Solutions Architect (Leeds)

We are looking for an experienced Senior Solutions Architect with over 16+ years of experience in designing and delivering robust, reliable, scalable and cloud-native solutions. The candidate should have good technical understanding of various tools and technologies including cloud service offering from various providers. The candidate should have a strategic mindset and the ability to collaborate with senior stakeholders, experience contributing to proposals, RFI (Request for Information) responses and bids, along with a strong grasp of architecture frameworks such as TOGAF and familiarity with GDS standards.

Key Responsibilities:

• Design and lead the development of enterprise-scale solutions using Spring Boot Java , Node.js , AWS, event-driven and Microservices Architecture
• Engage with public sector clients to translate business challenges into secure, reliable and scalable architectural solutions
• Work collaboratively with cross-functional teams including Delivery Leads, Business Analysts, Developers, Testers and DevOps engineers
• Respond to RFI, RFP and bid requests , contributing architecture overviews, solution design documents and technical estimates
• Support proposal creation by defining solution scope, identifying key risks & assumptions and presenting high level solutions.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to ensure alignment with compliance, security and data governance standards.
• Advocate and implement best practices in solution design, performance tuning, and maintainability.
• Ensure architectural documentation is clear, complete, and maintained
• Participate in architecture reviews , technical governance and the creation of reusable solution patterns.
• Keep up to date with emerging technologies and apply relevant innovations in client environments.
• Apply TOGAF or similar frameworks in designing and documenting architecture
• Drive innovation and contribute to organisation-wide initiatives and capability building

Required Experience & Skills:

• 16+ years’ experience as an solution architecture
• Proven technical leadership in Spring Boot , Node.js , REST APIs and AWS (including Lambda, S3, RDS, EventBridge, ECS Fargate, Secret Manager, API Gateway etc).
• Experience designing event-driven , microservices-based architectures and working with event stores .
• Demonstrable experience delivering complex solutions for private & public sector clients .
• Strong experience preparing and presenting technical responses for bids, proposals, and RFIs .
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to interact effectively with both technical teams and senior stakeholders.
• Experience in working in Agile methodologies and working with multidisciplinary delivery teams
• Comfortable managing relationships with delivery leads, practice heads, and client-side leadership.
• Knowledge of TOGAF or other architectural frameworks.
• Passion for staying updated with emerging technologies and applying them in solutioning.

Desirable / Nice to Have:

• Familiarity with GDS (Government Digital Services) guidelines and assessment processes
• AWS Solutions Architect – Professional or Associate certification
• Experience with DevOps, CI/CD, Docker/Kubernetes, and infrastructure-as-code tools (Terraform, CloudFormation)
• Experience with hybrid/multi-cloud solutions