Solution Architect – Sales & Operations Planning

You see things a little differently. So do we! At IKEA, we believe that what you value is more important than what your CV says. We offer positions that will challenge your skills and let you grow. Come see things a little differently with us.

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.

Inter IKEA Group brings together three areas: Retail Concept, Range and Supply. Together we work constantly to improve the IKEA home furnishing offer and make it more accessible for the many people. You will be part of IKEA Supply and the Supply Chain Development organization. IKEA Supply is responsible for securing that the product offer is produced and delivered to our customers. We lead the supply agenda across many functions and work together with all business areas, different business units, but also retail markets to secure customer availability in all markets and sales channels at lowest total cost.

Supply Chain Development (SCD) is one of the business units at IKEA Supply and we are on an exciting journey! By gathering the end-to-end supply chain development and innovation agenda into one organization, embedding management and development of processes and digital solutions into the business, we will meet the future with the right competences and business capabilities. By this we will also create the preconditions to a world class supply chain that enable IKEA to efficiently respond to the ever-changing customer needs. We are growing to meet our development agenda, thus, we are looking for Solution Architect within area of Supply Chain Planning Development within SCD

In Supply Chain Planning Development, we manage and develop supply chain planning capabilities across the needed time horizons and granularity, through people, processes, data & technology. Our mission is to create the prerequisites for excellence in operations by enabling efficient and effective decision-making resulting in integrated end-to-end executable plans.

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.

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 20 Sept. 2024. 

For questions regarding the recruitment process, please contact People & Culture Recruiter Katie Pettersson, Write an email. For more information about the position, please contact Hiring Manager Stephanie Soong, Write an email.

We look forward to receiving your application.