Solutions Architect

Avance Consulting; Guildford; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

Avance Consulting in the United Kingdom seeks an experienced solutions architect to drive architecture strategy, align technology with business goals, and govern design across large projects.

You will mentor other architects, define solution designs for hybrid cloud environments (AWS/Azure), manage risk, and communicate decisions to stakeholders from CEO to developers.

Qualifications

• Ability to interact with C-level and senior stakeholders to discuss architecture.
• Experience documenting and architecting solutions across hybrid, on-prem and cloud estates.
• Proven IT security and risk management within architecture roles.
• Experience with governance forums and design authorities; RFI/RFP processes.

Responsibilities

• Produce proposals and justify technology strategies to senior audiences.
• Drive alignment of technology landscapes with enterprise target pictures.
• Communicate architecture decisions to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Lead architectural design authorities and governance for projects.
• Translate business requirements into technology, service, and security deliverables.
• Identify and mitigate architecture, technical, and security risks.
• Produce architectural deliverables including designs and infrastructure diagrams.
• Provide design assurance to ensure solutions are implemented to standards.
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to other architects.
• Self-manage day-to-day architecture priorities and delivery workload.

Skills

Stakeholder management

Verbal & written communication

Enterprise technology knowledge

Hybrid/on-prem and cloud

Agile & waterfall methods

Documentation and modelling

IT security & risk management

Governance forums experience

RFI/RFP processes

AI/LLM collaboration

Education

Degree or HND in information technology

Microsoft or AWS certifications

TOGAF

ITIL

Commitment to continuous learning

Tools

Jira

Confluence

draw.io

Sparx

ADOIT

ArchiMate

Mermaid

C4

RabbitMQ

MuleSoft

Boomi

Kafka

Job description

• Produce proposals and justify the value of technology strategies to senior business audiences
• Drive alignment of the client Technology landscape with the enterprise target picture, including system retirement
• Ensure that architecture, divergences, and risks are clearly communicated and agreed by all stakeholders
• Convey architecture decisions through a variety of communication techniques to both technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Lead architectural design authorities for projects, and work within enterprise architectural governance and enterprise portfolio management frameworks
• Translate business requirements into technology, service, and security deliverables, identifying risks and proposing appropriate mitigations
• Identify all areas of architectural, technical, and security risk, and ensure these are managed with the cooperation of appropriate stakeholders
• Produce (or ensure production of) all architectural deliverables under the development methodology, including solution designs, architecture patterns, technical infrastructure designs and supporting documentation
• Provide design assurance for solution architecture to ensure solutions are implemented as designed, to the correct standards and quality
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to other solution architects within the team
• Self-manage day-to-day architecture priorities and delivery workload.

Skills and Experience

Your skills and experience include:

• Strong interpersonal and stakeholder management skills, including the ability to interact at all business levels - from the CEO and C-suite through to technical SMEs, developers, testers, and project managers
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, including the ability to assess the audience and pitch / influence appropriately
• Working across enterprise technologies, including prior SME roles across infrastructure, cloud, and application domains
• Defining, documenting, and architecting solutions across hybrid, on-premise, and public cloud estates, potentially requiring integration with legacy technologies for large projects and programmes
• Supporting and designing mission-critical infrastructure solutions across a wide variety of technologies
• IT security and risk management within an architecture role
• Experience working within architectural design authorities and governance forums
• Technical selection and RFI/RFP processes, including supplier assurance of third-party products and contractual due diligence including drafting statements of requirements for third parties or
• commenting on vendor statements of work (SoW)
• Working in a highly regulated environment (e.g. financial services)
• Agile methodologies (Scrum, Kanban) and waterfall methodologies along with associated toolsets (such as Jira)
• Use of documentation tools such as Atlassian Confluence along with diagramming or architectural modelling tools and languages (draw.io, Sparx, ADOIT, ArchiMate, Mermaid, C4)
• Broad knowledge of IT technologies and architectural styles and patterns (e.g. event-driven, serverless, microservices, SOA, layered architectures)
• Supporting implementation and solution design for large public cloud implementations, preferably both AWS and Azure
• Supporting implementation and technical design across core technologies (Windows, Linux, VMware, Hyper-V, web, database, security gateways, LAN/WAN networking)
• Designing solutions involving middleware and integration including JBoss / WebLogic, enterprise service bus / message queueing / integration platforms (iPaaS) such as RabbitMQ, MuleSoft,
• Boomi, Kafka
• Designing (including requirements traceability) secure, high performing, and highly available technology solutions
• Knowledge of continuous integration and deployment processes, methods, and tools
• Providing architectural support and assurance to DevOps teams, with application of agile practices
• Ability to work with cutting-edge AI LLM technologies, producing work in conjunction with models such as Anthropic Claude, whilst experimenting and exploring different methods of co-working with AI

Education and Qualifications

• Degree or HND in information technology, or equivalent experience
• Relevant technical and business qualifications (e.g. Microsoft or AWS certifications, TOGAF, ITIL)
• Evidence of your commitment to continuous learning