Solution Architect in Portsmouth

A 'Times Best Places to Work 2026' Company. The Solution Architect is responsible for the end‑to‑end design, development, and implementation of robust, scalable, and secure technology solutions that directly support organisational objectives. Acting as a strategic conduit between business stakeholders and technical teams, this role ensures that architectural integrity is maintained throughout the entire software development lifecycle. You will be tasked with delivering technical designs of moderate risk and complexity, ensuring they remain coherent and responsive to evolving requirements. By challenging assumptions and identifying strategic opportunities, you will play a pivotal role in translating a high‑level vision into actionable roadmaps.

Architectural Design & Strategy

• Create and maintain technical blueprints that balance innovation with architectural coherence, ensuring all designs are optimized through iterative feedback loops.
• Interpret organisational roadmaps to develop solution strategies that align with long‑term digital goals.
• Proactively challenge requirements and underlying assumptions to ensure the most efficient and effective technical path is selected.

Governance, Risk & Assurance

• Identify, document, and mitigate architectural risks that impact multiple teams or domains, specifically focusing on solutions of medium risk and complexity.
• Ensure all solutions adhere to Government Digital Service Standards and the Technology Code of Practice, maintaining readiness for formal Digital Service Assessments.
• Apply established architectural principles, patterns, and constraints to all decision‑making processes and contribute to continuous improvement of internal architectural governance frameworks.

Collaboration & Delivery

• Work as a key member of a blended, multidisciplinary Agile team, participating in sprint planning, peer reviews, and retrospective sessions.
• Communicate complex technical concepts effectively to both senior leadership and external customers, fostering consensus on critical design decisions.
• Maintain rigorous documentation standards, ensuring all architectural outputs are captured within official repositories, including Navy Digital Confluence, SharePoint, and GitHub.

Top 3 Requirements

• Ability to produce architectural representations that enable different teams to have a shared understanding of problems throughout the life cycle.
• Strong communication skills to present complicated, complex, or risky architecture topics with technical and non‑technical stakeholders.
• Experience with tracking emerging issues, strategies, roadmaps, patterns and technologies over time to assess opportunities and risks.

Experience and Skills Must haves

• Proven ability to guide design choices in environments characterized by moderate complexity and risk.
• Ability to see the 'big picture' while managing the technical nuances of a specific domain.
• Strong interpersonal skills with a proven track record of managing expectations across diverse stakeholder groups.
• Familiarity with the GDS lifecycle and the requirements for passing a Digital Service Assessment.
• Experience with Containerisation technologies such as Kubernetes.
• Produce and promote high quality solution designs and application architectures aligned with Data & Analytics architecture principles and strategy.
• Understanding of modern Security principles; Secure by Design, Zero Trust Architecture, and Software Defined Networks.
• Ability to problem solve and apply outcomes to an architectural solution.
• Experience with Modern Application platforms; MS Power Platform Palantir Foundry or equivalent.
• Understanding of Cloud Architectures across Azure, AWS and other platforms.

Nice to haves

• Experience having previously worked in Defence.

DDaT description: Solution Architect SFIA Level: 5 Start date: 1st August 2026 Initial contract length: 3 Months Role location: Portsmouth Nationality specification: British Citizen only, no dual nationality Number of days per week expected on site: 3+ per week (depending on need) Minimum security level: SC or above Day rate: £630 Outside IR35