Solution Architect for Desktop Engineering

COUNTRY Financial serves about one million households and businesses throughout the United States. It offers a full range of financial products and services from auto, home and life insurance to retirement planning services, investment management and annuities.

At COUNTRY Financial, our Solution Architect, Desktop Engineering is responsible for the end user experience of interacting with COUNTRY Financial’s Information Systems through managed endpoints. These endpoints could be workstations, laptops, virtual machines, thin clients, and other form factors. All of this would be done leveraging enterprise technologies such as Microsoft Windows, Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM), and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) among others. This role will be unique to COUNTRY and will help drive and shape the future of how and where we conduct business.

Our Engineers ensure the planning, selection, build, and maintenance of high quality technology solutions that meet defined and emerging business capability needs in a cost effective way. Partners with IT Security Analysts and Enterprise Architects to establish, understand, and adhere to technical and IT security standards. Involved in all aspects of the technology lifecycle to ensure that non-functional and functional requirements are adhered to in design and build so solutions are stable, secure, resilient, and perform well. Ensures that systems are maintained and supported to run effectively in production.

• Design, build, implement, and support COUNTRY’s IT solutions.
• Ensure IT solutions meet requirements for security, availability, capacity, resiliency, and performance in a way that is efficient and supportable, reducing overall support costs.
• Understand industry leading solutions and trends for assigned technologies and applying those as appropriate for COUNTRY.
• Understand business needs and partnering with appropriate IT counterparts to recommend technology solutions.
• Establish and maintain an IT multi-year strategy with a focus on continuous improvement. Create and maintain solutions architecture artifacts and other strategy and system documentation.

Experience Required:

• Bachelor's degree and at least 15 years of experience in information technology and 2 years lead experience OR,
• Master's degree and at least 12 years of experience in information technology and 2 years lead experience OR,
• At least 17 years of experience in information technology and 2 years lead experience.

Additional Requirements:

• A deep knowledge of desktop systems and best-practices are required.
• 6 years+ experience managing client automation and application deployment technologies in an enterprise environment.
• Strong working knowledge of Server technologies, Active Directory, Group Policy, and virtual technologies are required.
• Excellent debugging and optimization skills are required.
• 4-6 years experience managing desktop related hardware.
• Must have strong scripting skills in industry standard tools (i.e. PowerShell, WinBatch, VBScript, etc.).
• Certifications in desktop and server related technologies highly desired.

Physical Requirements:

Work may extend beyond normal business hours as business needs dictate.