Solutions Architect - Active SC Applications Only

Advanced Resource Managers Limited; City Of London; Hybrid; GBP 108,000 - 141,000; Full time

Job summary

Advanced Resource Managers Limited is seeking an experienced Solution Architect in London for a 6-month contract with Inside IR35. The role is hybrid, requiring 2–3 days onsite, and demands current SC clearance and NPPV3.

You will design and deliver architectures across digital products for policing, bridging application, data, and infrastructure concerns while collaborating with DevOps and engineering teams and guiding AWS deployments.

Qualifications

• Experience delivering architecture for national policing digital services.
• Translate requirements into clear architecture options and practical designs.
• Collaborate with DevOps, engineering and delivery teams to ensure architecture is implementable.

Responsibilities

• Develop, review and maintain solution and application architectures across a range of digital products and services.
• Produce architecture artefacts including application, integration, data and technology/infrastructure views.
• Review technical proposals and designs, identify trade-offs and provide recommendations.
• Work with engineering teams to ensure architecture is aligned with modern engineering practices.
• Provide architecture input throughout the product lifecycle from discovery to operation.
• Support designs deployed within AWS, considering compute, networking, storage, security and resilience.
• Contribute to DevOps and CI/CD approaches to support automated build, test, deployment and operation.
• Understand and advance Infrastructure as Code, especially Terraform, and how it relates to architecture.
• Define non-functional requirements: performance, availability, security, maintainability.
• Identify risks, debt and constraints and propose mitigations.
• Support integration between products and external systems with APIs and events.
• Capture and maintain architecture decisions and governance.
• Collaborate with other architects to establish reusable patterns and standards.
• Act as technical problem solver and communicate decisions to stakeholders.
• Adapt architecture explanations for technical and non-technical audiences.

Skills

Solution Architecture

Cloud Infrastructure

DevOps Collaboration

Stakeholder Engagement

Tools

Terraform

Job description

Solution Architect

6-Month contract - Inside IR35 - up to £675 per day

London based - hybrid working - 2-3 days a week onsite

Current and active SC Clearance as well as NPPV3 is required to be considered for this role

We are looking for an experienced Solution Architect to work as part of a central architecture function supporting the design and delivery of a portfolio of digital products and services that support Policing. This is a hands-on architecture role requiring someone who is comfortable working across a variety of products and technology areas, moving between application architecture, solution design, integration, cloud infrastructure and engineering considerations.

Key Responsibilities:

• Develop, review and maintain solution and application architectures across a range of digital products and services, translating business and technical requirements into pragmatic, deliverable designs.
• Produce architecture and design artefacts at an appropriate level of detail, including application, integration, data and technology/infrastructure views.
• Review and evaluate technical proposals, solution options and designs, identifying trade-offs and providing clear recommendations to support delivery decisions.
• Work closely with engineering teams to ensure architecture is implementable and aligned with modern engineering practices, rather than simply producing architecture documentation.
• Provide architecture input throughout the product lifecycle, from early discovery and design through development, transition and operation.
• Support the design of solutions deployed within AWS, including consideration of compute, networking, storage, security, resilience, availability, observability and operational support.
• Work with engineering teams on DevOps and CI/CD approaches, helping ensure that architecture supports effective automated build, test, deployment and operation.
• Understand and contribute to Infrastructure as Code approaches, particularly Terraform, and how infrastructure design and application architecture work together.
• Define and assure non-functional requirements, including performance, availability, resilience, scalability, security, supportability and maintainability.
• Identify architectural risks, technical debt, dependencies and constraints, working with delivery teams to determine appropriate mitigation or resolution.
• Support integration between products, shared services and external systems, considering APIs, events, data flows and wider end-to-end dependencies.
• Ensure architecture decisions and rationale are appropriately captured and maintained.
• Contribute to architecture governance and assurance, helping teams navigate governance pragmatically while maintaining appropriate technical standards.
• Work collaboratively with other architects and engineering specialists to establish reusable patterns, standards and approaches across multiple products.
• Act as a technical problem solver, helping teams investigate complex or cross-cutting technical issues and develop viable solution options.
• Communicate architecture effectively to both technical and non-technical stakeholders, adapting the level of detail to the audience.

Essential Skills and Experience:

Domain Experience

Experience of delivering architecture within one or more of the following environments is required:

• Large Government Departments
• Policing, law enforcement or Public Safety
• Large-scale, security-sensitive digital services
• Programmes involving legacy modernisation, cloud migration or replacement of business-critical systems

Technical Experience:

• Strong experience working as a Solution Architect within complex digital delivery environments associated to national policing systems.
• Good application architecture and solution design experience, ideally across multiple products or services rather than a single technology stack.
• Experience designing modern applications and services using approaches such as APIs, microservices, event-driven integration and cloud-native patterns.
• Good understanding of the relationship between application architecture, infrastructure and software engineering.
• Experience working directly with software engineers, technical leads, DevOps engineers and delivery teams.
• Ability to translate requirements and problems into clear architecture options and practical solution designs.
• Experience defining and working with non-functional requirements.
• Understanding of security, resilience, scalability, availability, observability and operational considerations within solution design.
• Ability to work with incomplete or evolving requirements and provide sufficient architectural direction without unnecessarily constraining engineering teams.
• Strong stakeholder engagement and communication skills.
• Ability to work across several products or technical problems concurrently and prioritise architecture effort according to delivery need.