My client is seeking a Lead Software Solutions Architect to join their dynamic and exciting team.

The Lead Software Solution Architect (LSA) reports directly to the CTO and provides technical leadership and architectural support across our Agile delivery teams. As a LSA you will be responsible for the architecture design and software design across a number of teams, technologies, and initiatives as well as a member of a cross company Architecture and Design Authority, working with the Team Solutions Architects.

As part of the architecture function the Lead Solution Architect is a key role to shape and guide the right architectural and technical outcomes for our business. The role will focus on supporting our product owners and the delivery teams to efficiently deliver the needs of the business and our clients along with driving innovation, consistency, and efficiency in our software.

The Lead Software Solution Architect is responsible for the overall solutions architecture of our initiatives, ensuring quality of design, that the designs are in line with the architecture strategy and that the designs are implementable by our technical teams. The role will need to support and influence key stakeholders, such as product owners, developers and engineering to ensure our product and architecture strategies are understood, supported and ultimately delivered.

Typically, the Lead Solution Architect will have worked in a number of challenging design roles and on challenging delivery projects both large and small. They will also have a broad range of architecture skills covering various architecture domains, methodologies and processes. The ideal candidate will retain an understanding of the technology and be able to communicate to engineering and development teams clearly how the architecture goals can be achieved.

The role will therefore have the following responsibilities:
· Leading project companywide architecture on various levels - from high level outlined architecture to detailed architecture and in some cases high and detailed level design.
· Responsibility for the documentation and other architectural deliverables, supporting the Product Owners and Business Analysts in the production of Use Cases and Use Case model, supporting Data Architecture designs in the production of agreed deliverables.
· Liaising with stakeholders; Product Owners, Business Analysts, Q&A, Engineering, Release, Support, Development and Account Management as well as client representatives at all levels; providing architectural steer, clarity of architecture and design strategy and encouraging best practice.
· Solution governance and quality assurance.
· Review and quality assurance of the artefacts created by our teams to ensure the quality of delivered solution to fulfil business requirements and adhere to strategic vision.
· Sharing experiences and learning points gained whilst working in assigned projects with the other members of technology community.
· Providing solutions for a wide range of technologies.
· Working in both traditional Waterfall and Agile environments.

Minimum, Essential & Desirable skills
Minimum
· 5+ years of experience working as a solution architect or lead designer.
· Experience of complex multi-system solution development projects with multi-dimensioned process and data requirements.
· Hands-on experience of working through the end to end project lifecycle.
· Strong communication and influencing skills.
· Good overall knowledge of a broad range of technology and technology trends.
· Excellent verbal, written and design communication skills.

Essential
Technical
· Technical background and ability to conceptualise technology into a design, in some cases without having had direct hands-on technical experience of the technology.
· A deep and up-to-date understanding of best practice application / solution architectures.
· Past experience of designing systems or components, which are scalable, reusable, sellable and profitable.
· Relevant solution architecture skills (i.e. Process, Data, Application, and Infrastructure), and a good understanding of architectural concepts, methodologies and mapping approaches.
· Experience in complex and significant Microsoft technology designs, including but not limited to .NET and related frameworks.


Expert and broad base of knowledge in most of the following:
· Windows, PC, and platform operating systems, including Windows Server, Windows 8, Windows 10, Microsoft SQL Server.
· Internet protocols, standards and patterns such as TCP, HTTP, html/xml SOAP, Rest, SSL, Json.
· Messaging technologies, protocols and patterns such as EDI, Azure ServiceBus, AMQP, SMTP.
· Expert knowledge of programming languages, including C#, VB.NET, CSS 3, HTML 4 and 5, javascript, AngularJS, Bootstrap, Typescript.
· Experience with the Microsoft Application stack and development tools including, Visual Studio 2015, ReSharper, Fiddler.
· Hands-on experience with developing web service API's, such as REST and WCF, including versioning, licensing and security.
· Experience in Microservice architectures, including but not limited to Service Fabric.
· Excellent RDBMA and SQL knowledge and experience.
· Document Databases, Search and Caching Technologies.
· Data factories and big data analytics.
· Mobile and cloud based solution design.