Bristol / Edinburgh / Leeds (Hybrid – 2 days per week in the office)
A leading financial services organisation is seeking a Lead Solutions Architect to play a critical role in shaping the architecture behind large-scale digital transformation initiatives. This position sits at the heart of a major platform responsible for delivering colleague and customer services across insurance, pensions, and investment products.
This is not a maintenance-focused architecture role. It is an opportunity to define architectural direction, modernise legacy capability, and help build scalable, intelligent platforms that support the organisation’s long-term digital strategy.
You will work closely with Product Owners, Engineering teams, and Enterprise Architecture to design and deliver complex, high-impact solutions across a distributed engineering landscape spanning the UK and international teams.
Key Responsibilities
* Define and lead target solution architectures across APIs, microservices, colleague platforms, CCaaS telephony, robotics, and AI-enabled automation
* Drive the modernisation and simplification of service-driven architectures, enabling scalable and resilient digital platforms
* Shape the data strategy to support actionable intelligence and improved decision-making at scale
* Guide engineering teams in implementing secure, reliable, and scalable architectures
* Work across multiple feature teams to balance delivery speed with long‑term architectural strategy
* Support the transformation of back‑office operations and customer service capabilities through modern technology and automation
* Collaborate with architecture and engineering leadership to establish standards, patterns, and best practices
Key Experience Required
* Proven experience leading architecture across complex, multi‑system transformation programmes
* Deep knowledge of API‑led architectures and microservices, including event‑driven and publish/subscribe patterns
* Strong understanding of web architecture, security, and scalable distributed systems
* Experience designing systems with authentication, single sign‑on (OAuth), and encryption (in transit and at rest)
* Demonstrated ability to define architectural standards, frameworks, and patterns
* Strong stakeholder engagement skills with the ability to influence engineering and product teams
* Cloud platform experience (GCP preferred, though Azure or AWS is also valuable)
* Experience with contact centre / CCaaS platforms such as Genesys Cloud, NICE, or AWS
* Leadership or mentoring of other architects
* Experience experimenting or prototyping new approaches across different technology stacks
* Familiarity with content management frameworks and digital experience tooling
* Hybrid working model with two days per week in the office
* Locations available in Bristol, Edinburgh, or Leeds
* Agile and flexible working options, including hybrid arrangements and job share opportunities
* Generous pension contribution of up to 15%
* Annual performance bonus
* Share schemes including free shares
* Flexible lifestyle benefits and wellbeing initiatives
* Strong parental leave policies and family support programmes
This role offers the opportunity to work on high‑impact digital transformation programmes, influence architectural strategy across large platforms, and help shape the future technology landscape of a major financial services organisation.
If you would like to learn more, please apply or reach out for a confidential discussion.
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