Solution Architect – Sales & Operations Planning

IKEA is on a constant journey to create a better everyday life for the many people by continuously reinvent us as we continue to grow and develop to meet and exceed our customers’ needs. We will transform our digital capabilities, bringing core business processes, people, data & technology together - an enabler for IKEA to become an even better home furnishing company in the future. A journey that needs passionate people who embrace change, dare to question, and want to make a difference. If that sounds like you, come and join us.

Job Description

Do you have good communication skills, embrace change, highly adaptable, self-driven leader, capability to learn new skills and a team player?

While Solution Architect is your core competence, you will be given the opportunity to grow into a “multi-skilled Developer” where you will be assigned tasks based on business needs. Therefore, your responsibilities may varies depending on the match between your different competences and business needs. This gives you the ability to grow and learn in different domains and skills.

If this is what you have been seeking, continue reading and reflect in your application how you, with your experience, knowledge, motivation and capabilities will contribute and grow into a “multi-skilled Developer” working in an Agile environment.

As a Solution Architect you will mainly work with following:

• Shape ideas – in close collaboration with relevant internal and external stakeholders – into concrete, robust and appropriate solution architectures (high level design) and transition roadmaps (for implementation) that achieve the business outcome for a fast-growing business (for running business and initiatives).
• Secure that the solution architecture reflects customer and co-worker experience, time to market, sharing and collaboration, functional, technical, infrastructure, operational, security, financial, social and environmental considerations. Actively contribute to the resolution of conflicting requirements.
• Secure that the transition roadmaps reflect the level of uncertainty of the future state. Balance the transformations of foundational building blocks with continues business value delivery.
• Communicate the solution architectures and transition roadmaps to relevant internal and external stakeholders within and across organisation(s). Seek understanding and agreement to ensure aligned and consistent solution implementations across IKEA.
• Ensure that the solution architecture and roadmaps comply with relevant policies, principles, rules and standards. Align with agreed IT landscape architectures, its vision and goals and transition roadmaps. Suggest changes when compliance hinders business value.
• Ensure that the agreed solution architectures and transition roadmaps guide the scoping of business initiatives, the low-level design and govern the implementation of solutions.
• Pro-actively identify and advise on opportunities to deliver better business result (e.g. related to technology trends and players, roadmaps, customer value, cost, benefits, impact, risks, dependencies).
• Collaborate closely with IT suppliers, influence them with IKEA requirements and have a critical dialog about proposals to secure the best result for IKEA.
• Participate in cross area design board to secure holistic architecture decisions, developing the architecture capability at IKEA and technology identification and selection.
• Lead solution architecture activities within the assigned area e.g. the creation, revision and implementation of vision and goals, standards and reference solution architectures (reusable for the enterprise), handling of deviations and exceptions, ensuring architecture requirements for life cycle management of products and services, perform design reviews, provide guidance for service improvements and service transition.

Qualifications

We offer a challenging role in a constant changing and global environment, you will be able to drive and strongly influence the future in the assigned Digital Products. A background working with Sales & Operations Planning or Supply Chain Planning will be an added advantage.

To be successful in this role you need to have:

• Achieve long-term sustainable business result together with realizing short term opportunities; deliver better solutions for IKEA from idea to reality.
• Desire to deeply understand information technology and its best implementation for IKEA.
• Collaborate and communicate with IKEA people building trust and partnership and reach common goals.
• Good understanding of the IKEA business model – strategies, roadmaps, priorities, processes, organisations, concepts, policies, IKEA IT landscapes
• Extensive understanding of the assigned technical area and inter-dependencies both within and outside the organisation (the assigned commercial off-the-shelf solutions and/or IKEA build solutions, their functionality, build-in key concepts and structure, components or modules, and their implementation at IKEA)
• Good understanding of digital technologies/trends, industry standards, application and infrastructure market, and digital practices with potential to benefit or impact IKEA.
• Good understanding of IKEA enterprise architecture framework and modelling techniques.
• Good knowledge about software and infrastructure development practices.

Does this sound like your next challenge?

We look forward to receiving your application in English. Please note that we will be interviewing continuously, which means that we may close the application process earlier than stated if we find the right candidate. This position is based in Älmhult, Sweden or Pratteln, Switzerland.

Apply as soon as possible but no later than 23 Sept. 2024.

For questions regarding the recruitment process, please contact People & Culture Recruiter Katie Pettersson, katie.pettersson1@inter.ikea.com. For more information about the position, please contact Hiring Manager Stephanie Soong, sukmei.soong@inter.ikea.com.

We look forward to receiving your application.