Solutions Architect – SC

We are looking for an experienced Solution Architect to work as part of a central architecture function supporting the design and delivery of a portfolio of digital products and services that support Policing. This is a hands‑on architecture role requiring someone who is comfortable working across a variety of products and technology areas, moving between application architecture, solution design, integration, cloud infrastructure and engineering considerations.

• Develop, review and maintain solution and application architectures across a range of digital products and services, translating business and technical requirements into pragmatic, deliverable designs.
• Produce architecture and design artefacts at an appropriate level of detail, including application, integration, data and technology/infrastructure views.
• Review and evaluate technical proposals, solution options and designs, identifying trade-offs and providing clear recommendations to support delivery decisions.
• Work closely with engineering teams to ensure architecture is implementable and aligned with modern engineering practices, rather than simply producing architecture documentation.
• Provide architecture input throughout the product lifecycle, from early discovery and design through development, transition and operation.
• Support the design of solutions deployed within AWS, including consideration of compute, networking, storage, security, resilience, availability, observability and operational support.
• Work with engineering teams on Dev Ops and CI/CD approaches, helping ensure that architecture supports effective automated build, test, deployment and operation.
• Understand and contribute to Infrastructure as Code approaches, particularly Terraform, and how infrastructure design and application architecture work together.
• Define and assure non‑functional requirements, including performance, availability, resilience, scalability, security, supportability and maintainability.
• Identify architectural risks, technical debt, dependencies and constraints, working with delivery teams to determine appropriate mitigation or resolution.
• Support integration between products, shared services and external systems, considering APIs, events, data flows and wider end‑to‑end dependencies.
• Ensure architecture decisions and rationale are appropriately captured and maintained.
• Contribute to architecture governance and assurance, helping teams navigate governance pragmatically while maintaining appropriate technical standards.
• Work collaboratively with other architects and engineering specialists to establish reusable patterns, standards and approaches across multiple products.
• Act as a technical problem solver, helping teams investigate complex or cross‑cutting technical issues and develop viable solution options.
• Communicate architecture effectively to both technical and non‑technical stakeholders, adapting the level of detail to the audience.

Experience of delivering architecture within one or more of the following environments is required:

• Large Government Departments
• Policing, law enforcement or Public Safety
• Large-scale, security‑sensitive digital services
• Programmes involving legacy modernisation, cloud migration or replacement of business‑critical systems

• Strong experience working as a Solution Architect within complex digital delivery environments associated to national policing systems.
• Good application architecture and solution design experience, ideally…