they meet defined criteria.
• Produces software builds from software source code for loading onto target hardware.
• Configures the hardware and software environment as required by the system being integrated.
• Produces integration test specifications, conducts tests and records and reports on outcomes.
• Diagnoses faults and records and reports on the results of tests. Produces system integration reports.

If required: People Management / Resource Management:

• May be involved and gives some input on hiring Transition decisions
• Ensures appropriate leadership skills are present at every level through creating a motivational and supportive work environment in which employees are coached, trained and provided with career opportunities through development
• Allocates the different work to the respective employees considering experience, complexity, workload and organizational efficiency
• Continuously monitors and evaluates team workload and organizational efficiency with the support of IT systems, data and analysis and team feedback and makes appropriate changes to meet business needs.

• Provides team members/direct reports with clear direction and targets that are aligned with business needs and GIT objectives

Key Relationships:

• Global IT
• Respective business function (GOPS, Finance, HR, Brand Marketing, Wholesale/Retail)
• HR Management
• Controlling

Requisite Education and Experience / Minimum Qualifications:

• Four-year college or university degree with focus on software engineering or IT or related areas, or equivalent combination of education and experience
• Proficient spoken and written command of English
• At least 8-year experience in IT
• 5 years of experience in relevant area
• 1 year of experience in team management
• Understanding of different culture
• Participated in projects with people from other functions/markets
• Hands-on Java development experience with strong software engineering and design practices (OO design, testing, refactoring, code reviews).
• Experience designing and delivering distributed and high concurrency / traffic systems (API-first, microservices, event-driven integration) with performance and reliability in mind.
• Experience in CRM and/or eCommerce platforms and retail industry is a plus (consumer profile, loyalty, customer service, omni-channel engagement).
• Solid understanding of integration and data fundamentals (Kafka/messaging, caching, relational and NoSQL modelling).
• Cloud understanding with practical exposure to AWS and/or Alibaba Cloud; familiar with CI/CD and observability.
• Incorporate AI/ML capabilities (e.g., personalization, recommendation, predictive analytics, GenAI-powered customer engagement) into solution architecture where relevant.