Solutions Architect - Active SC Applications Only

Solution Architect

6-Month contract - Inside IR35 - up to £675 per day

London based - hybrid working - 2-3 days a week onsite

Current and active SC Clearance as well as NPPV3 is required to be considered for this role

We are looking for an experienced Solution Architect to work as part of a central architecture function supporting the design and delivery of a portfolio of digital products and services that support Policing. This is a hands-on architecture role requiring someone who is comfortable working across a variety of products and technology areas, moving between application architecture, solution design, integration, cloud infrastructure and engineering considerations.

Key Responsibilities:

• Develop, review and maintain solution and application architectures across a range of digital products and services, translating business and technical requirements into pragmatic, deliverable designs.
• Produce architecture and design artefacts at an appropriate level of detail, including application, integration, data and technology/infrastructure views.
• Review and evaluate technical proposals, solution options and designs, identifying trade-offs and providing clear recommendations to support delivery decisions.
• Work closely with engineering teams to ensure architecture is implementable and aligned with modern engineering practices, rather than simply producing architecture documentation.
• Provide architecture input throughout the product lifecycle, from early discovery and design through development, transition and operation.
• Support the design of solutions deployed within AWS, including consideration of compute, networking, storage, security, resilience, availability, observability and operational support.
• Work with engineering teams on DevOps and CI/CD approaches, helping ensure that architecture supports effective automated build, test, deployment and operation.
• Understand and contribute to Infrastructure as Code approaches, particularly Terraform, and how infrastructure design and application architecture work together.
• Define and assure non-functional requirements, including performance, availability, resilience, scalability, security, supportability and maintainability.
• Identify architectural risks, technical debt, dependencies and constraints, working with delivery teams to determine appropriate mitigation or resolution.
• Support integration between products, shared services and external systems, considering APIs, events, data flows and wider end-to-end dependencies.
• Ensure architecture decisions and rationale are appropriately captured and maintained.
• Contribute to architecture governance and assurance, helping teams navigate governance pragmatically while maintaining appropriate technical standards.
• Work collaboratively with other architects and engineering specialists to establish reusable patterns, standards and approaches across multiple products.
• Act as a technical problem solver, helping teams investigate complex or cross-cutting technical issues and develop viable solution options.
• Communicate architecture effectively to both technical and non-technical stakeholders, adapting the level of detail to the audience.

Essential Skills and Experience:

Domain Experience

Experience of delivering architecture within one or more of the following environments is required:

• Large Government Departments
• Policing, law enforcement or Public Safety
• Large-scale, security-sensitive digital services
• Programmes involving legacy modernisation, cloud migration or replacement of business-critical systems

Technical Experience:

• Strong experience working as a Solution Architect within complex digital delivery environments associated to national policing systems.
• Good application architecture and solution design experience, ideally across multiple products or services rather than a single technology stack.
• Experience designing modern applications and services using approaches such as APIs, microservices, event-driven integration and cloud-native patterns.
• Good understanding of the relationship between application architecture, infrastructure and software engineering.
• Experience working directly with software engineers, technical leads, DevOps engineers and delivery teams.
• Ability to translate requirements and problems into clear architecture options and practical solution designs.
• Experience defining and working with non-functional requirements.
• Understanding of security, resilience, scalability, availability, observability and operational considerations within solution design.
• Ability to work with incomplete or evolving requirements and provide sufficient architectural direction without unnecessarily constraining engineering teams.
• Strong stakeholder engagement and communication skills.
• Ability to work across several products or technical problems concurrently and prioritise architecture effort according to delivery need.

Disclaimer:

This vacancy is being advertised by either Advanced Resource Managers Limited, Advanced Resource Managers IT Limited or Advanced Resource Managers Engineering Limited ("ARM"). ARM is a specialist talent acquisition and management consultancy. We provide technical contingency recruitment and a portfolio of more complex resource solutions. Our specialist recruitment divisions cover the entire technical arena, including some of the most economically and strategically important industries in the UK and the world today. We will never send your CV without your permission. Where the role is marked as Outside IR35 in the advertisement this is subject to receipt of a final Status Determination Statement from the end Client and may be subject to change.