Solution Architect in Reading

As a Solution Architect, you will act as a critical bridge between our Enterprise ERP ecosystem and our Modern Engineering platforms. You will cover the full end-to-end value chains for HR, Legal, Finance, Procurement, and Gross-to-Net (G2N). You will provide technical thought leadership—selecting the right tool for the job whether it is a custom-built cloud‑native application, an SAP BTP extension, an AI‑driven automation, or a best‑of‑breed SaaS solution.

This role requires technical breadth in cloud‑native patterns, API‑first design, and a proven track record of delivering complex integrations in a hybrid technology landscape. To be successful, you should be a highly motivated individual with an innovative and strategic mindset, a bias for action, proactive communication skills, and the ability to form and communicate a strong perspective. You must be able to articulate and translate complex technical topics to stakeholders, help lift the technical competency of teams, collaborate with internal/external partners, ensure alignment with architectural principles and standards, and drive tangible business outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Guide build versus buy decisions, objectively evaluating if a business need is best met within the ERPSAP ecosystem, through custom engineering (GCP/Azure), or via third‑party SaaS.
• Support the holistic architectural blueprint, owning key architecture assets to influence the right investments across a product group (HR, Finance, Legal, etc.) with a focus not only on new features but technical debt reduction.
• Advise on the design of scalable AI & Automation patterns for integrating Generative AI and LLMs into corporate workflows while maintaining strict data privacy, controls, SOX and compliance.
• When integrating with ERP, partner with ERP domain architects and technical service owners to own the architecture assets that ensure the ERP remains standard.
• Design implementation paths that treat the ERP as a set of services, driving a composable landscape where SAP and Non‑SAP components communicate via standard APIs and events.
• Partner with Principal Engineers to take high‑level designs to a 'ready to build' state, ensuring developers have clear 'paved roads' for both SAP‑centric and cloud‑native projects.
• Contribute to the technical strategic vision and roadmap within a product group or series of related products ensuring the technology ecosystem supports the needs of the product teams.
• Partner with Product Teams in pre‑discovery activities helping to understand potential technical direction informing the hiring of key technical roles.
• Partner with product leadership to engage senior business stakeholders helping map technical decisions to business value.
• Manage relationships with service integrators and vendors, ensuring their proposals align with company architectural standards.
• Help ensure privacy and security by design, ensuring solutions meet compliance standards.
• Identify opportunities to consolidate technologies that span SAP and Non‑SAP functions to drive efficiency and reuse.
• Incorporate cloud cost management into architectural designs to ensure long‑term financial sustainability of digital products.
• Act as a mentor to junior and mid‑level engineers, fostering a culture of continuous learning and architectural excellence.
• Contribute to enterprise standards for Event‑Driven Architecture (EDA) and API Management, ensuring seamless data flow between the ERP and the wider digital estate.
• Partner with business, Product Teams, and enterprise/solution architects to recommend opportunities to rationalise or combine technologies that cut across functions looking for both efficiency and reuse opportunities.
• Support solution architecture review groups to ensure solutions delivered meet enterprise requirements.
• Identify opportunities to directly contribute to architecture standards and patterns that product teams can use to implement solutions.
• Contribute to the identification and rationalisation of technical debt looking to recommend and support portfolio health initiatives across functions and enterprise.
• Translate enterprise architecture to how we engineer.

Basic Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in architecting and delivering enterprise IT systems.
• Experience in large technology selection processes able to lead technical decision‑making.
• Strong technical background ideally from a hands‑on IT engineering background, with an array of different experiences in architecture space.
• Experience with ERP solutions (SAP preferred) building upon and integrating with.

Experience and Technical Background

• Modern application architecture methodologies.
• Cloud Native design patterns, with a preference towards Microsoft Azure / Google Cloud.
• 'DevSecOps' culture, including modern software development practices, covering Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD), Test‑Driven Development (TDD), etc.
• Experience with interface implementation between SaaS providers (leveraging Integration‑as‑a‑service frameworks).
• Experience supporting digital platforms, including Integrations, Release Management, Regression Testing, Integrations, Data Obfuscation, etc.
• Experience scaling an 'API‑Ecosystem', designing, and implementing 'API‑First' integration patterns.
• Strong organizational and communications skills with multiple examples of being able to convey complex technical topics, that resulted in a definitive direction.
• Strong leadership and proactive communication skills with a strong bias for action and ability to advise others.

Preferred Qualifications

• Familiarity with infrastructure considerations (networking, hosting, security, etc.) in enabling on‑premise and cloud IT solutions.
• Solution architecture certifications for Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud Platform.
• Experience working in a product operating model delivering architecture capability across product.
• Hands‑on experience with SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP).
• Experience architecture AI‑integrated solutions or data science platforms.