Infrastructure solution architect in Woking

This is a senior architecture role within the global Customer Technology organisation, as part of the team responsible for serving the Customer operating entity. You will have a high level of accountability and responsibility, operating in a dynamic and evolving environment. The role combines strategic solution architecture with deep technical infrastructure expertise, requiring the ability to operate effectively across both dimensions.

The primary activities of this role are to define and deliver end-to-end IT solution architecture, create repeatable architecture patterns, produce solution designs, and advise internal partners on how best to invest in the right IT solutions to realise Customer's strategic ambitions in the UK. Security and service are key aspects of all designs and deliverables.

The role entails working closely with and influencing a wide variety of business and technical stakeholders, understanding overall business and IT strategy, organisational fit, compliance, and ongoing business change requirements. It includes leading architectural design authorities, providing technical leadership to other architects, and driving alignment of the Customer Technology landscape with the enterprise target picture.

In addition to the above, the role is responsible for the architectural assurance of deliverables and for the QA of peer deliverables. A key element of the role is the research of market-leading technologies and technology services, along with the generation of business cases to present to architectural design authorities to justify purchase and implementation. You will also be highly process-orientated, able to ensure that the architecture process can demonstrate traceability of the design decisions made, successfully arguing both the pros and cons of each option.

The role sits within a small team of architects, reporting to the principal architect for technology, working closely with technical, solution, and integration architects across the wider team and with the enterprise architects in the Customer team.

You will:

• Produce proposals and justify the value of technology strategies to senior business audiences
• Drive alignment of the Customer Technology landscape with the enterprise target picture, including system retirement
• Ensure that architecture, divergences, and risks are clearly communicated and agreed by all stakeholders
• Convey architecture decisions through a variety of communication techniques to both technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Lead architectural design authorities for projects, and work within enterprise architectural governance and enterprise portfolio management frameworks
• Translate business requirements into technology, service, and security deliverables, identifying risks and proposing appropriate mitigations
• Identify all areas of architectural, technical, and security risk, and ensure these are managed with the cooperation of appropriate stakeholders
• Produce (or ensure production of) all architectural deliverables under the development methodology, including solution designs, architecture patterns, technical infrastructure designs and supporting documentation
• Provide design assurance for solution architecture to ensure solutions are implemented as designed, to the correct standards and quality
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to other solution architects within the team
• Self-manage day-to-day architecture priorities and delivery workload

Your skills and experience include:

• Strong interpersonal and stakeholder management skills, including the ability to interact at all business levels — from the CEO and C-suite through to technical SMEs, developers, testers, and project managers
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, including the ability to assess the audience and pitch/influence appropriately
• Working across enterprise technologies, including prior SME roles across infrastructure, cloud, and application domains
• Defining, documenting, and architecting solutions across hybrid, on-premise, and public cloud estates, potentially requiring integration with legacy technologies for large projects and programmes
• Supporting and designing mission-critical infrastructure solutions across a wide variety of technologies
• IT security and risk management within an architecture role
• Experience working within architectural design authorities and governance forums
• Technical selection and RFI/RFP processes, including supplier assurance of third-party products and contractual due diligence including drafting statements of requirements for third parties or commenting on vendor statements of work (SoW)
• Working in a highly regulated environment (e.g. financial services)
• Agile methodologies (Scrum, Kanban) and waterfall methodologies along with associated toolsets (such as Jira)
• Use of documentation tools such as Atlassian Confluence along with diagramming or architectural modelling tools and languages (draw.io, Sparx, ADOIT, ArchiMate, Mermaid, C4)
• Broad knowledge of IT technologies and architectural styles and patterns (e.g. event-driven, serverless, microservices, SOA, layered architectures)
• Supporting implementation and solution design for large public cloud implementations, preferably both AWS and Azure
• Supporting implementation and technical design across core technologies (Windows, Linux, VMware, Hyper-V, web, database, security gateways, LAN/WAN networking)
• Designing solutions involving middleware and integration including JBoss / WebLogic, enterprise service bus / message queueing / integration platforms (iPaaS) such as RabbitMQ, MuleSoft, Boomi, Kafka
• Designing (including requirements traceability) secure, high performing, and highly available technology solutions
• Knowledge of continuous integration and deployment processes, methods, and tools
• Providing architectural support and assurance to DevOps teams, with application of agile practices
• Ability to work with cutting-edge AI LLM technologies, producing work in conjunction with models such as Anthropic Claude, whilst experimenting and exploring different methods of co-working with AI

Degree or HND in information technology, or equivalent experience. Relevant technical and business qualifications (e.g. Microsoft or AWS certifications, TOGAF, ITIL). Evidence of your commitment to continuous learning.

Customer is the world's largest insurer, supporting over 100 million customers across 70 countries. Customer Technology is the global IT service provider for Customer and delivers IT solutions that drive the digitalisation of the Group. With more than 13,000 employees located in 22 countries around the globe, Customer Technology works together with other Customer entities in pioneering the digitalisation of the financial services industry. We oversee the full digitalisation spectrum — from one of the industry's largest IT infrastructure projects that includes data centres, networking, and security, to application platforms that span from workplace services to digital interaction. In short, we deliver full-scale, end-to-end IT solutions for Customer in the digital age.