Solution Architect

Purpose of the role

To design, develop, and implement solutions to complex business problems, collaborating with stakeholders to understand their needs and requirements, and design and implement solutions that meet those needs and create solutions that balance technology risks against business delivery, driving consistency. 

Accountabilities

• Design and development of solutions as products that can evolve, meeting business requirements that align with modern software engineering practices and automated delivery tooling. This includes identification and implementation of the technologies and platforms.
• Targeted design activities that apply an appropriate workload placement strategy and maximise the benefit of cloud capabilities such as elasticity, serverless, containerisation, etc.
• Best practice designs incorporating security principles (such as defense in depth and reduction of blast radius) that meet the Bank’s resiliency expectations.
• Solutions that appropriately balance risks and controls to deliver the agreed business and technology value.
• Adoption of standardised solutions where they fit. If no standard solutions fit, feed into their ongoing evolution where appropriate.
• Fault finding and performance issues support to operational support teams, leveraging available tooling.
• Solution design impact assessment in terms of risk, capacity and cost impact, inc. estimation of project change and ongoing run costs.
• Development of the requisite architecture inputs required to comply with the banks governance processes, including design artefacts required for architecture, privacy, security and records management governance processes.

Vice President Expectations

• Contribute or set strategy, drive requirements and make recommendations for change. Plan resources, budgets, and policies; manage and maintain policies/processes; deliver continuous improvements and escalate breaches of policies/procedures.
• Be a subject matter expert within own discipline and will guide technical direction. Lead collaborative, multi-year assignments and guide team members through structured assignments, identify the need for the inclusion of other areas of specialisation to complete assignments. Train, guide and coach less experienced specialists and provide information affecting long term profits, organisational risks and strategic decisions.
• Advise key stakeholders, including functional leadership teams and senior management on functional and cross functional areas of impact and alignment.
• Manage and mitigate risks through assessment, in support of the control and governance agenda.
• Demonstrate leadership and accountability for managing risk and strengthening controls in relation to the work your team does.
• Demonstrate comprehensive understanding of the organisation functions to contribute to achieving the goals of the business.
• Collaborate with other areas of work, for business aligned support areas to keep up to speed with business activity and the business strategies.
• Create solutions based on sophisticated analytical thought comparing and selecting complex alternatives. In-depth analysis with interpretative thinking will be required to define problems and develop innovative solutions.
• Adopt and include the outcomes of extensive research in problem solving processes.
• Seek out, build and maintain trusting relationships and partnerships with internal and external stakeholders in order to accomplish key business objectives, using influencing and negotiating skills to achieve outcomes.

All colleagues will be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Values of Respect, Integrity, Service, Excellence and Stewardship – our moral compass, helping us do what we believe is right. They will also be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Mindset – to Empower, Challenge and Drive – the operating manual for how we behave.

Join us as a Solution Architect at Barclays, where you'll design scalable solutions for digital channels like online and mobile banking, supporting the Sierra program within the Cards Needs Lab. You’ll deliver architecture and design artifacts, guide engineering teams, and shape the architecture of modern, distributed systems using cloud technologies, REST APIs, and microservices.

To be successful in this role, you should have experience with:

• Architecting and designing modern distributed systems.
• Strong skills in designing REST APIs, microservices, and cloud-native solutions.
• Ability to create and communicate solution designs to business, architecture, leadership, and engineering teams.
• Stakeholder management, having strong influencing skills with ability to solve difficult problems whilst making complex architectural trade-offs,
• Hands-on software development experience, with different programming languages and patterns.

Some other highly valued skills may include:

• Functional/Domain experience in financial services Banking/Cards/Loans/Payments.
• Hands-on experience in architecting Digital Channels/Mobile App that operate within public cloud (AWS/Azure).
• Ability to manage technical product selection process, scope & execute Tech spikes/PoCs.

You may be assessed on the key critical skills relevant for success in role, such as risk and controls, change and transformation, business acumen strategic thinking and digital and technology, as well as job-specific technical skills.

The role can be either based in Knutsford (Radbroke Hall) or Manchester (4 Piccadilly Place).