Principal Solution Architect

Principal Solution Architect

Birmingham (2 days per week) | Occasional Manchester travel

Package up to £100,000 + 15–30% Bonus + £6,300 Car Allowance

The Opportunity

We are supporting a major UK technology organisation undergoing significant platform modernisation and digital transformation.

This is a newly created Principal Solution Architect position sitting within a highly visible architecture function, responsible for shaping the future state architecture of a complex SaaS platform estate used by thousands of customers across the UK and Europe.

The organisation is investing heavily in cloud-native engineering, modern software architecture, platform scalability, and engineering maturity. As a result, they require an experienced Principal Solution Architect capable of influencing technology strategy whilst remaining close enough to engineering teams to ensure architectural decisions translate into real-world delivery.

This is not a governance-only architecture role.

You will be expected to work closely with Engineering Leaders, Product teams, Principal Engineers, and delivery functions to define architecture roadmaps, guide solution design, and help modernise a large-scale platform ecosystem.

The Role

You will take ownership of architecture across multiple product and platform domains, helping shape long-term technology direction whilst ensuring immediate delivery priorities remain aligned to strategic objectives.

The successful individual will be responsible for:

• Defining and maintaining solution architecture standards across multiple product teams.
• Leading architecture design for large-scale business-critical platforms.
• Creating technology roadmaps that support future growth and scalability.
• Driving cloud-native architecture best practices.
• Supporting the migration and modernisation of legacy services.
• Working closely with Engineering Managers and Principal Engineers to ensure architecture is delivered effectively.
• Reviewing solution designs and providing technical leadership across engineering teams.
• Balancing technical excellence with commercial and operational requirements.
• Identifying architectural risks and opportunities across the wider technology estate.
• Acting as a senior technical authority for complex business initiatives.
• Influencing stakeholders at both technical and executive level.

Technology Environment

The environment is heavily focused around modern cloud-native engineering practices and distributed systems.

Key technologies include:

• AWS
• .NET 8 / .NET Core
• Microservices Architecture
• Event-Driven Systems
• REST APIs
• Kafka
• EventBridge
• SNS / SQS
• ECS / EKS / Kubernetes
• Terraform
• CI/CD Pipelines
• GitHub Actions
• SQL & NoSQL Databases
• Domain Driven Design
• Observability & Monitoring Platforms

You do not need experience with every technology listed above, however strong cloud architecture experience within modern distributed environments is essential.

What We're Looking For

We are keen to speak with architects who can demonstrate experience within modern product-led technology organisations.

Likely backgrounds could include:

• Principal Solution Architect
• Lead Solution Architect
• Enterprise Architect with strong delivery involvement
• Principal Software Engineer moving into architecture
• Cloud Architect
• Platform Architect

Experience required:

• Proven experience designing enterprise-scale software solutions.
• Strong AWS architecture capability.
• Experience within SaaS, platform, or product-led environments.
• Deep understanding of modern software engineering practices.
• Experience designing microservices and event-driven architectures.
• Strong stakeholder management skills.
• Ability to bridge the gap between architecture strategy and engineering delivery.
• Comfortable influencing senior technical and business stakeholders.