Solution Architect jobs in United Kingdom

Join Civic Marketplace as Our Foundational Engineering Leader!

Are you passionate about technology's power to drive meaningful impact in communities? At Civic Marketplace, we're reimagining how local governments procure and deliver essential services, building the most intuitive and efficient procurement platform of the future.

Why Civic Marketplace?

We're a mission-driven startup on a journey to transform the way local governments operate—breaking down barriers, optimizing processes, and ultimately improving outcomes for residents. If you thrive on startup hustle and want to be part of a purpose-led team making real change, this opportunity is for you.

Who We’re Looking For:

We’re seeking our first engineering hire—a dynamic technical leader who is ready to own our technology from end to end. You'll drive our technical roadmap, manage and elevate our codebase, and build a high-performing team to meet our ambitious goals. You’ll be a cornerstone of our growing organization, with the freedom to shape our tech stack and strategy.

About the role

• You drive great execution and are full-stack, comfortable in both leading and ‘owning’ code end to end. You will be our full-time lead engineer hire. You work with teams to enable execution including implementing appropriate processes, setting appropriate expectations, managing risks, managing resource allocation (aka managing the balance of scope/schedule/resources), and removing blockers.

• You develop a quality playbook for your teams and area(s) of ownership, including standards for pull requests, code reviews, testing, and monitoring. You are a direct contributor and don’t shirk away from coding, and happy also to delegate and hire where appropriate and are comfortable to work with freelancers.

• You are fluent in REACT, marketplaces, payment infrastructure, and hybrid approaches of custom, and no-code/low code app development

• You ensure the team owns the operation of data, systems, and apps in production. You drive resolution of critical issues, root cause analysis-driven actions.

• You drive hiring, motivation, growth with everyone in your team. You develop and calibrate a thorough understanding of employees’ motivations, strengths, and growth opportunities. You work to align opportunities for personal growth with prospective impact to the organization. You provide constant, real-time feedback to the team. You create a self-managing team.

• You ensure the team continuously improves. You establish goals and OKRs for the team and/or technical scope, set up processes to ensure we continually track and learn, and drive priorities to improve. You orchestrate improvement using root cause analyses, postmortems/retrospectives, and other processes.

• You cultivate a great culture where team members can do their best work. You promote ownership and accountability, high I/O, learning and teaching, good decision making, and a push for very high standards.

• You build relationships and are open to working with contractors and hiring where needed. You build, maintain, and invest in relationships inside and outside of the org, and ensure the team does the same. You promote transparency through regular updates on priorities and status.

• You ensure the team has clear goals, roadmaps, and priorities that are well informed by and socialized with partners and peers across the organization. You work end-to-end to ensure we minimize technical and functionality gaps between teams.

About You:

• You act with and teach appropriate urgency when the situation calls for it. You feel personally accountable and responsible. You look for problems and inefficiencies and find elegant solutions before they become major issues.

• You are high I/O, emotionally mature, and humble. You are a good, deep listener. Likewise, you share info proactively and effectively. You care about being effective over being right. You accept feedback willingly, seeking opposing points of view.

• You are an open-minded learner. You live to learn new things, like staying up to date on new technologies, tools, and techniques such as AI and no code and low code tools. You are inspired by what's possible as well as what people inside and outside the company know, and eager to incorporate the best. You experiment, challenge status quo, and take appropriate risks.

• You are a rapid learner that quickly ramps on new languages, frameworks, and systems.

• You are a systems thinker: you think end to end about how designs and changes affect the overall service, architecture, codebase, and users, and how it will evolve in the future.

• You understand and drive techniques for leading projects and improving productivity, raising the visibility of the team’s work within the organization.

• You are experienced with a variety of growth and leadership strategies, tactics, and scenarios.

• You are empathetic, happy when helping others succeed. You drive and facilitate clarity when there's ambiguity in what's needed.

• You invest; you make wise, informed decisions about where you invest your time and help the team determine how to best allocate their time. You mentor employees (on their team or across the organization), encouraging and guiding them in levelling up.

• Experience at least 5 or more years as a min. You're joining a small team of fewer than 3 very committed and excited engines who will be excited to learn from you at this super critical time you'll be involved in growing and leading the team

What’s in for you?

• Influence, trust and impact inside a well funded startup that's scaling

• Work alongside other talented and friendly folk who are keen to learn and improve

• Competitive salary and meaningful stock options

• High impact role where you’ll have the autonomy to develop our platform quickly and make a meaningful contribution

• A small bit about process: we'll start with a 30 minute chat, then have a couple of conversations (one technical, one non-technical) followed by a final chat with one of our founders, you'll get more details about this prior to interview).

Closing date - March 31st, 2025.

Closing date - March 31st, 2025.

Please Note: We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.