Solution Architect

The West Midlands Combined Authority is delivering ambitious plans to create a better-connected, more prosperous region, where people can access jobs, housing, transport and opportunity. Our Growth Plan and the Mayor's priorities set out what we want to achieve, but delivering these ambitions depends on having the right technology, systems and digital capabilities in place.

Technology plays an essential role in enabling our people to work effectively, supporting better services and decision-making, and helping WMCA deliver its ambitions for the West Midlands.

As a Solutions Architect within our Technology & Insights Team, you will help shape the digital foundations that enable this work. Working closely with the Senior Solutions Architect, you will translate complex business needs into practical, secure and sustainable technology solutions, helping ensure our systems, data and services work effectively together.

You’ll work collaboratively with colleagues, delivery teams, technical specialists and suppliers to develop solution options, guide technical decisions and provide architectural assurance throughout the delivery lifecycle.

Please note that this is a two-year fixed-term contract.

• Develop and deliver solution architecture across WMCA, translating business requirements into practical, secure and sustainable technical designs that support current and future organisational needs.
• Work closely with the Senior Solutions Architect to ensure solutions align with WMCA's technology strategy, enterprise architecture principles, standards and strategic direction.
• Work collaboratively with colleagues, technical specialists and stakeholders to understand business problems, requirements, constraints and dependencies and translate these into effective solution designs.
• Develop and assess solution options, considering business outcomes, cost, risk, security, data, integration, supportability and long‑term sustainability, making clear recommendations to support informed decision‑making.
• Create, review and communicate architecture documentation and models, including solution designs, architecture diagrams, options assessments and technical decisions.
• Provide architectural guidance and assurance throughout the delivery lifecycle, constructively challenging proposed approaches and helping delivery teams and suppliers resolve technical issues, dependencies and architectural risks.
• Ensure solution designs appropriately consider security, data, integration, resilience, performance, scalability, interoperability and supportability.
• Contribute to technical governance, architecture standards and design authority processes, identifying risks and opportunities and escalating significant cross‑cutting or strategic architecture decisions to the Senior Solutions Architect where appropriate.
• Work collaboratively with internal teams, external suppliers and strategic partners to ensure proposed solutions can be successfully implemented, supported, and operated.
• Contribute to reusable architecture patterns, standards, knowledge‑sharing and continuous improvement of architecture practice across WMCA.

• Significant practical experience of designing technology solutions within a complex organisational environment.
• Experience translating business requirements and problems into clear architecture options, recommendations and technical designs.
• Broad understanding of solution architecture across several relevant technology domains, such as applications, integration and APIs, cloud and infrastructure, data, security and identity, enterprise platforms and networking.
• Practical understanding of modern architecture approaches, including cloud‑based solutions, APIs, integration patterns, and…