GCP Solutions Architect - Leeds x2 per week

We have an exciting opportunity now available with one of our global telecoms clients! They are currently looking for a skilled GCP solution architect to join their team for an initial six-month contract. Accountabilities:

• First point of technical engagement on new initiatives: understand the outcome, the constraints and what the business is actually asking for.
• Produce options analysis and a clear recommended approach grounded in existing technical patterns and solution guardrails.
• Own the architecture artefacts: solution designs, context and integration diagrams, data flows for a given problem statement .
• Design non-functional requirements in from day one: security, identity, data protection, resilience, observability and cost.
• Provide early cost estimates and surface technical risks and dependencies before work is committed.
• Stay engaged through delivery. Review what is being built against the design and adjust the design deliberately when it no longer fits.
• Contribute to and evolve reference architectures, standards and reusable patterns.
• Bring designs to the Design Authority and work with Security, GRC and Platform on review and technical direction.

• A proven Solution Architect, or a senior engineer who has carried real solution design responsibility, ideally in cloud-native or SaaS environments.
• An engineering background that holds up with engineers. You understand modern development practice because you have done it.
• Hands-on design on GCP including serverless, managed databases and event-driven services.
• Strong in API design, integration patterns, microservices and event-driven architecture.
• Solid on identity: OAuth2/OIDC, federated identity and zero-trust principles.
• Designing for security, data protection and regulatory compliance in an enterprise setting.
• Familiar with Terraform, CI/CD and GitOps.
• Data architecture across relational and NoSQL stores, data modelling, and integration with ERP and HR platforms.
• Writes ADRs and runs design reviews as a matter of course.
• Pragmatic under ambiguity. You can make a sound call now without compromising where the architecture needs to be later.

Desirable:

• AI or agent-based solutions, especially evaluation, guardrails and human-in-the-loop design.
• Workflow automation.
• Back Office domain knowledge in Finance, Procurement or HR.

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