Senior Solution Architect - London, Bristol OR Edinburgh

About The Role

FDM is a global business and technology consultancy seeking a Senior Solution Architect (Compute & Storage) to work for our client within the Financial Services sector. This is initially a 6-12 month contract with the potential to extend and will be a hybrid role that will be based in London, Bristol or Edinburgh.

Our client is seeking a senior Solution Architect with deep expertise across enterprise compute, storage and infrastructure platforms to support a strategic programme of transformation and modernisation across its on-premise estate.

This individual will provide architectural leadership across infrastructure initiatives, defining target-state architectures, technical standards, roadmaps and solution designs whilst working closely with engineering, operations, security and vendor teams. The role requires a blend of strategic thinking and hands-on technical credibility, with a particular focus on resilient, secure and scalable infrastructure platforms.

Responsibilities:

• Lead the architecture and design of enterprise compute and storage solutions.
• Produce High Level Designs (HLDs), reference architectures, technical standards and roadmap artefacts.
• Define future-state infrastructure architecture aligned to business, operational and security requirements.
• Provide architectural governance and technical assurance across infrastructure programmes.
• Support platform engineering teams through design reviews, prototyping and implementation guidance.
• Develop strategies covering capacity planning, performance optimisation, data lifecycle management and storage governance.
• Design highly available, resilient and recoverable infrastructure solutions.
• Drive standardisation, automation and operational efficiency across the technology estate.
• Evaluate technology options and vendor solutions, providing clear recommendations and trade-off analysis.
• Collaborate with architecture, engineering, security, operations and application teams to ensure successful delivery of solutions.

About You

Architecture & Delivery

• Significant experience operating as a Solution Architect within large, complex enterprise environments.
• Proven track record delivering infrastructure transformation and modernisation initiatives.
• Experience creating architecture roadmaps, standards, patterns and governance frameworks.
• Experience operating within mature architecture functions and design authority structures.
• Experience working within regulated industries and enterprise-scale organisations.

Compute & Infrastructure

• Strong expertise in enterprise compute platforms including:
• Nutanix AHV
• Prism Central
• HCI architectures
• Server lifecycle management
• Virtualisation technologies
• Strong understanding of workload placement, performance optimisation and infrastructure scalability.

Storage Technologies

• Deep knowledge of Dell enterprise storage platforms including:
• PowerStore
• PowerScale
• PowerMax
• ECS
• Experience with SAN, NAS, storage networking and data lifecycle management.
• Experience defining storage governance and data tiering strategies.

Containers & Platform Engineering

• Strong knowledge of Red Hat OpenShift and Kubernetes-based platforms.
• Experience designing container hosting platforms and platform service architectures.
• Understanding of observability, monitoring and platform resilience.

Resilience & Security

• Experience designing backup, recovery and disaster recovery architectures.
• Strong understanding of cyber resilience and ransomware recovery capabilities.
• Experience with immutable storage and replication strategies.
• Exposure to Rubrik is highly desirable.
• Strong grasp of infrastructure security principles including segmentation, encryption, privileged access management and secure-by-design architecture.

Automation & Cloud

• Experience with infrastructure automation and orchestration technologies.
• Familiarity with Infrastructure as Code, APIs and configuration management tooling.
• Experience integrating on-premise environments with Azure or other public cloud platforms.
• Understanding of hybrid-cloud workload mobility strategies.

Leadership & Stakeholder Management

• Strong executive communication and stakeholder management skills.
• Ability to influence and build consensus across technical and non-technical audiences.
• Comfortable presenting architecture options, risks and recommendations to senior leadership.
• Ability to balance strategic architecture objectives with practical delivery requirements.

Preferred Qualifications

• TOGAF, Open CA, BCS Enterprise & Solution Architecture or equivalent certification.
• Cloud or infrastructure certifications.
• Security architecture certifications.
• Degree or equivalent qualification in a technology-related discipline.

Ideal Candidate Profile

We are looking for a senior infrastructure-focused architect who combines deep technical expertise across compute, storage and platform technologies with the ability to lead enterprise architecture decisions, influence stakeholders and drive modernisation initiatives across a complex hybrid estate.

About Us

FDM is an award-winning global leader in tech and business talent solutions, backed by more than 35 years of industry experience. We have centres across Europe, North America, and Asia-Pacific, and a global workforce of over 2500 employees. FDM has shown exponential growth throughout the years, firmly establishing itself as an award-winning employer, currently listed on the FTSE4Good Index and as a 2026 Financial Times UK 'Best Employer'.

Why join us

• Career coaching, mentoring and access to upskilling throughout your entire FDM career
• Assignments with global companies and opportunities to work abroad
• Opportunity to re-skill and up-skill into new areas, develop non-linear career paths and build a skillset within your field
• Annual leave and work-place pension