Solutions Architect

Aflac Northern Ireland; Belfast City District; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible working

Four days per week considered

Job summary

Aflac Northern Ireland is seeking a Solutions Architect to shape how applications are built across multiple engineering teams, delivering cloud-native architectures on AWS and defining integration patterns aligned with enterprise standards.

You will produce ADRs, NFRs, and Well-Architected reviews, collaborate with Product Owners, and advance AI-enabled platform capabilities while ensuring security, compliance and scalable performance.

Qualifications

• 5+ years as Solutions Architect or senior design role.
• Experience delivering cloud-native AWS solutions (microservices, event-driven, API gateway).
• Produces architectural artefacts: ADRs, NFRs, Well-Architected outputs.
• Designs REST and event-based API contracts across complex integrations.
• Strong data architecture knowledge: pipelines, relational stores, graph DBs.
• Stakeholder management in agile environments; active sprint participation.

Responsibilities

• Define and own the solution architecture across multiple engineering teams.
• Translate architectural direction into actionable designs with stakeholders.
• Produce and maintain ADRs, NFR specs, and Well-Architected Review outputs.
• Own the API contract model between Platform and Experience.
• Drive alignment with upstream and downstream systems with Product Owners.
• Identify architectural risks early (integration contracts, data consistency, performance, regulatory compliance).
• Lead Well-Architected Reviews on security, reliability, performance, cost, and operations.
• Collaborate on monitoring and observability strategy.
• Work with Security to ensure defense-in-depth and regulatory compliance.
• Keep pace with AI/ML platform capabilities and opportunities.

Skills

Systems thinking

Architectural communication

Cloud-native AWS

REST & event-based APIs

Data architecture

Stakeholder management

Non-functional requirements

AI/ML platform capabilities

Education

Bachelor's or Master's in CS/Engineering

Tools

Jira

Confluence

GitHub

CI/CD

AWS Well-Architected Tool

Job description

Team Context

Aflac is investing in a new generation of technology capability that will transform customer and employee experiences, scale the secure and responsible use of AI across the enterprise, and reshape how software is designed, built, tested and delivered. These roles will work across strategic product transformation, cloud and data platforms, enterprise AI services, context and knowledge engineering, quality, experience design and AI-enabled developer tooling. This is more than an opportunity to join an individual project: it is a chance to help build the platforms, practices and specialist capabilities that will turn AI into measurable business value at enterprise scale. This role will apply that strategy directly to modernising how insurance products are created, managed and supported throughout the customer and claims journey

The Role

Working with Engineering Managers, Engineers, Product Owners, Domain Architects and Enterprise Architects to shape how the application is built.

You will bring experience designing and delivering complex integration platforms on AWS. You will be comfortable producing and reviewing design documents, challenging trade-offs, defining non-functional requirements and explaining architectural direction to senior stakeholders.

What you will be doing

• Define and own the solution architecture across multiple engineering teams, covering the full spectrum from data processing and system integrations through to user-facing workflows and product tooling.
• Partner with multiple Stakeholders to translate architectural direction into actionable designs, ensuring alignment with Aflac Enterprise Architecture standards and domain roadmaps.
• Produce and maintain key architectural artefacts: Solution Architecture Descriptions, Architecture Decision Records (ADRs), Non-Functional Requirements Specifications and Well-Architected Review Assessments.
• Own the API contract model between Platform and Experience ensuring clean system boundaries, versioning discipline, and integration consistency across teams.
• Work with Product Owners to drive alignment with upstream and downstream systems.
• Identify and elevate architectural risk early, particularly around integration contracts, data consistency, performance at scale, and regulatory compliance requirements.
• Lead Well-Architected Reviews, evaluating solutions against security, reliability, performance efficiency, cost optimisation, and Aflac’s operational pillars.
• Contribute to the capability model, shaping how mapped capabilities are designed across the program phases.
• Support agile delivery in real time, attending sprint ceremonies, architecture syncs, and ADR review sessions, providing in-the-moment guidance without creating bottlenecks.
• Collaborate with the monitoring and observability strategy, ensuring architectural decisions support system health, traceability, and incident response.
• Work closely with the Security team to ensure solutions are built with defence-in-depth principles, security models and regulatory compliance in mind.
• Keep pace with the evolution of AI and related technologies and identify opportunities to apply them responsibly within the platform.

Skills and experience

Below is an overview of the skills and experience we are looking for, but remember, don't rule yourself out if you don't have everything on the list, it's your intellect and your attitude we are really after.

We're looking for people who can demonstrate the following:

• A systems thinker who can hold the full architectural picture in mind while staying grounded in the practical realities of agile delivery.
• Strong architectural communication, able to produce clear, concise design documents and present trade‑off decisions to both technical and non‑technical audiences.
• Rigorous and opinionated about architectural standards, while remaining pragmatic, knowing when a perfect design must yield to a deliverable one.
• A natural collaborator who can build trusting relationships
• Comfortable with ambiguity, this is a complex, evolving program and the architecture must evolve with it.
• A self‑led learner who stays current with cloud‑native patterns, integration architectures, event‑driven systems, and AI/ML platform capabilities

Essential

• 5+ years of experience as a Solutions Architect or in a senior technical design role, with direct accountability for architecture decisions on complex, multi‑system programs.
• Proven experience designing and delivering cloud‑native solutions on AWS, including microservices, event‑driven architectures, API gateway patterns, serverless compute, and managed data services.
• Strong track record of producing architectural artefacts: Solution Architecture Descriptions, ADRs, NFR specifications, and Well‑Architected Review outputs.
• Experience designing system integrations, including REST and event‑based API contracts, and working within complex integration landscapes that span modern and legacy systems.
• Solid understanding of data architecture patterns, including data pipelines, data enrichment, structured relational stores (DB2/RDS/Aurora), event sourcing, and graph databases (Neptune or equivalent).
• Stakeholder management across engineering teams in an agile environment, embedded participation in sprints, not just upstream governance.
• Experience working within an enterprise architecture governance framework, including alignment with domain architects and contribution to enterprise standards.
• Strong understanding of non‑functional requirements, performance at scale, reliability, security, observability, and compliance.
• Hold a Bachelor's or Master's degree or equivalent, preferably in Computer Science, Engineering, or a STEM subject. Comparable commercial experience will also be considered
• Applicants must be located in Northern Ireland and hold the relevant right to work status. We are unable to offer sponsorship

Desirable

• Experience in the insurance or financial services domain, particularly claims processing, policy administration, or regulatory compliance systems.
• Familiarity with large‑scale modernisation programmes, particularly where modern platforms must integrate with or incrementally replace established systems.
• Hands‑on experience with AI/ML platform integration, particularly document processing, intelligent automation, or rules‑based adjudication engines.
• Experience working with US‑headquartered companies, building relationships with teams in other locations and navigating a matrix organisation.
• Familiarity with Pega or other BPM/case management platforms as part of a broader architecture.
• Experience with graph databases (AWS Neptune, Neo4j, or equivalent) and an understanding of where graph data models outperform relational alternatives for connected, relationship‑rich data.
• Familiarity with supporting tools and technologies: Jira, Confluence, AWS Well‑Architected Tool, GitHub, and CI/CD pipelines (Azure DevOps or equivalent).
• AWS certification at Professional or Specialty level (Solutions Architect Professional, Database Specialty, or equivalent).

We are committed to attracting diverse talent and supporting flexible working. Applications from candidates wishing to work four days per week are welcomed and will be considered in line with business and team requirements.

So, that's us. Thanks for reading this far.

Aflac is an equal opportunities employer