Senior Solution Architect

We are seeking a Senior Solution Architect with a proven ability to operate at the intersection of strategy, technology, and delivery, and who is motivated by shaping large-scale, meaningful change within a complex and intellectually vibrant organisation. This is a high-impact role for an experienced architect who wants to influence how UCL designs, builds, and evolves its digital services across major programmes, platforms, and product areas.

You will lead solution design in close collaboration with senior stakeholders, fellow architects, delivery teams, and external partners. Translating strategic priorities into pragmatic, resilient solutions, you will help shape architectural standards, patterns, and governance while remaining close to delivery. Acting as a trusted advisor to senior leaders, you will balance enterprise-level outcomes with hands-on architectural depth to address complex challenges with broad institutional impact.

Do you have experience in UX?, * Proven experience working within large, complex organisations, with the ability to understand strategic drivers and translate them into practical, deliverable solution designs that meet real business and user need.

• Strong capability in shaping end-to-end solution architectures, balancing strategic intent with delivery constraints to produce resilient, scalable, and maintainable outcomes.
• Experience leading and influencing multidisciplinary product teams, including senior technical leads, software engineers, test engineers, user experience and accessibility practitioners, DevOps, security, operations, and external partners.
• The ability to operate confidently at both strategic and detailed levels, providing clear direction while engaging hands-on with design decisions, trade-offs, and implementation approaches.
• A pragmatic mindset, with strong analytical skills and the ability to navigate complexity, ambiguity, and competing priorities in a matrix environment
• Solid technical breadth across modern technology stacks, including cloud. platforms, integration patterns, APIs, identity, and application architectures
• Experience translating architectural principles and standards into actionable guidance for delivery teams, supporting consistency without creating unnecessary friction.
• Strong communication and influencing skills, with the ability to explain complex technical concepts clearly and build alignment among diverse stakeholders.
• A collaborative approach and interest in contributing to architectural communities of practice, knowledge sharing, and continuous improvement.
• Experience or qualifications in TOGAF and/or SAFe (or equivalent frameworks) are advantageous.

As well as the exciting opportunities this role presents, we also offer some great benefits some of which are below:

• 41 Days holiday (27 days annual leave 8 bank holiday and 6 closure days)
• Additional 5 days' annual leave purchase scheme
• Defined benefit career average revalued earnings pension scheme (CARE)
• Cycle to work scheme and season ticket loan
• Immigration loan
• Relocation scheme for certain posts
• On-Site nursery
• On-site gym
• Enhanced maternity, paternity and adoption pay
• Employee assistance programme: Staff Support Service
• Discounted medical insurance Visit

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/reward-and-benefits to find out more.

Information Services Division (ISD) is the primary provider of IT services to UCL. We support and enhance learning, teaching, research and administrative processes by providing information- and technology-related services to over 50,000 staff and students of UCL and associated institutions. Our goal is to be the top IT services group in the HE sector and we are growing our team's capability in AI, experience/UX, agile development, security, cloud, service management and partnering. We are modernising our technology foundations, digitising the processes of the university to transform experience for students and staff, and partnering across the university to drive differentiation in UCL education and research. The Solution Architecture Team is part of a wider team of Architects including Enterprise, Platform, Data, Integration and AI Architecture teams who are responsible for defining and governing architecture, driving solution design, and maintaining the repository to include current and future states.