Solutions Architect , UI

MarketAxess Holdings Inc.; City of Westminster; Hybrid; GBP 80,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading financial technology firm in the UK is seeking a Solutions Architect to drive the development of their trading platform. The ideal candidate should possess extensive experience in software engineering and solution architecture, specifically in cloud computing environments. You will collaborate with cross-functional teams to ensure high standards of software engineering and address complex business needs. This role offers a dynamic work environment committed to continuous improvement and innovation.

Benefits

Free lunch and snacks

25 days annual leave plus charity days

Two-week bonus holiday after 5 years

Comprehensive benefits package including private medical insurance

Tuition Assistance and Professional Training

Qualifications

• 10+ years of progressive software engineering experience.
• 5+ years in solution architecture and 3+ in a cloud computing environment.
• Strong understanding of UX/UI design principles.
• Experience delivering presentations to senior level executives.

Responsibilities

• Interpret business needs and set strategy for solutions.
• Own services from requirements gathering to production.
• Lead a team of engineers in delivering cloud-native solutions.
• Facilitate the evaluation and selection of software standards.

Skills

Software engineering

Solution architecture

Cloud computing

React

TypeScript

Event-processing architectures

UX/UI design

Agile principles

People management

Education

BS/MS degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related subject

Tools

GraphQL

Kafka

Flink

Spark

Job description

We are seeking a hands on Solutions Architect to join our team who has a passion and expertise in helping us build our next gen Trading Workstation. The ideal candidate is someone who has demonstrated experience in architecting, building and operating highly scalable, available, and fault tolerant Trading platforms across a range of technologies. You should be passionate about technology, architecture, software engineering and quality, and innovatively addressing business problems. You will work with the team to collaborate on software solutions and architecture and ensure exceptional software engineering practices, and good documentation. It's essential to be willing to take on new skills to meet the shifting demands of accelerating our modernization efforts to the public cloud and Kubernetes world. Feedback from your users should be something that you look forward to, as you will work closely with the Product and Engineering to incorporate their needs into the team’s roadmap and use it as a measure of success. A critical success factor is being viewed as a trusted partner and collaborator, including business and technology stakeholders. We embrace a culture of collaboration and experimentation while striving and encouraging all team members to focus on continuous improvement and learning. We openly welcome diverse perspectives and people who are not afraid to challenge assumptions and prior ways of working.

Responsibilities

• Interpret business needs and set strategy – provide technical vision, drive strategy and roadmaps around solutions, solve complex problems, and act as the technical owner across strategic efforts for which your team(s) are responsible.
• Project execution and applying technology – own the services your team delivers from requirements gathering, design, development, testing, to production, establishing repeatable processes and methods that ensure high productivity, quality, and reliability.
• Providing architecture guidance – define principles, guidelines, standards, and solution patterns to ensure decisions align with the firm’s target state architecture vision; create deliverables like standard definitions, reference models and architecture designs to support governance.
• Team leadership – lead a team of engineers in identifying and implementing well‑architected, cloud‑native solutions that deliver the best possible experience for our clients and engineering teams; mentor through code reviews and ensure work meets team and industry standards.
• Assessing technology – facilitate the evaluation and selection of software product standards and services, understand emerging technology trends and disruptions, and apply them to enable new and evolving business capabilities.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of progressive software engineering experience, with 5+ in solution architecture and 3+ in a cloud computing environment (applications, infrastructure, storage, data, and platforms).
• Adept at building client‑side applications using React and TypeScript with strong experience in designing and implementing GraphQL schemas.
• 5+ years of streaming and event‑processing architectures and platforms (e.g., Kafka).
• Strong understanding of UX/UI design principles and a passion for creating intuitive user interfaces.
• Ability to plan, estimate, and manage the technical aspects of project execution and delivery.
• Product mindset that is deeply empathetic to customer needs, strategic in orientation, and metrics‑ and outcomes‑driven.
• Comfort working with ambiguity and adapting to changing requirements, with a proactive bias toward action.
• Good understanding of product management, agile principles and development methodologies, supporting agile teams with advice on opportunities, impact, and risks while addressing technical and architectural debt.
• Experience delivering presentations to senior level executives and technical audiences.
• Minimum of 3 years of people‑management experience leading global teams.
• BS/MS degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related subject.
• E‑trading and financial services industry experience is a plus.

Additional Technical Expertise

• API and microservices architecture
• Streaming and event‑processing architectures and platforms (e.g., Kafka, Flink, Spark)
• Desktop interoperability (e.g., OpenFin, Glue 42)
• Structured and unstructured databases and usage patterns
• High‑speed, high‑volume, high‑frequency transaction processing systems
• Real‑time logging, monitoring, and resiliency approaches
• Automated testing practices and frameworks
• Process automation approaches and tooling (e.g., DevOps and AIOps)
• Strong collaborative software engineering techniques and methods: agile development, continuous integration, code review or pairing, unit testing, refactoring, and related approaches.
• Ability to articulate and document architectural decisions and roadmaps at a senior executive level.
• Demonstrated ability to understand the long‑term “big picture” and short‑term perspectives of situations.
• Proven ability to build and maintain effective, trusting partnerships with product managers, architects and technical leads for individual products and applications.
• Ability to propose and estimate the financial impact of solution architecture alternatives.

Characteristics

• Trusted and respected as a thought leader who can influence and persuade business, IT leaders and engineering teams.
• Technology‑neutral: remains unbiased toward any specific technology or vendor choice and is more interested in results than personal preferences.
• Displays humility, drive, intellectual curiosity, and integrity.
• Motivated and driven by achieving long‑term business outcomes.
• Ability to work effectively in a team environment and lead cross‑functional teams.

Benefits

• Free Food: we provide lunch each day of the week when the employee attends the office via our vendor Feedr, as well as breakfast cereals, office snacks and drinks from our free vending machines.
• Paid Time Off: 25 days annual leave entitlement plus 2 charity days.
• Reward for your service: we offer a two‑week bonus holiday after completing each 5 years of service.
• Core benefits: competitive standard benefits package with private medical (PMI) for family, cash plan, health screenings, dental cover, 6× life assurance, critical illness cover, income protection, pension, car leasing, wellness stipend reimbursement, interest‑free season ticket loan and a “Share Incentive” plan.
• Tuition Assistance and Professional Training: on‑demand learning, boot camps, and opportunities to attend conferences.

Company Overview

MarketAxess is on a journey to digitally transform one of the world’s largest financial markets, enabling the shift from analog, phone‑based trading to a fully electronic marketplace. Our platform makes fixed‑income trading more accessible, improving transparency, efficiency and competition. With more than 2,000 clients worldwide relying on our solutions—and that number is only expected to grow—our success is built on collaboration, experimentation, and a relentless focus on innovation. Employees in Technology work in the office two or more days a week to maintain a collaborative environment while allowing flexibility depending on business function.