Senior Solutions Architect

About Us

KAANNAN & ASSOCIATES (K&A) is a hybrid digital, technology consulting and product studio specializing in healthcare innovation. Our mission is to harness the power of digital innovation, data analytics and artificial intelligence to shape the future of healthcare, revolutionizing drug discovery, development and patient care delivery.

Working with industry giants in Pharma, Life Sciences, and Digital Health, we aim to unlock the full potential of technology, data and artificial intelligence to deliver breakthrough therapies that significantly impact on patient care on a global scale.

We seek a Senior Solutions Architect (Contract) to provide technical leadership, solution architecture and technical design to deliver a next generation enterprise digital trial solution to accelerate clinical research in pharma/life sciences. You ll be responsible for future-state solution design and architecture, map downstream consumption use cases into capability requirements, and drive a pragmatic build vs buy vs accelerate strategy. You will lead a structured market scan and vendor/accelerator evaluation, translate findings into architecture options and recommendations, and support decision-making on which capabilities to develop internally versus procure/partner for.

• Duration: 6-month, full-time consulting engagement

• Location:
  
  Remote with on-site presence as needed (approximately once per quarter)

• Start Date:
  
  Week of February 16

• Compensation: $110–$125 per hour, commensurate with experience

• Architecture Discovery

• Quickly develop a working view of the current solution landscape: systems, integrations, data flows, constraints, and decision rights

• Define functional requirements (must-haves vs nice-to-haves) grounded in use cases and release roadmap

• Partner with stakeholders to translate the Release 1+ roadmap into capability requirements and downstream consumer needs

• Partner with downstream use-cases to capture consumption needs: workflows, data, technical capabilities and adoption constraints

• Translate use cases into a capability map and prioritized functional and technical requirements that inform solution design and vendor evaluation

• Establish criteria and weightings (functional fit, integration fit, compliance/validation readiness, security, implementation effort, vendor maturity/viability, TCO, time-to-value)

• Define evaluation depth and decision gates (scan → deep-dive → shortlist → POC) and evidence standards (what counts as proof vs claims)

• Conduct scenario and workflow-based demos and technical fit sessions; score and document risks (as needed)

• Produce a concise executive narrative connecting use cases → capabilities → architecture → accelerators → recommendation

• Support decision forums (e.g., steering committee) with clear tradeoffs, risks, and next steps

• Develop a build-vs-buy acceleration hypothesis tied to capability gaps, time-to-value, and implementation feasibility

• Define target capabilities, architectural principles, and design guardrails

• Establish a clear architectural view of the clinical digital data flow solution’s future state, grounded in the client’s vision and Release 1+ roadmap

• Establish reference patterns for downstream consumption (integration patterns, onboarding expectations, dependency gates)

• Identify which capabilities should be built in-house versus accelerated through commercial solutions, open-source components, or vendor partnerships

• Create an “acceleration opportunity matrix” tying capability gaps to time-to-value, risk, total cost of ownership, and downstream enablement impact

• Drive alignment on architecture tradeoffs and sequencing (what must exist now vs what can be staged)

• Define pragmatic future-state architecture option(s) aligned to roadmap sequencing and consumer enablement

• 5+ years of experience in solution architecture, enterprise architecture, or senior technical consulting, with clear ownership of large-scale enterprise, multi-system architectures

• 5+ years of experience serving as a technical or solution architecture leader on enterprise transformation…