Senior Solution Architect - Digital in London

Salary: £70-85k

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 and home over a 4‑week period. Hybrid working arrangements can evolve subject to business requirements.

Overview

TfL exists to move London forward safely, inclusively, and sustainably. London’s success depends on colleagues continuously improving and innovating to make moving around our city more safe, inclusive, and sustainable. We have the opportunity to improve people’s lives and help our city navigate the future more than almost any other transport body in the world.

To do this we have to navigate an ever‑changing environment. Technology is evolving at breakneck speed. When and how customers use our network is shifting. The climate emergency is accelerating. TfL needs Solution Architects to work on projects that cover all of its responsibilities: public transport, roads, walking, cycling, real estate, asset management, regulation, and enforcement.

We are looking for solution architects who are passionate about working for TfL, have the business and technical skills to help deliver complex solutions across multiple technologies, business units and technical teams. Interpersonal skills are as important as your technical capabilities. You must be a critical thinker, with the ability to research and provide summarised results. You must be comfortable presenting your recommendations to all role levels within impacted business and technical teams. You must be able to prioritise your work, meet deadlines, anticipate, and resolve problems.

The role requires you to be in the office 50% of your time. The technology and development teams are based in North Greenwich.

Project / Role Overview

You will be responsible for the creation of project level architecture designs for solutions that are built in‑house or are delivered by partners. In creating the solution architecture, you will build consensus and gain approval from impacted business and technical teams. You will support project teams through delivery to ensure the desired outcomes are achieved and design changes are fully considered, agreed, and approved.

Key Accountabilities

• You will ensure that the project vision, scope, and desired outcomes are properly defined and will meet the needs of the business.
• Understand organisational objectives and external drivers. For example, legislation or industry compliance.
• Lead the end‑to‑end solution architecture for customer‑facing digital and mobile services.
• Work within business and technical constraints.
• Work with colleagues in other technical teams to ensure principles and best practice are applied.
• Ensure that functional and non‑functional requirements are fit for purpose. Ensure they align with project scope, vision, and criticality of the service.
• Stay up to date with technology trends and approaches.
• Analyse and present solution options to business and technical stakeholders. For example, develop build versus buy options.
• Work with technical teams to build costs and delivery estimates.
• Manage risks, decisions, and assumptions in a transparent way.
• Design and document high‑level and low‑level designs aligned with TfL enterprise architecture principles. Ensure their approval through formal governance.
• Communicate and work collaboratively with business and technical stakeholders. Help teams to understand technical and business perspectives in order to build consensus.
• Support project teams through delivery to ensure the desired outcomes are achieved and design changes are fully considered, agreed, and approved.
• Contribute to long‑term target state architecture and digital roadmaps.

Knowledge, Skills & Experience

• Experience as an architect on large scale, complex technology projects with responsibility for designing products, systems, components, and service integration.
• Experience of designing integration solutions across internal and external services on the cloud and on‑premises.
• Be able to define and apply solution design patterns. For example, integration, microservices, data management, web & mobile applications, SOA and IoT.
• Be able to produce designs using UML, Sparx Systems Enterprise Architecture, Visio and Office 365.
• Experience of working on medium and large‑scale public sector IT procurement projects.
• Qualification in a relevant subject area is desirable (e.g., Solution Architecture, TOGAF).
• Design for high availability, disaster recovery, and regional resilience.
• Embed Infrastructure as Code and DevOps practices.
• Industry knowledge of Information technology trends, particularly those within public transport operations and payments.
• You will have hands‑on technical knowledge, skills, and experience in designing and building customer facing cloud‑native client (mobile and web) applications and API services.
• This includes: Design scalable microservices architectures using Kubernetes‑based platforms.
• Design and govern solutions using Microsoft Azure services including: Azure App Services, Azure API Management, Azure Functions, Azure AD B2C / Entra External ID, Azure Service Bus / Event Grid, Azure Redis Cache, Azure Front Door / Application Gateway / Cloudflare.
• Proven experience designing and delivering large‑scale, public‑facing digital platforms, including APIs, event‑driven/pub‑sub architectures, and open data services.
• Knowledge of open data standards (e.g. SIRI, GTFS) and best practices for exposing real‑time and historical datasets to external consumers.
• Experience implementing API‑first and event‑driven architectures, including consumer onboarding processes, developer portals, and clear usage policies.
• Expert understanding of API governance, including security, version management, performance monitoring, and rate limiting.
• Familiarity with Azure cloud‑native services for hosting APIs, event streaming and system integration.
• Knowledge of modern web frameworks.
• Experience delivering mobile applications for consumer use, ideally in transport planning, routing, or.