Hiring: Senior Solution Architect / Technical Authority Architect

Salary: £70-85k + Excellent Benefits

Grade: Band 3

Contract type: TfL Reference: 4928

External - All offers of employment are subject to satisfactory right‑to‑work checks. Candidates must be able to demonstrate their right to work in the UK. At the present time TfL is unable to offer visa sponsorship for this role.

Hybrid working within this role enables a balance of 50 per cent of time split between the office (North Greenwich) and home over a 4-week period. Hybrid working arrangements can evolve subject to business requirements.

Shape the Technology Behind London's Transport Network

At Transport for London (TfL), we're responsible for keeping one of the world's greatest cities moving. Every day, millions of customers rely on our services, enabled by one of the world's most sophisticated transport payment and revenue collection platforms, processing billions of pounds in revenue and supporting travel across the capital. We're looking for multiple Senior Solution Architects / Technical Authority Architects to join our growing team and drive the future of TfL's Revenue Collection technology landscape.

You'll influence one of the UK's largest and most complex payment and revenue collection platforms, processing approximately £6.8bn annually and supporting millions of customer journeys every day. The platform spans customer-facing devices, retail channels, payment processing, fare calculation, and back-office services across London's transport network. You'll work at the intersection of business strategy and technology delivery, translating complex requirements into practical, scalable solutions that deliver measurable outcomes for customers and TfL.

As TfL transitions to a new long-term service provider, you'll play a pivotal role in ensuring architectural integrity, technical compliance, and successful delivery of one of the UK's largest and most complex payment ecosystems.

What You'll Be Doing

This role combines hands‑on solution architecture with technology assurance and governance. You'll influence both the future design of TfL's Revenue Collection ecosystem and the standards, compliance, and technical decisions that govern its evolution. This role sits at the heart of a major technology and supplier transformation programme that will shape Revenue Collection services for the next decade.

As a trusted Technical Authority, you'll lead architecture assurance and solution design across a diverse portfolio of projects, suppliers, and services. Key responsibilities include:

• Act as a trusted technical authority, ensuring TfL remains an informed and intelligent client, able to challenge, influence, and assure supplier decisions across a multi-billion-pound technology estate.
• Supporting the successful transition to TfL's future Revenue Collection service model.
• Establishing and operating technology assurance and governance processes.
• Providing solution architecture leadership for systems delivered by internal teams and external partners.
• Developing target-state architectures, roadmaps, and investment options to support strategic decision-making.
• Assessing architectural change, identifying risks, and ensuring compliance with contractual and technical standards.
• Shaping technology direction to deliver value for money, resilience, scalability, and long-term sustainability.
• Working closely with Product Managers, delivery teams, commercial specialists, and suppliers to develop business cases and technology strategies.
• Ensuring functional and non-functional requirements are robust, achievable, and aligned with business outcomes.
• Supporting procurement activities, supplier selection, and technology evaluations.
• Building consensus across business and technical stakeholders and presenting recommendations to senior leaders.
• Providing architecture governance throughout delivery to ensure projects achieve intended outcomes.
• Represent projects through architecture governance forums, securing approval, driving alignment, and influencing technical direction across TfL.
• Influencing and collaborating with senior business, commercial, and technology stakeholders to drive informed architectural and investment decisions.

What We're Looking For

We're seeking architects who combine strong technical expertise, strategic thinking, and the ability to influence stakeholders across complex technology and supplier ecosystems. You will bring:

• Proven experience delivering architecture on large-scale, business-critical technology programmes.
• A collaborative approach and the ability to work across multiple technical and business disciplines.
• Experience working within architecture governance, compliance, or technical authority functions.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to influence stakeholders at all levels.
• Experience supporting technology procurement, supplier delivery, and outsourced service environments.
• Strong solution architecture skills across cloud, on-premises, integration, and service-oriented environments.
• The ability to balance innovation, risk, and operational requirements in complex environments.
• Experience producing architecture artefacts using tools such as Enterprise Architect, Visio, UML, and Microsoft 365.
• TOGAF or equivalent architecture certification.
• Public transport, payments, or revenue collection systems.
• Contract compliance and supplier assurance activities.
• Cloud platforms such as Azure or AWS, alongside on-premises system design.
• Build-versus-buy assessments and technology investment analysis.
• Contractor and supplier auditing and assurance.
• Experience designing solutions for high-volume transaction processing, payments, retail, ticketing, or other customer‑facing platforms.
• Understanding of modern architecture patterns including event-driven architecture, APIs, microservices, resilience engineering, containerisation, CI/CD, and high-availability distributed systems.
• Experience working with strategic suppliers and managing architecture within complex environments comprising outsourced services, internally developed systems, and multi-supplier delivery models.

Why Join TfL?

Few organisations offer the opportunity to influence technology at this scale, with a direct impact on millions of customers and one of the world's most sophisticated transport networks. This is an opportunity to shape the future of how millions of people pay for travel across London. You'll influence long-term technology strategy, work with major suppliers and senior stakeholders, and help modernise one of the UK's most significant public-sector payment platforms.

You'll join a growing architecture function with the opportunity to shape major technology programmes, influence strategic decisions, develop deep expertise in one of the world's most sophisticated transport and payment ecosystems, and leave a lasting impact on how millions of people travel across London every day.

We welcome applications from candidates who have previously applied for similar architecture roles at TfL. As our technology landscape, organisation and opportunities continue to evolve, we encourage you to apply if your skills and experience align with this opportunity. We may close this advert early if we receive a high volume of suitable applications.

Equality, diversity and inclusion

We are committed to equality, diversity and inclusion. We want to represent the city we serve, which will help us become a more innovative and efficient organisation. Our goal is to make our recruitment as inclusive as possible. We are a disability confident employer who guarantee an interview to any disabled candidate who meets all of the essential criteria. We also use anonymising software that removes identifying information from CVs and cover letters to make the process fair.

Benefits

• Final salary pension scheme
• Free travel for you on the TfL network
• Reimbursement of 75% of the cost of a standard class Ticket for National Rail travel from home
• 30 days annual leave plus public and bank holidays
• TfL is committed to work-life balance, operating a hybrid working approach where business and role requirements allow
• Tax-efficient cycle-to-work programme
• Retail, health, leisure and travel offers
• Discounted Eurostar travel

We will make every effort to give you as much notice as possible, however some interviews/assessments could be organised at short notice.

Vetting Process

At Transport for London, safety, trust and fairness sit at the heart of how we recruit. Our Vetting Charter explains the checks we carry out before you join us, helping ensure we create a safe, inclusive and reliable network for everyone who depends on our services. We simply ask that the information you provide is honest and accurate so we can progress your application smoothly. If something doesn’t match or can’t be verified, we may not be able to move forward with your application, but we’ll always treat you with transparency, respect, and clear communication throughout.