Enterprise Architect

Our client within the European Institutions is currently looking for an Enterprise Architect to work on ensuring the good operational condition of the Data Centres by supervising the activities performed by TAXUD and DIGIT contractors,

Languages needed

• UML
• BPMN
• ArchiMate
• SPARX ENTERPRISE ARCHITECT
• Aris
• Microsoft Visio
• DevSecOps

Tasks

• Ensuring the good operational condition of the Data Centres by supervising the activities performed by TAXUD and DIGIT contractors, with a focus on IT Operations, Security, Integration, Application Lifecycle Management, DevSecOps, and Service Continuity
• Overseeing the integration aspects of the IT infrastructure, DC housing and hosting services and components, as well as the basic system layers (e.g. Infrastructure Services, Platform Services, Application Services, System Monitoring and Management tools), liaising with TAXUD and DIGIT contractors.
• Supervising the Local Datacentre Consolidation (LDC) initiative, aiming to ensure the smooth transition of Data Centre IT layers and, subsequently, Information Systems from the current state (managed by DG TAXUD and operated by TAXUD‑OPS contractors) to DG DIGIT managed services, supervision and responsibility.
• Analyzing the integration of different Information Systems and ensuring their interoperability.
• Providing advice, guidance, consultancy and assistance to the official(s) responsible, delivering expert advice on IT technical matters, service delivery, solution architecture, organizational aspects and ITSM processes.
• Coordinating the proper execution of activities and projects, facilitating interactions and providing guidance to all stakeholders, including contractors, European Commission officials and external experts.
• Contribution to the evolution of DG TAXUD IT infrastructure, platforms, applications, services and solution architecture.
• Support to project coordination and programme continuity.
• Support to DG TAXUD IT operations and service management.

Requirements

B2 level of English minimum. Any knowledge of French is an asset.

System Architecture and Integration Design

Experience in supporting and maintaining complex system architectures across on‑premises, hybrid and cloud environments.

Practical experience with high availability, disaster recovery and system integration principles.

Good knowledge of interoperability technologies, including web services, message‑oriented middleware, service‑oriented and event‑driven architectures.

Experience in the specification of system components, data structures and services.

Experience in defining service interfaces, service data models and reference models.

Good knowledge of service implementation patterns (synchronous, asynchronous, request/response, etc.), and distributed system design principles.

Experience with architecture modelling standards and tools (e.g. UML, BPMN, ArchiMate; Sparx EA, LeanIX, ARIS, Visio).

Experience with cloud‑native technologies, including containers and orchestration platforms (Docker, Podman, Kubernetes, Tanzu).

Practical knowledge of Infrastructure as Code and IaC tools (e.g. Terraform, Ansible, Ansible Tower, CloudFormation, HashiCorp Vault).

Understanding of microservices architectures and cloud computing concepts.

Experience with scripting and automation languages used in operational contexts (e.g. Python, Yaml, Bash, PowerShell, Ruby, Perl).

Experience with DevSecOps practices and CI/CD pipelines supporting automated build, test and deployment processes.

IT Infrastructure management

Proven experience in the design and operation of high‑availability infrastructures.

Knowledge of networking technologies, including DNS, Load Balancing, Reverse Proxies, Routing and Switching, VPNs and basic networking troubleshooting.

Knowledge of security technologies such as Firewalls, VPN/IPsec, intrusion detection/prevention systems and SIEM solutions.

Experience with storage and backup technologies, including block, file and object storage solutions (e.g. Hitachi, EMC, AWS S3, etc.)

Experience with enterprise operating systems (e.g. Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Windows Server).

Experience with virtualisation platforms (e.g. VMware vSphere, Nutanix, KVM).

Knowledge of databases management systems (e.g. Oracle DB, Oracle RAC, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL/MariaDB, PostgreSQL, MongoDB)

Experience with middleware technologies (e.g. Oracle WebLogic, SOA, OSB, JMS; Apache Tomcat EE; IBM MQ; Axway API Gateway; WildFly; Apache Kafka; etc.).

Strong experience with container and kubernetes platforms, DevSecOps and CI/CD tools (e.g. Docker, Podman, VMware Tanzu, Red Hat OpenShift, Amazon ECS/EKS; Helm, Bitbucket, Bamboo, Nexus, Jenkins, GitHub, GitLab Argo CD, etc.).

Knowledge of monitoring and observability solutions (e.g. Tivoli, OEM, Dynatrace, Splunk, Elastic Stack, Prometheus, Grafana, etc).

Knowledge of public, hybrid, private, and sovereign cloud platforms (e.g. AWS, Azure, OCI, OVH).

Experience with service management, collaboration, and application lifecycle management tools (e.g. ServiceNow, SMT; Atlassian Confluence, Jira; GitLab; Microsoft 365 products, etc.).

IT Service Management

Experience contributing to service strategy, design, transition, operation, and continual service improvement activities, ensuring alignment with availability, capacity, continuity and supplier management requirements.

Participation in change management processes, including interaction with Change Advisory Board (CAB) to assess and approve system modifications.

Support for incident and problem management through architecture‑level analysis and documentation, and root cause analysis for recurring issues.

Familiarity with Configuration Management practices and maintenance of asset records within a CMDB (Configuration Management Database).

Ability to define and support SLAs/OLAs, ensuring infrastructure design meets performance and availability targets.

Contribution to Continual Service Improvement (CSI) efforts, including performance tuning, risk reduction, and cost optimization.

Skilled in writing architecture diagrams, technical documentation, and SOPs.