Solution Architect - Senior Manager in Edinburgh

About the role

Tech Catalyst is seeking Solution Architects to own the architecture of AI-enabled digital products, platforms and services. You will partner with business, product and technology teams to translate business priorities, user needs and end-customer outcomes into secure, scalable, resilient and operationally viable solutions. Working across multidisciplinary squads or larger programmes, you will remain accountable from discovery and solution design through engineering delivery, release and transition to live service. As a senior architecture practitioner, you will also support selected proposals and customer-facing discussions and contribute reusable standards, patterns and blueprints to Tech Catalyst’s architecture capability.

What your days will look like:

• Own the end-to-end architecture of AI-enabled products, platforms and services, from discovery and solution shaping through engineering, release and transition to live service.
• Provide technical leadership throughout delivery, guiding multidisciplinary engineering teams, reviewing key design decisions and resolving technical trade-offs.
• Identify and manage architectural risks, constraints, dependencies and technical debt, ensuring alignment with non-functional requirements, security controls and Tech Catalyst standards.
• Design responsible, production-ready AI solutions, defining appropriate evaluation and monitoring across AI quality, performance, safety, data quality, privacy, security, explainability, traceability and human oversight.
• Collaborate across Enterprise Architecture, Security, Engineering, Data and Platform teams, while developing and promoting reusable patterns, reference architectures and blueprints.
• Stay current with AI and cloud technologies, including AI models and agentic technologies, balancing portability and avoiding unnecessary dependencies while leveraging platform-native capabilities.
• Provide senior technical leadership and influence, clearly communicating architecture decisions to stakeholders, supporting RFPs/RFIs and proposals, and mentoring Solution Architects, Engineers and other technical practitioners.

This role is for you if you have:

• Experience designing and delivering enterprise solutions end-to-end, from discovery and solution shaping through to engineering delivery and live service.
• Good architectural judgement, with the ability to work through ambiguity, technical trade-offs, risks and non-functional requirements while keeping solutions practical and deliverable.
• Experience with cloud-native architecture and engineering, ideally using Azure or a comparable cloud platform, with an understanding of areas such as APIs, integration, security, identity, DevSecOps, observability and resilience.
• Experience designing AI solutions, with knowledge of areas such as AI models, retrieval/RAG, agents and orchestration, alongside considerations including responsible AI, evaluation, performance, security and cost.
• Practical technology delivery experience, which could include AI platforms, software development, cloud modernisation, distributed technologies or taking AI solutions into production.
• Experience providing technical leadership and working collaboratively, including influencing senior stakeholders, supporting and coaching technical teams, and contributing to solution shaping, proposals, RFPs or RFIs.

What you’ll receive from us:

No matter where you may be in your career or personal life, our benefits are designed to add value and support, recognising and rewarding you fairly for your contributions. We offer a range of benefits including empowered flexibility and a working week split between office, home and client site; private medical cover and 24/7 access to a qualified virtual GP; six volunteering days a year and much more.