Principal Solution Architect (SFIA 6)

What this person will be doing:

• Empowering our customers to overcome their technical challenges while collaboratively crafting innovative solutions and shaping their strategic technical vision and roadmaps.
• Setting the technical standards for solution development within the club, and ensuring that all of the solutions that are being delivered to clients will meet their needs. Ensures the team are always delivering quality solutions.
• Facilitating “Innovation Day” type workshops to accelerate Discovery and Alpha activities. Understands stakeholder problems (both those that are said and those that are implicit) and can offer potential solutions.
• Work with Club (and wider) stakeholders on bid activities.
• Recruits and inspires the technical staff within the club,and line manages the Solution Architect contingent. Offers the necessary advice and support to ensure that they realise their potential.
• Influencing the growth and delivery strategies for the club, sitting within the club Design Authority structure to ensure that those strategies are being executed effectively.

• This role needs to be a driven, passionate, senior leader within the club. One that has the necessary people skills to inspire the confidence of clients and colleagues alike, and facilitate collaborative working practices in a complex stakeholder environment.

• Solid technical skills, sufficient to be credible when developing concept solutions and estimating the effort required to bring them to fruition.

• The individual needs to possess the integrity to do the right thing by stakeholders, and not be afraid to challenge groupthink or substandard solutions.

• The Principal Solutions Architect will provide the technical face of the club, setting and enforcing technical standards via the club Design Authority ensuring that quality and security are baked into all of our products. They will inspire, motivate and support the team around them to realise their potential by embodying a can-do attitude, always willing to look for ways to add value and improve the lives of users. In doing so this individual will elevate the skills and abilities of the development teams within the Club.
• The role requires someone that can interact with stakeholders, interpret their needs and frustrations, and provide credible solutions that may help to resolve them; solutions which can then be taken forward by the appropriate delivery team
• They will be a strategic problem solver and innovator, someone who is not willing to accept the status quo or mediocrity. Comfortable with navigating ambiguity, who understands that perfect is often the enemy of the good. Willing to make decisions based on the information at hand, but also have the humility to revisit those decisions when new information becomes available, and if necessary change tack.
• To succeed in this role a broad understanding of technology platforms, especially on-premise Kubernetes implementations and AWS architectural components is likely to be necessary, along with experience implementing the development frameworks used within Zaizi. Knowledge of cyber security best practice, especially with cloud hosted solutions will also be important.
• A key facet of the role will be estimating technical costs and development effort to support wider budgeting and bid activities.
• Credibility to act as a point of escalation and advocate for the technical functions within the club, and the necessary experience tact and diplomacy to line manage the Solutions Architects careers effectively in order to help them succeed.
• Presentation skills, and the ability to communicate complex ideas to senior stakeholders within the client business.
• Workshop facilitation, and the ability to bring together a disparate team of stakeholders to effectively explore the problem space and develop credible concepts.
• Experience of overseeing the containerisation of third party applications, migration from on-prem to cloud services (AWS predominantly) and overseeing software development teams would all be advantageous.

You don’t meet all the requirements?

Studies show that women and black, Asian and minority ethnic people are less likely to apply for a job unless they meet every qualification. So if you’re excited about this role but your experience doesn’t align perfectly with the job description, we’d love you to still apply. You might just be the perfect person for this role, or another role here at Zaizi.

We actively welcome applications from people of colour, the LGBTQ+ community, individuals with disabilities, neurodivergent individuals, parents, carers, and those from lower socio-economic backgrounds.

If you need any accommodations to support your specific situation, please feel free to let us know. For candidates who are neurodiverse or have disabilities, we are happy to make any adjustments needed throughout the interview process—just ask!

SC Clearance:

Zaizi works with UK Central Government departments on a range of projects. To be able to work on our customer projects, employees must be Security Cleared to a standard acceptable to our Government customers. Due to this restriction we can currently only recruit candidates who have the right to work in the UK without sponsorship and who have lived in the UK for the last 5+ years continuously.

Interview Process:

1st stage:

Initial phone screening done by a member of the recruitment team

2nd stage:

Technical interview, this stage evaluates your technical expertise and problem-solving abilities, especially if you're applying for a technical role.

Final Stage:

10-15 min presentation and a panel interview where multiple people from different departments ask you questions.

Salary: £105k - £120k

25 days paid holiday, plus bank holidays

BUPA medical insurance
Workplace Pension 5% employer contribution
Group Life Assurance
Cyclescheme
5 days a year for approved Training
WFH equipment allowance
Buy / Sell Holiday
2 days paid volunteering days

Other benefits:
Flexible working
Work on exciting projects - make a difference
Empowered to make decisions
Encouraged to fail fast and learn quickly

For further information contact- Talentteam@zaizi.com

Nat Hinds-Head of Talent

Kayla Kirby-Talent Acquisition Specialist