Domain architect Education

Would you like to contribute to innovative and agile education for students and teachers, and thus contribute to the future of education? Then we have the perfect challenge for you! We are looking for an experienced education domain architect who can really make a difference. In this position, you will design coherent and guiding architecture as the foundation for realizing agile, organized education. Does this appeal to you? Then we would love to hear from you!

Where you will work

SURF is the IT cooperative of Dutch education and research institutions. Together with them, we work on digital services and complex innovation issues to improve the quality of education and research.

The National Growth Fund Program Npuls is an eight-year program through which we improve the quality of our education. Npuls works closely with SURF, the IT cooperative of Dutch educational and research institutions. Npuls sets the strategic direction for the future of education, while SURF provides the technological infrastructure and innovative IT solutions to achieve the strategic goals. As a domain architect, you make an important contribution to this.

Working at SURF means working for a unique and open organization. This is evident in everything: the structure of the organization, the setup of the project teams, the culture in our offices, and the atmosphere among colleagues. SURF offers excellent terms of employment and is flexible when it comes to work/life balance. Employees enjoy working independently. In addition, everyone is given the space and freedom to use and develop their talents as effectively and broadly as possible.

The team you will join

You will be working in the Architecture & Interoperability team. This team is responsible for the architecture in this entire domain within the Accessible and Open Education & Research unit. You will work closely with the Flexible Education team. This multidisciplinary team develops and manages services that enable educational institutions to organize their education in a more agile way. This gives learners more control over their own learning path. Together with your colleagues and experts from educational institutions, you will create a coherent service portfolio. The work of the Flexible Education team is linked to developments within Npuls, which has agile education and barrier-free learning as its key pillars.

What you will do

You will be building the digital environments of the future. You will do this within SURF, together with the (technical) product managers of the Flexible Education team, and from Npuls with colleagues from chain partners such as Studielink. You will bring together information from stakeholders into a coherent whole and develop it into domain and target architectures for education. You will feel ownership of these architectures and promote them within the organization.

The first platform you will be working on is the Life Long Learning education platform. This platform is part of the digital ecosystem of continuing education that facilitates valuable interactions between learners, educational institutions, and sector partners.

What else you will be doing

• You will contribute ideas about the strategy and long-term vision of programs, projects, and services and translate these into coherent and guiding architectures.
• You will be the link between the enterprise architect, service domain owner, and (technical) product managers.
• You will work closely with fellow architects and contribute to the development of the architecture function and the further professionalization of the architecture discipline.
• You will actively seek coherence in the agile education service portfolio and involve the relevant stakeholders within and outside SURF.

Your skills and experience

You are able to use architecture as an accelerator for realizing tasks and ambitions based on a clear vision, and you know how to communicate this in a convincing manner. You work in a connecting way and know how to get others on board with your ideas and vision. You easily establish relationships between different areas of expertise, education sectors, parts of SURF and Npuls, and developments at educational institutions.

In addition, you have

• Academic working and thinking level (preferably in the field of Administrative Information Science, Business Administration, and/or Computer Science) and at least 5 years of relevant work experience;
• Experience with methods and techniques such as ArchiMate, TOGAF, and Agile/Scrum;
• Demonstrable experience in developing architecture products such as domain/target architectures and start architectures;
• Experience in environments where the technical development of digital facilities is a continuous process;
• In-depth knowledge of architecture concepts, design principles, and best practices and their significance for universities, colleges, and vocational education institutions;
• Experience with privacy-by-design and security-by-design;
• Experience with national reference architectures, such as the Education Reference Architectures (HORA & MORA) or the Education Sector Architectures (HOSA & MOSA);
• Good command of the Dutch and English languages and a results-oriented work attitude.

SURF takes pleasure in doing its recruitment itself; acquisition is therefore not appreciated.