Senior Solution Architect – Rail Traffic Planning

pSenior Solution Architect for the train and works planning applications at a railway infrastructure manager in Brussels. Time material, December 2026 to November 2031. Fluent English and French or Dutch required. /p h3Description /h3 pWe are looking for a Senior Solution Architect to design and govern the architecture of the train and works planning solution at a railway infrastructure manager in Brussels. The assignment is on a time material basis, full-time, and starts preferably on 1 December 2026 for an estimated 9,000 hours. You have at least 10 years of experience, including as a solution architect on production systems, you model in ArchiMate, and you speak fluent English and French or Dutch. /p pThe applications are used by train and works planners, signal box staff and traffic control. They are critical for rail operations and covered by a 24/7 on-call service. You are not part of a development team and you report to the team lead. /p pTechnology: OpenShift, AIX, Oracle and Redis; Java 8 and Java 17-21 (mostly microservices); Angular 15 and 18, and Swing; HashiCorp Vault; IBM MQ and Kafka; Elastic. Experience with one specific technology matters less than assessing a new one quickly. The coexistence of legacy and microservices, and of MQ and Kafka, is the core difficulty of the domain. /p ul liDesign, document and govern the solution architecture, in line with enterprise architecture, principles, standards and target roadmaps /li liTranslate functional and non-functional requirements into a feasible, secure, resilient and scalable design /li liBuild and compare several scenarios, with benefits, costs, risks and reversibility, including a rough implementation cost per scenario /li liRecord key decisions in Architecture Decision Records /li liMake a technical inventory of the solution and a technical architecture roadmap that covers the current state, the legacy maintenance, the platform modernisation programme and cybersecurity standards /li liPlan the transition: gaps, intermediate states and realistic migration steps /li liKeep the architecture repository in ArchiMate, in one model with views per stakeholder (for example in Sparx EA) /li liPrepare architecture reviews, handle deviations and run conformity reviews during the build and before go-live /li liGuide the design, development, integration, test, cybersecurity and operations teams; join refinement and do targeted code reviews on service boundaries, interface contracts and transaction and error handling /li liContribute to proofs of concept where technical risk calls for it /li liHand over architecture knowledge and keep the documentation up to date /li /ul h3Your profile /h3 h3Required: /h3 ul liAt least 10 years of experience in IT, engineering or a related field /li liAt least 10 years as a solution architect on production systems and in designing information systems /li liExperience designing and integrating solutions across several technical domains and stakeholders /li liEnterprise and solution architecture, governance and requirements management /li liReasoning in scenarios, trade-offs, risks, dependencies, costs and value /li liKnowledge of integration patterns, APIs, data, infrastructure, cloud and cybersecurity /li liUnderstanding of resilience, continuity, performance, capacity and lifecycle in operations /li liExperience in architecture reviews, risk analyses and guiding implementations /li liDistributed application architectures: service boundaries, transaction boundaries, data ownership, interface contracts and versioning, events and messaging /li liHands-on software development experience, recent enough to be credible with an engineering team /li liFluent English and French and/or Dutch, spoken and written /li liClear communication with technical and non-technical people, facilitation and negotiation, and the ability to get an architecture decision accepted by explaining it rather than imposing it /li /ul h3Preferred: /h3 ul liPractical knowledge of TOGAF (5 years); a TOGAF certification is a plus /li liKnowledge of security practices and of an IT service management framework /li /ul h3Nice to have: /h3 ul liContribution to relevant iterations of the architecture development method, without taking over enterprise strategy or overall governance /li /ul h3Assignment /h3 ul liTime material, full-time /li liLocation: Brussels /li liEstimated volume: 9,000 hours /li liStart: preferably 1 December 2026 /li liEnd: 30 November 2031 /li liRate: to be discussed /li /ul