Solution Architect

Job Title: Solution Architect Job Location: Guilford, UK/Remote with Occasional Office Visit Job Type: Contract/Perm Role Purpose

• Provide company‑wide architectural governance and technical leadership for the enterprise program migrating on‑premise estate (RHEL, Oracle, Microsoft) to FCP. Define and enforce target reference architectures, migration patterns, security & compliance guardrails, and run governance through an Architecture Review Board (ARB) to ensure secure, cost‑effective, resilient, and compliant outcomes. Key Responsibilities
• Establish, document, and own cloud target/reference architectures for FCP covering compute, networking, identity, storage, databases, middleware, integration, backup/DR, and observability.
• Lead architectural governance:
• Chair/run the Architecture Review Board (ARB).
• Review, approve, or raise conditions for migration and design packages.
• Maintain Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) and a patterns/standards library.
• Create migration strategy and application classification (lift‑and‑shift, replatform, refactor, replace, retire).
• Define and validate data migration and cutover strategies for Oracle (and other DBs), including rollback and integrity verification plans.
• Define security, compliance, and operational guardrails (IAM, encryption, network segmentation, logging, vulnerability management).
• Produce runbooks, playbooks, and cutover templates; validate them during pilot migrations.
• Define non‑functional requirements (performance, HA, RTO/RPO) and validate designs against them.
• Drive cost governance: tagging policy, cost models, budget forecasts, and ongoing optimization.
• Coordinate with App owners, DBAs, Security, Compliance, DevOps, Infra, and PMO to ensure alignment and readiness.
• Mentor platform and application teams; enable knowledge transfer and create training materials.
• Run proofs‑of‑concept (PoCs) and provide hands‑on support for complex migrations or performance tuning.
• Conduct post‑migration reviews, capture lessons learned, and iterate architecture/designs. Required Qualifications & Skills
• Education: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, IT, Engineering, or equivalent experience.
• Experience: 8+ years IT experience with at least 4+ years in architecting and leading enterprise on‑prem → cloud migrations.
• Technical expertise:
• Strong Linux (RHEL) systems knowledge and experience with configuration management/automation.
• Deep Oracle database migration experience (replication, logical/physical migration tools, schema conversion, performance tuning).
• Microsoft stack experience (Windows Server, AD, .NET, SQL Server) and migration approaches.
• Solid cloud architecture knowledge (IaaS, PaaS, managed DBs, networking, identity).
• Containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes) experience preferred.
• Security and compliance controls implementation experience for cloud migrations.
• Observability, monitoring, and incident management best practices.
• Soft skills:
• Strong stakeholder management and communication skills across technical and non‑technical audiences.
• Experience running Architecture Review Boards and writing ADRs.
• Proven ability to produce clear architecture artifacts, runbooks, and migration playbooks. Preferred / Nice-to-have
• TOGAF or enterprise architecture certification.
• Experience with large-scale Oracle consolidation/migration projects.
• Experience with cost governance tools and cloud financial management (FinOps).
• Experience with regulated environments (PCI, GDPR, SOX, HIPAA) if applicable.