Location: Reading or Dublin – hybrid (2 days a week)
Travel: Occasional travel between sites
Salary & Package: Competitive
A global retail organisation is seeking an experienced Solution Architect – Forecasting, Allocation & Replenishment to join its Technology Architecture function. This is a permanent role within a growing architecture practice, supporting large‑scale transformation across retail, supply chain and planning systems.
This position will play a key role in shaping a modern, ML/AI‑enabled retail ordering platform, guiding solution design, and ensuring architectural integrity across complex, high‑volume enterprise environments.
What You’ll Do
- Design end‑to‑end enterprise solutions across processes, applications, data, integration, technology, service and security
- Create and review solution blueprints and integration/security documentation
- Analyse requirements, identify gaps and shape architectures to meet functional and non‑functional needs
- Define as‑is, to‑be and transition architectures, securing alignment with stakeholders
- Present solution designs to the Design Authority for approval
- Oversee low‑level design activities and collaborate with specialist architects and systems integrators
- Resolve design issues, manage change impacts and ensure architectural decisions are understood
- Ensure solution delivery aligns with programme plans, testing phases and cutover timelines
- Support environment provisioning and maintain solution quality throughout development
- Maintain architecture documentation and update baseline architecture at go‑live
- Work closely with business partners, SMEs, delivery teams and service teams to ensure smooth implementation and transition to support
What You’ll Bring
- Demonstrable experience with inventory planning and forecasting platforms
- Strong communication skills with excellent documentation and diagramming capability
- Proven experience designing solutions in high‑volume retail environments (fashion/general merchandise ideal)
- Experience with forecasting, allocation and replenishment systems
- Familiarity with retail supply chain and planning platforms
- Experience working on large‑scale IT transformation programmes
- Solid understanding of the systems development lifecycle
- Experience with cloud applications and Retail ERP (Oracle Retail preferred)
- Ability to analyse complex, interconnected systems and produce simplified architectural models
Successful Candidates Will Have
- 7+ years in IT engineering/design within large multinational organisations
- 5+ years in solution architecture
- Broad understanding of major IT disciplines and software development practices
- Experience integrating applications in high‑volume environments (Azure Integration Services a plus)
- Strong stakeholder engagement skills with the ability to influence without authority
- A proactive, curious, self‑starter mindset with a passion for continuous improvement
- Strong interpersonal skills and the ability to communicate comfortably with senior leaders, product owners and delivery teams
- Experience working in retail or other fast‑paced consumer environments
- Experience developing solutions aligned to an overarching architecture strategy
- Ability to provide leadership and guidance to peers and junior team members
