We currently have an excellent opportunity for a Solution Architect to join a well established team in our growing business.
The Solution Architect provides the leadership, analysis, and design activities required to develop technology solutions that meet business needs while aligning with architectural governance and enterprise standards. Operating under broad direction, the Solution Architect ensures delivery teams design, build and implement fit-for-purpose solutions that contribute to strategic business outcomes.
The role collaborates closely with platform owners, project managers, business analysts, and technical specialists throughout project lifecycles. It focuses on ensuring and advising – guiding others on design, governance, and quality, and providing assurance that architectures are compliant with the enterprise direction.
Organisational context:
The IT function has renewed its strategy in response to the company's ambition to drive an industry that is both sustainable and productive, that pushes boundaries in service of humanity. An attractive industry that is worthy of the 21st Century and the great people who work in it.
The IT team is rising to that opportunity, repositioning itself as a strategic enabler for the organisation, and applying focused effort to create a more streamlined technology landscape that accelerates value creation, improves digital experience for greater impact, ensures data integrity underpins every decision, and embeds AI to support every process.
Key Accountabilities:
Interpret Business Needs:
- Work with platform and technology owners to ensure a robust architectural runway that supports future business growth.
- Understand business drivers, capabilities (current and future), and change requirements to produce effective and sustainable designs.
- Evaluate and document trade-offs between different solution options to guide stakeholders.
Assess Technology:
- Monitor current-state solutions to identify deficiencies from aging technology, misalignment, or technical debt.
- Analyse market and technology trends and advise how they may impact business and IT Delivery.
- Facilitate the evaluation and selection of software and infrastructure products, including cost, licensing, and total cost of ownership (TCO).
- Support platform and technology owners in lifecycle management and end of life decisions.
- Conduct feasibility studies, proofs of concept, and vendor assessments.
Apply Technology:
- Lead the evaluation, design and analysis of solution architectures across multiple projects or platforms.
- Ensure solutions align with architectural principles, standards and patterns.
- Provide design assurance and technical leadership to delivery teams throughout build and deployment.
- Collaborate with project managers and business analysts to ensure planned outcomes align with solution intent.
- Support platform technology teams by advising on integration, scalability and non-functional requirements.
Provide Enterprise Guidance:
- Contribute to enterprise reference architectures, standards and definitions.
- Support Architecture Review Boards by producing artefacts that enable design assurance.
- Participate in and contribute to a Community of Practice (CoP) for architects.
- Document reusable patterns and lessons learned.
Performance Measures:
- Time to value – idea to discovery, discovery to business case, business case to delivery.
- Stakeholder feedback.
- Contribution to realisation of target enterprise architecture.
- Project cost recoverable utilisation >70%.
Key Relationships:
Internal:
- Reports to Lead Solution Architect.
- Architecture team members.
- Business Stakeholders/SMEs, Platform and Technology Owners.
- Delivery Organisation (Project Managers, Platform Teams).
External:
Desired Capabilities and Behaviours:
- A driver of change and improved ways of working.
- A Pragmatist that can balance tactical and strategic needs of the business.
- Ability to engage with stakeholders at all levels of the organisation, adjusting language and tone to the audience.
- A believer in quality, open documentation to aid team collaboration and knowledge sharing.
- Can effectively lead and influence teams and team members.
- Skilled at influencing, guiding and facilitating stakeholders and peers with decision making.
- Ability to articulate new ideas and concepts to technical and nontechnical audiences
- Ability to understand the long-term ("big picture") and short-term perspectives of situations
- Ability to translate future-state business capabilities and requirements into solution architecture requirements
- Ability to propose and estimate the financial impact of solution architecture alternatives
- Ability to work creatively and analytically to solve business problems and propose solutions
- Ability to quickly comprehend the functions and capabilities of new technologies
- Trusted and respected as a thought leader who can influence and persuade business and IT leaders and IT development teams.
- Technology neutral: remains unbiased toward any specific technology or vendor choice, and is more interested in results than personal preferences
- Displays intellectual curiosity and integrity
- Business acumen, appreciation of IT budgeting (Run/Change), contribute to business case development.
Education and Experience:
- Degree in Computer Science, Math or related subject, or equivalent relevant experience.
- Exposure to multiple, diverse technologies, platforms and processing environments.
- Good understanding of strategic and new and emerging technology trends, and the practical application of existing, new and emerging technologies to new and evolving business and operating models.
- Good understanding of product management, agile principles and development methodologies and capability of supporting agile teams by providing advice and guidance on opportunities, impact and risks, taking account of technical and architectural debt.
- Experience working in a relevant industry is helpful, but not required.
- Experience developing architecture blueprints, strategies and roadmaps.
- Experience delivering presentations to senior-level executives and technical audiences.
- Experience of modern work management and documentation tools such as Confluence, Jira, GitHub.
About Us
Laing O'Rourke are an international engineering and construction company delivering state-of-the-art infrastructure and buildings projects for clients in the UK, Middle East and Australia.
Certainty, reliability, quality – this is what our clients want. And at Laing O'Rourke, we have more than 150 years of experience delivering it. Laing O'Rourke's story is one of energy, passion, ambition, people and teamwork. We harness the power of our experience, stretching back over a century and a half to deliver certainty for our clients.
As part of the Disability Confident scheme, we would like to enable access to candidates with long term conditions and disabilities through the ‘Offer an interview scheme'. This supports applicants that meet the essential criteria by offering an interview for the advertised position. Please let us know if you would like to opt in to this scheme and let us know if you require any adjustments for the interview process.
We want to ensure our recruitment process is accessible to all. If you need the application form in an alternative format or you would like to know more about our recruitment process, please email [email protected]
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