Solutions Architect

Role/Job title:

Solution Architect

Work Location:

Edinburgh /London

Role type:

Contract InsideIR35

Mode of working:

Hybrid 2 Days/week

Duration of assignment:

6 months to 1 year

Any other working conditions:

No routine travel or on-call requirement; occasional travel may be required for design, governance and release activities.

The Role:

As a Solution Architect, you will define and govern the end-to-end architecture for a debit-card platform integration within a leading UK banking environment. The programme will connect card-management and payment systems with a modern vault and core-banking services through an integration layer, APIs, events and batch interfaces. You will guide discovery, design and delivery across cloud and on-premises platforms, working with product, engineering, security, infrastructure and service teams to produce secure, resilient and supportable solutions.

Your responsibilities:

Own the end-to-end solution architecture for the TM-Vault integration, covering lookup services, the core-banking integration layer and changes across card-management, payment-gateway and clearing systems.

Translate business outcomes and functional journeys into target-state architecture, solution designs, interface specifications and delivery roadmaps.

Define integration patterns for REST and SOAP APIs, event-driven interactions and batch processing across cloud and on-premises environments.

Lead architecture decisions for hosting, data movement, caching, orchestration, resilience, security, performance and observability.

Produce and govern architecture artefacts, including high-level and low-level designs, interface contracts, data flows, non-functional requirements and architecture decision records.

Work with product owners, integrators, engineers, DevOps, QE and service teams to shape the backlog and ensure design intent is maintained through build, test and release.

Coordinate with dependent platform teams and architecture forums to resolve cross-system dependencies and secure required approvals.

Assess legacy integration constraints and define pragmatic transition approaches that minimise throwaway change and support coexistence during migration.

Provide technical assurance through design reviews, implementation oversight, risk management and production-readiness assessments.

Support knowledge transfer, documentation and handover to engineering and service teams, including operational monitoring and support requirements.

Your Profile

Essential skills/knowledge/experience:

Strong experience designing large-scale enterprise solutions in banking, cards, payments or core-banking integration.

Architecture expertise across APIs, microservices, event-driven services and batch integration patterns.

Hands-on knowledge of Java and Spring Boot solution ecosystems, with the ability to guide engineering design and implementation.

Experience designing solutions on Google Cloud Platform and Kubernetes-based platforms, including hybrid cloud and on-premises integration.

Strong understanding of API management and security, integration gateways, authentication, encryption and secrets management.

Experience with Kafka or equivalent event-streaming platforms, cloud storage and data-integration patterns.

Experience producing architecture artefacts and presenting solution decisions to engineering, security, infrastructure and governance stakeholders.

Knowledge of CI/CD, automated quality controls and operational tooling such as Jenkins, Harness, Splunk or Dynatrace.

Effective stakeholder communication, facilitation and technical leadership across multi-disciplinary and distributed teams.

Ability to define and assure non-functional requirements for availability, resilience, scalability, latency, security, observability and recoverability.

Desirable skills/knowledge/experience:

Knowledge of debit-card lifecycle journeys, card ordering, lost-and-stolen servicing, PIN management, voice authorisation, renewals and reissue processes.

Experience integrating legacy mainframe or card platforms using SOAP, ISO 8583, files and modern API or event-based patterns.

Knowledge of Apigee, HashiCorp Vault, Google Cloud Storage, OpenShift or equivalent technologies.

Familiarity with financial-services architecture governance, security controls and production-readiness processes.

Understanding of BIAN-aligned APIs or enterprise data-model standards.