Senior Solution Architect – Microsoft

Senior Solution Architect – Microsoft / Azure / Application Modernisation

Duration: 6 months

Rate: Competitive Rate

Hybrid Working - 8 days onsite per month - the rest is remote

Role Overview

We are looking for an experienced Senior Solution Architect to design and deliver complex, end-to-end technology solutions within a large-scale enterprise environment.

Working closely with Domain Architects, Enterprise Architects, Technical Leads, Application Owners, Engineering teams and Business stakeholders, you will take ownership of solution architecture from initial requirements and technical analysis through to implementation.

This is not purely an architecture governance role.

We are looking for someone with strong technical depth who can design modern application architectures, challenge engineering decisions and, where required, develop prototypes and Proofs of Concept (PoCs) to validate architectural approaches.

A strong background within the Microsoft technology ecosystem, particularly Microsoft Azure, .NET, APIs, integration and event-driven architecture, would be highly desirable.

Key Responsibilities

End-to-End Solution Architecture

• Own the definition and delivery of end-to-end solution architecture for complex technology initiatives.
• Translate business requirements into robust, scalable and technically achievable architecture designs.
• Work across multiple applications, platforms and architectural domains to ensure overall solution consistency.
• Produce architecture designs covering functional and non-functional requirements.
• Ensure solutions comply with Enterprise Architecture principles, technology standards and security requirements.
• Challenge business and technical requirements where appropriate and propose alternative solutions.
• Estimate the technical effort, complexity and dependencies associated with proposed solutions.

Microsoft & Azure Architecture

Design solutions using modern Microsoft technologies, ideally including experience across several of the following:

• Microsoft Azure
• Azure App Service
• Azure Functions
• Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
• Azure API Management (APIM)
• Azure Service Bus
• Azure Event Grid / Event Hubs
• Microsoft Entra ID / Azure AD
• Azure SQL / SQL Server
• Azure Storage
• Azure Key Vault
• Azure Monitor / Application Insights
• Microsoft .NET / .NET Core / C#
• REST APIs and API-first architectures
• Microservices and distributed application architectures
• Messaging, asynchronous processing and event-driven architecture

Experience across the entire technology stack is not required; however, candidates should demonstrate strong Microsoft application architecture experience and an understanding of how these technologies can be combined to build enterprise-scale solutions.

Application Modernisation

• Architect the modernisation of legacy and monolithic applications.
• Define strategies for decomposing existing applications into more scalable, maintainable and modular architectures.
• Design API-led, microservices and event-driven architectures where appropriate.
• Support migration from legacy/on-premise environments towards cloud and hybrid-cloud architectures.
• Identify opportunities to improve software engineering, application delivery and technology architecture.
• Balance modernisation objectives against operational risk, technical debt, cost and business continuity.

Resilience, Availability & Non-Functional Requirements

A major part of the role will be ensuring solutions can operate reliably within a business-critical enterprise environment.

You will design solutions addressing:

• High Availability (HA)
• Disaster Recovery (DR)
• Resilience and fault tolerance
• Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) / Recovery Point Objectives (RPO)
• Performance
• Scalability
• Security
• Operability and supportability
• Monitoring and observability
• Business continuity

You should have previous experience architecting systems where availability, recovery and operational resilience are critical requirements.

Architecture Governance & Delivery

• Present proposed solution architectures to senior management, Architecture Boards and technical stakeholders.
• Produce clear architecture documentation,