Job Title: Senior Solution Architect (Modern IT – Microservices, Cloud & DevOps)

Role Summary

The Senior Solution Architect is a technology leader responsible for owning and shaping complex, cross‑domain solution architectures across modern digital platforms. The role combines deep hands‑on architectural expertise in microservices, cloud-native design, and DevOps with strong stakeholder leadership, governance, and strategic influence. The Senior Solution Architect ensures solutions are aligned to business strategy, enterprise architecture standards, and long‑term platform evolution while enabling high‑quality, secure, and resilient delivery at scale.

Key Responsibilities

1) End-to-End Solution Ownership

• Own solution architecture across multiple products, domains, or value streams, from ideation through build and operate.
• Translate business strategy, regulatory constraints, and product roadmaps into cohesive, scalable solution architectures.
• Drive architectural trade-offs and decisions balancing speed, cost, risk, and long-term sustainability.
• Ensure consistent application of architecture standards while enabling autonomy of delivery teams.

2) Modern Architecture Design (Microservices & Cloud-Native)

• Define and govern microservices-based architectures using domain-driven design, API-first, and event-driven patterns.
• Design highly resilient, scalable distributed systems with clear strategies for data ownership, consistency, and integration.
• Lead adoption of cloud-native services and patterns (managed services, serverless, containers).
• Guide architecture for high availability, disaster recovery, performance, and scalability across regions and environments.

3) Cloud Architecture & Platform Alignment

• Architect solutions on AWS, Azure, or GCP, aligned with enterprise cloud strategy and landing zone standards.
• Define patterns for multi-environment, multi-account/subscription/project setups.
• Embed FinOps principles into architecture (cost visibility, optimization, guardrails).
• Support hybrid and multi-cloud architectures where required.

4) DevOps, SRE & Operational Excellence

• Champion DevOps and platform engineering practices across teams.
• Ensure solutions are designed for CI/CD automation, Infrastructure as Code, and GitOps.
• Embed SRE principles: SLOs/SLIs, error budgets, resilience testing, and operational readiness.
• Ensure strong observability (metrics, logs, traces) and clear run/incident management integration.

5) Security, Risk & Compliance Leadership

• Lead secure-by-design architecture using zero-trust principles, IAM least privilege, encryption, and network segmentation.
• Ensure compliance with enterprise, regulatory, and data-privacy requirements.
• Drive threat modeling, security architecture reviews, and remediation alignment with engineering teams.
• Act as a senior design authority for high-risk or business-critical solutions.

6) Governance, Stakeholder Management & Mentoring

• Act as a trusted advisor to senior business stakeholders, product leaders, and engineering heads.
• Lead architecture forums, design reviews, and decision-making bodies.
• Mentor Solution Architects and senior engineers; uplift architecture maturity across teams.
• Collaborate closely with Enterprise Architecture on target state, roadmaps, and standards evolution.

Required Skills & Experience

Core Technical & Architecture Skills

• Extensive experience designing large-scale distributed systems using microservices, APIs, and event-driven architectures.
• Strong hands-on experience with at least one major cloud platform (AWS, Azure, or GCP) at enterprise scale.
• Deep understanding of Kubernetes-based platforms (EKS/AKS/GKE), container security, and runtime concerns.
• Proven experience with DevOps toolchains, CI/CD pipelines, and Infrastructure as Code (Terraform/Bicep/CloudFormation).
• Strong grounding in observability, resilience, and production readiness.

Architecture & Delivery Leadership

• Proven ability to define and govern complex solution architectures spanning multiple teams and systems.
• Experience leading modernization and migration initiatives (strangler, re-platform, refactor).
• Strong documentation and decision discipline using ADRs, NFRs, and architecture principles.
• Ability to assess architectural risk and drive mitigation pragmatically.

Soft Skills & Leadership

• Excellent communication skills with the ability to influence at senior leadership level.
• Strong facilitation skills for complex discussions involving trade-offs and constraints.
• Comfortable operating in ambiguity and driving clarity across multiple stakeholders.
• Mentoring mindset with a focus on building long-term architectural capability.