Senior Solution Architect

Our client, a leading global supplier for IT services, requires Senior Solution Architect to be based at their client’s office in Bristol, UK.

This is a hybrid role - you can work remotely in the UK and attend the Bristol office 2 days per week .

This is a 6+ month temporary contract to start asap

Day rate: Competitive Market rate

Our client is seeking an exceptional Senior Solution Architect to design, govern, and deliver secure, scalable, and high-performing enterprise solutions across complex, regulated environments. You will act as the architectural authority across business, data, application, technology, and integration domains - shaping architectures, driving cloud adoption, modernising Legacy platforms, and ensuring alignment with business outcomes.

This role requires a blend of hands-on technical depth, architecture governance, and stakeholder leadership, ideally gained within Banking & Financial Services (BFSI) or similarly regulated sectors, ? Architecture & Solution Design

• Define and own end-to-end architecture across applications, data, cloud, and integration layers.
• Translate business requirements into high-quality architecture artefacts including MVDs, HLDs, integration maps, data flow models, and sequence diagrams.
• Lead architecture reviews, design assurance, and architectural governance to ensure alignment with enterprise standards and principles.
• Design scalable, resilient, secure architectures leveraging microservices, APIs, event-driven systems, and modern cloud-native patterns.
• Evaluate and recommend technologies, frameworks, and tools aligned with strategic platforms and standards.

? Cloud, Integration & Modernisation Leadership

• Architect and guide solutions across Azure/GCP, with practical understanding of containers, serverless, networking, IAM, and cloud security.
• Lead implementations of cloud platforms or equivalent enterprise systems where relevant.
• Define modern API-first, microservices, and event-driven architectures using REST, etc.
• Drive modernisation initiatives, cloud migrations, ERP/EPM transformation, and multi-/hybrid-cloud strategy.

? Domain, Security & Compliance (BFSI-focused)

• Ensure architectures meet regulatory, audit, and compliance obligations (As prescribed by enterprise Architecture governance)
• Embed security-by-design, IAM, encryption, data governance, and operational risk controls in all solutions.
• Work closely with risk, audit, security, and compliance teams to ensure solutions are accredited and operationally ready.

? Stakeholder Management & Delivery Leadership

• Partner with business, finance, engineering, product, and operations teams to shape solution direction and trade-offs.
• Provide technical leadership to engineering teams through delivery - from design to build to deployment.
• Communicate complex technical concepts to both senior leadership and non-technical audiences.

? Governance, Standards & Coaching

• Champion architectural best practices, reusable patterns, and reference architectures.
• Contribute to and manage architecture repositories, modelling standards, and documentation quality.
• Mentor engineers, junior architects, and cross-functional stakeholders; foster continuous learning and architectural excellence.

? Core Architecture Expertise

• 10+ years in Solution Architecture, Technical Architecture roles.
• Strong experience designing distributed systems, microservices, API-led architectures, and integration-heavy solutions.
• Deep understanding of cloud technologies (AWS/Azure/GCP) including networking, IAM, compute, storage, container platforms, and cloud-native services.
• Practical knowledge of DevOps, CI/CD, IaC, automated testing, observability, and SRE practices.
• Strong grounding in data architecture: warehousing, streaming, governance, lineage, and analytics.

? BFSI/Enterprise Domain Experience

• Experience delivering solutions within Banking, Financial Services, Insurance, or similarly regulated environments.
• Familiarity with ERP/finance platforms, GL systems, payments, risk, regulatory reporting, EPM, Financial Planning Budgeting & Reporting or financial data flows.

? Documentation & Governance

• Expertise producing MVDs, HLDs, LLDs, sequence diagrams, and architecture roadmaps.
• Experience with architecture frameworks (eg, TOGAF, Zachman) and modelling tools (UML, ArchiMate, Ardoq, Visio).

? Soft Skills & Leadership

• Exceptional communication, stakeholder management, and influencing skills.
• Strong analytical thinking, problem solving, and decision-making capability.
• Ability to operate in fast-paced, cross-functional environments with matrixed stakeholder structures.

Tech Stack (Indicative)

• Cloud: GCP/Oracle EPM Cloud
• Integration: REST API, OIC, Others relevant
• Containers: Any
• Data: SQL, NoSQL, BigQuery, Dataflow, Oracle DB
• Frameworks: TOGAF, ArchiMate, Agile (Scrum, Kanban, SAFe)

Desirable Skills:

• Cloud certifications (eg, Google Cloud Professional Architect, Oracle EPM ).
• Oracle Cloud certifications (ERP Cloud, Integration Cloud,EPM) .
• Experience in large-scale digital transformation and multi-year enterprise programmes.
• Exposure to open banking, API ecosystems, or financial modernisation programmes.