Solution Architect - Payments Enterprise Technology - FTC 18 months - BPL

Barclays; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 80,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading financial institution in the UK is seeking an experienced Solutions Architect to design and implement SaaS architecture as part of a significant transformation project. The candidate will collaborate with stakeholders, develop innovative solutions, and ensure alignment with business needs. This role offers a hybrid working model with an expectation of 3 days per week office presence. Candidates should have a strong background in financial technology and proven experience onboarding SaaS vendors.

Benefits

Hybrid working model

Opportunity for professional growth

Performance-linked incentives

Qualifications

• Demonstrable senior level experience designing SaaS‑focused architectures.
• Experience in one or more of Finance, HR or Functions technology domains.
• Experience onboarding SaaS vendors and deploying SaaS products in financial services or fintech.

Responsibilities

• Design and develop solutions to complex business problems.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to understand their needs and requirements.
• Implement solutions that meet business needs balancing technology risks.

Skills

Designing SaaS-focused architectures

Finance technology domain

Onboarding SaaS vendors

Proactive and self-sufficient

Job description

A fantastic opportunity to join us as we create a standalone Payments Acquiring business embracing afintechnology culture from our new offices alongside our Brookfield partners. This is an exciting time to join a unique project well suited to candidates who thrive in a fast paced, flat organisation with significant autonomy.

Enterprise Technology will be replacing a complex, largely on-premise technology stack with a clean new SaaS landscape for Finance, Risk, HR and Functions IT. We require an exceptional Solutions Architect to design and integrate across that landscape.

This is an 18‑month Fixed Term Contract role to drive the build out of the new stack. During this time we will be defining the go‑forward model for Enterprise Technology and anticipating a variety of permanent roles that will become available.

To be successful in this role, you will need the following:

• Demonstrable senior level experience designing SaaS‑focused architectures.
• Experience in one or more of Finance, HR or Functions technology domains.
• Experience onboarding SaaS vendors and deploying SaaS products in financial services or fintech.

Some other highly valued skills may include:

• Experience in fintech or smaller organisations for scale‑appropriate solutions.
• Highly pro‑active and self‑sufficient.

You may be assessed on key critical skills relevant for success in the role, such as risk and controls, change and transformation, business acumen, strategic thinking and digital and technology, as well as job‑specific technical skills.

The successful candidate will be based in London. Our offices are located at 1 Churchill Place and 7 Westferry Circus (new BPL office). We support a hybrid working pattern with 3 days per week office‑based presence expected.

Barclays’ payments acceptance business provides critical infrastructure to the UK economy, processing billions of pounds of payments annually for both small businesses and domestic and international corporate clients. In April 2025, we announced a long‑term partnership with Brookfield Asset Management to grow and transform the payments acceptance business by broadening the range of services offered, enhancing the experience for both existing and prospective clients. Leveraging extensive client relationships and deep experience of UK payments, we will create an environment of continuous innovation - activated by Brookfield’s global private equity expertise in payments, technology, operational transformation and corporate carve‑outs - to ensure the business is strategically positioned for long‑term growth. Barclays will invest approximately £400m in the new business, the majority of which will be incurred during the first three years. Performance‑linked incentives will drive greater alignment between the partners, underpinning the long‑term commitment to the transformation. Barclays and Brookfield will work to create a standalone entity over time, continuing to use the Barclaycard Payments (BPL) brand and acting as the sole payments acceptance services provider to Barclays’ clients for a minimum of ten years. For more information on our partnership with Brookfield, please visit Barclays.com.

Purpose of the role

To design, develop, and implement solutions to complex business problems, collaborating with stakeholders to understand their needs and requirements, and design and implement solutions that meet those needs and create solutions that balance technology risks against business delivery, driving consistency.

Accountabilities

• Design and development of solutions as products that can evolve, meeting business requirements that align with modern software engineering practices and automated delivery tooling. This includes identification and implementation of the technologies and platforms.
• Targeted design activities that apply an appropriate workload placement strategy and maximise the benefit of cloud capabilities such as elasticity, serverless, containerisation etc.
• Best practice designs incorporating security principles (such as defence in depth and reduction of blast radius) that meet the Bank’s resiliency expectations.
• Solutions that appropriately balance risks and controls to deliver the agreed business and technology value.
• Adoption of standardised solutions where they fit. If no standard solutions fit, feed into their ongoing evolution where appropriate.
• Fault finding and performance issues support to operational support teams, leveraging available tooling.
• Solution design impact assessment in terms of risk, capacity and cost impact, inc. estimation of project change and ongoing run costs.
• Development of the requisite architecture inputs required to comply with the bank’s governance processes, including design artefacts required for architecture, privacy, security and records management governance processes.

Vice President Expectations

• To contribute or set strategy, drive requirements and make recommendations for change. Plan resources, budgets, and policies; manage and maintain policies/processes; deliver continuous improvements and escalate breaches of policies/procedures.
• Define jobs and responsibilities, planning for the department’s future needs and operations, counselling employees on performance and contributing to employee pay decisions/changes, and lead a number of specialists to influence the operations of a department.
• Demonstrate a clear set of leadership behaviours to create an environment for colleagues to thrive and deliver to a consistently excellent standard. The four LEAD behaviours are: L – Listen and be authentic, E – Energise and inspire, A – Align across the enterprise, D – Develop others.
• Act as a subject matter expert within own discipline and guide technical direction. Lead collaborative, multi‑year assignments and guide team members through structured assignments, identify the need for inclusion of other areas of specialisation to complete assignments, train, guide and coach less experienced specialists and provide information affecting long‑term profits, organisational risks and strategic decisions.
• Advise key stakeholders, including functional leadership teams and senior management on functional and cross‑functional areas of impact and alignment.
• Manage and mitigate risks through assessment, in support of the control and governance agenda.
• Demonstrate leadership and accountability for managing risk and strengthening controls in relation to the work your team does.
• Demonstrate comprehensive understanding of the organisation functions to contribute to achieving the goals of the business.
• Collaborate with other areas of work, for business aligned support areas to keep up to speed with business activity and the business strategies.
• Create solutions based on sophisticated analytical thought comparing and selecting complex alternatives. In‑depth analysis with interpretative thinking will be required to define problems and develop innovative solutions.
• Adopt and include the outcomes of extensive research in problem solving processes.
• Seek out, build and maintain trusting relationships and partnerships with internal and external stakeholders to accomplish key business objectives, using influencing and negotiating skills to achieve outcomes.

All colleagues will be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Values of Respect, Integrity, Service, Excellence and Stewardship – our moral compass, helping us do what we believe is right. They will also be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Mindset – to Empower, Challenge and Drive – the operating manual for how we behave.