Technical Solutions Architect in Manchester

Zippd is a fast-moving, technology-first logistics platform. We are building the routing engines, warehouse management systems (WMS), and APIs that power the next generation of urban delivery. We are looking for a hands-on Technical Solutions Architect to act as the critical bridge between our operations, our clients, our engineering team, and our wider business. You will own the technical design of new features end-to-end — from gathering requirements with non-technical stakeholders, through architecting the right solution against our existing platform, all the way to presenting it back to both the engineering team and senior leadership for sign-off. This is not a pure documentation role. You will be expected to have a programmer's instinct, an architect's eye for trade-offs, and a consultant's ability to communicate. You'll also spend around 20% of your time acting as the technical face of Zippd, supporting our retail partners as they integrate into our API ecosystem.

Core Responsibilities

• Technical Solution Architecture & Technical Design (45%)
  • Translate business and operational requirements into robust, scalable technical solutions that fit cleanly into our existing platform.
  • Design microservice architectures, API contracts, database schemas, and integration patterns that align with our engineering principles.
  • Make pragmatic build vs buy vs integrate decisions, considering cost, time, and long-term maintainability.
  • Produce high-quality sequence diagrams, Entity-Relationship Diagrams (ERDs), system context diagrams, and API data flow charts.
  • Write air-tight technical specifications in Confluence so our engineering team (Laravel / MySQL / OSRM / AWS) knows exactly what to build without ambiguity.
• Stakeholder Engagement & Requirements Gathering (25%)
  • Run requirements sessions with non-technical stakeholders — operations managers, commercial teams, the CEO, and the CTO.
  • Convert ambiguous business problems into clearly scoped technical solutions.
  • Present proposed solutions back to both the engineering team and senior leadership, defending the design and adapting based on feedback.
  • Act as the trusted technical voice in the room when business and engineering disagree.
• Engineering Support & Live Issue Triage (10%)
  • Provide ongoing support to the engineering team throughout build — clarifying intent, answering questions, and unblocking decisions.
  • Act as second-line technical support for complex production issues, working alongside engineering to diagnose and resolve.
• Client Integration Support (20%)
  • Act as the technical point of contact for external retailers and partners onboarding onto the Zippd platform.
  • Support clients in understanding and consuming our REST APIs and webhooks.
  • Troubleshoot integration issues, test API payloads, and ensure a smooth technical handover before clients go into live production.

Required Technical Background

• Programming background: A previous career as a developer (Laravel/PHP, Python, Node.js, Go, or similar). You don't need to write production code daily here, but you must be able to read a pull request, sketch a working algorithm on a whiteboard, and have an opinion on code quality.
• Microservice architecture experience: Hands-on experience designing or working in microservice ecosystems — service boundaries, inter-service communication, event-driven patterns, queue systems (Redis, SQS, RabbitMQ), and the trade-offs vs monoliths.
• Database design: Strong SQL fundamentals. You can design a normalised relational schema from scratch, understand indexing strategies, and know when to break the rules (denormalisation, caching, read replicas). NoSQL exposure is a plus.
• AWS experience: Practical knowledge of core AWS services — EC2, S3, RDS, Lambda, API Gateway, SQS, CloudWatch. You should be able to design a cost-effective, scalable AWS architecture and explain why you chose each service.
• API design: Deep understanding of REST principles, JSON payloads, webhooks, OAuth/JWT authentication, rate limiting, versioning, and idempotency.
• Diagramming & Documentation: Expert level in Lucidchart, Draw.io, Miro, or similar. Proven experience writing technical specs in Confluence and tracking work through Jira.
• System state design: You can confidently model complex state machines (e.g. mapping how an order transitions from Pending → Allocated → In-Transit → Delivered, including all the failure paths in between).

The Profile We Are Looking For

• You are a translator with engineering credibility: You can listen to an operations manager talk about warehouse chaos and translate it into a microservice design, an ERD, and a clean Confluence page that the dev team can build from. You can also defend that design when challenged.
• You are pragmatic, not academic: You understand that perfect architecture doesn't exist — only architecture that ships and supports the business. You make sensible trade-offs and explain them clearly.
• You are detail-obsessed: You do not leave edge cases to chance. When you write a spec, the dev team rarely has to ask 'what happens if this fails?'
• You are an exceptional communicator: You possess crystal-clear written and spoken English. You can comfortably present to the CEO one hour and pair with a senior engineer the next.
• You are commercially aware: You understand that every technical decision has a business cost. You don't propose solutions in isolation — you weigh effort, value, and risk.
• You are ready to be in the room: You thrive in a fast-paced, in-person environment. (Remote or hybrid work is not available for this role.)

What We Offer

• A pivotal role at the heart of a fast-growing logistics technology business.
• Genuine ownership of the technical direction of major platform features.
• Direct exposure to the CTO, CEO, and senior leadership.
• A modern tech stack (Laravel, MySQL, OSRM, AWS) and the freedom to influence its direction.
• A competitive salary, negotiable based on experience.
• Manchester city centre office, with the team in the room every day.