Overview
Lead Retail Solution Architect - IBM i-series (AS400) to Cloud
Location: West London - 5 days on-site
Salary: £75-80,000 per annum
My client is looking to recruit an accomplished Lead Solution Architect to drive a pivotal transformation in their technology organisation. This is a strategic and highly influential role, where you will define the architectural vision, enable product teams, and bridge modern cloud-native platforms with core enterprise systems including deep integration with IBM i-series (AS400) environments and distributed operations.
Role
As Lead Solution Architect, you will shape the organisation\'s technical strategy, mentor architects and engineers, and influence decision-making across technology and business domains. You will lead the transition from a technology stack-oriented delivery model to a product-centric, outcome-driven architecture, ensuring scalability, resilience, and alignment with business objectives.
Responsibilities
* Define and drive the enterprise-wide architecture strategy supporting the transition from stack-centric IT to product-led, outcome-focused delivery.
* Establish an architectural vision aligned with commercial objectives, customer experience goals, and operational scalability.
* Design and govern integration patterns between modern cloud platforms, distributed retail/wholesale sites, and IBM i-series (AS400) systems.
* Champion modernisation of Legacy environments, enabling core enterprise capabilities (pricing, inventory, fulfilment) to be consumed via APIs and event-driven interfaces.
* Act as a trusted advisor to senior technology and business leaders, shaping product strategy through architecture.
* Define and embed architecture principles, standards, and guardrails to support autonomous product teams.
* Lead initiatives to transition delivery teams to product-aligned operating models, creating scalable architectural patterns and platforms that accelerate delivery.
* Ensure non-functional requirements including security, observability, resilience, and performance are embedded in product and platform design.
* Oversee architectural governance in a way that enables delivery rather than constrains it.
* Mentor and coach solution architects and senior engineers, raising the overall architectural maturity.
* Play a leading role in architecture forums, communities of practice, and design reviews.
Qualifications
* Extensive experience as a Lead Solution Architect, Principal Architect, or similar senior architecture leadership role.
* Proven track record of driving architectural transformation, ideally moving from stack- or project-centric models to product- and outcome-driven architectures.
* Deep expertise in enterprise integration and hybrid architecture, including hands-on experience with IBM i-series (AS400) and distributed retail/wholesale site operations.
* Strong understanding of modern architectural paradigms: domain-driven design, event-driven architecture, microservices, API-first.
* Experience shaping and scaling architectures on AWS, Azure, or GCP.
* Exceptional communication and influencing skills with C-level, business stakeholders, and engineering teams.
* Strong leadership experience guiding teams through large-scale technical and organisational change.
* Exposure to platform engineering, DevOps, or data architecture.
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