Job Summary
We are seeking an experienced Solutions Architect to translate business needs into secure, scalable, and cost-effective technology solutions. The role involves partnering with business and technology teams to understand objectives, evaluate technology options, and design practical solutions aligned with organizational priorities. The Solutions Architect will provide architectural direction across applications, integrations, data, infrastructure, cloud services, and third-party platforms. This position requires a balanced approach to functionality, usability, reliability, maintainability, security, and cost, while connecting business stakeholders with technical delivery teams throughout the solution lifecycle.
Key Responsibilities
Business Partnership and Requirements Discovery
• Partner with business stakeholders to understand desired outcomes, operational challenges, and opportunities for technology improvement.
• Translate business needs into functional requirements, technical requirements, and actionable solution designs.
• Identify constraints, dependencies, assumptions, and success criteria early in the planning process.
• Help stakeholders evaluate whether to adopt existing capabilities, purchase a solution, build new functionality, or integrate available services.
End-to-End Solution Design
• Design solutions spanning business applications, enterprise platforms, data flows, integrations, infrastructure, and cloud services.
• Balance business value, user experience, scalability, reliability, security, delivery complexity, and total cost of ownership.
• Evaluate proposed solutions for compatibility with existing systems, enterprise standards, and long-term technology direction.
• Develop architecture diagrams, integration specifications, architecture decision records, and implementation roadmaps.
• Identify opportunities to simplify the technology environment, reuse existing capabilities, and reduce unnecessary duplication.
Technology Evaluation and Decision Support
• Assess products, platforms, services, and vendors against business and technical requirements.
• Present recommendations with clear explanations of alternatives, trade-offs, costs, risks, and operational implications.
• Lead or support proofs of concept (PoCs) to validate feasibility and resolve material uncertainties.
• Partner with procurement, legal, information security, and technology teams as needed during solution selection.
Delivery Guidance and Collaboration
• Provide architectural guidance to engineering, infrastructure, application, and implementation teams throughout delivery.
• Work with project and product leaders to align solution scope, dependencies, sequencing, and technical milestones.
• Review implementation designs and help resolve cross-system or cross-team technical issues.
• Identify material deviations from the agreed architecture and help teams evaluate and document appropriate changes.
• Support transition to operations through clear documentation, ownership definitions, and knowledge transfer.
Architecture Alignment and Responsible Design
• Collaborate with Information Security Architecture to incorporate appropriate safeguards into solution designs from the outset.
• Partner with relevant specialists to address privacy, compliance, resilience, accessibility, and operational requirements.
• Align solutions with established architecture principles and technology standards while supporting justified exceptions.
• Surface material risks and unresolved decisions to appropriate stakeholders and decision-makers.
• Contribute reusable patterns, reference architectures, and lessons learned to improve future solution delivery.
Required Qualifications
• Demonstrated experience designing and delivering technology solutions across multiple systems or technical domains.
• Experience in solution architecture, software engineering, systems integration, infrastructure, cloud engineering, or a related discipline.
• Strong understanding of application architecture, APIs, integration patterns, databases, networking, and cloud services.
• Ability to translate ambiguous business needs into clear requirements and practical technical designs.
• Ability to evaluate alternatives across functionality, security, performance, reliability, maintainability, and cost.
• Experience producing architecture diagrams, technical documentation, and decision records.
• Strong communication skills, including the ability to explain complex technical concepts to nontechnical audiences.
• Ability to build consensus, influence decisions, and work effectively across teams without direct management authority.
• Ability to work independently and collaborate effectively in a fully remote environment.
• Bachelor's degree in a relevant field or equivalent practical experience.
Preferred Qualifications
• Experience with enterprise applications, SaaS platforms, cloud services, and hybrid technology environments.
• Experience with technology modernization, platform consolidation, or complex integration initiatives.
• Familiarity with identity and access management, data protection, and secure design principles.
• Experience evaluating vendors, developing proofs of concept, and assessing total cost of ownership.
• Familiarity with DevOps practices, Infrastructure as Code, and automated delivery pipelines.
• Relevant solution architecture, cloud, or enterprise architecture certifications.
• Ability to incorporate security requirements into broader solution designs and collaborate effectively with security specialists. A dedicated cybersecurity background or security certification is not required.
