Solutions Architect (IT)

Role Overview The Solution Architect is responsible for technical leadership, architectural design, and the end to end delivery of functionality within an agile development environment. The role requires strong experience across distributed teams, sprint planning, high performance application development, and ensuring adherence to coding, design, and architectural standards. ___ Key Responsibilities Leadership & Agile Delivery

• Foster teamwork, set technical direction, and ensure alignment with program guidelines.
• Develop sprint work plans aligned to release roadmaps and functional epics.
• Track sprint progress and ensure timely delivery of planned work.
• Facilitate daily stand ups, sprint planning, retrospectives, and other agile ceremonies.
• Review user stories with Business Analysts and Business Owners to plan future sprints.
• Identify risks, obstacles, and changes to scope or schedule; escalate appropriately.
• Collaborate with the Scrum Master to improve team velocity and drive continuous improvement.
• Assist with budget forecasting, resource planning, and estimation.
• Coordinate resource utilisation and identify opportunities for resource sharing across teams.
• Maintain detailed resource plans for all sprints within a release cycle.
• Support pre sales and sales teams with technical expertise, customer demos, and solution validation.

___ Technical Architecture & Design

• Create application designs including database architecture, service/API design, and performance considerations.
• Maintain architectural oversight across all sprint and release deliverables.
• Define and enforce coding standards, implementation patterns, and quality guidelines.
• Work with architects and developers to establish frameworks and reusable components.
• Identify key design and implementation decisions to minimise technical risk.

___ Development Leadership

• Operate as a lead developer when required, performing code reviews and ensuring best practices.
• Provide story point estimates and contribute to backlog refinement.
• Ensure proper usage of code repositories and agile tools as per program standards.
• Verify implementation of test cases and ensure unit test coverage targets are met.
• Collaborate with QA teams to identify and implement automation opportunities.
• Track defects and promote a culture of quality within the team.
• Assist with transitioning releases to production support teams and support priority production issues.

Required Skills & Experience

• Prior experience as a software development lead for large scale, high performance transactional web applications.
• Strong hands on experience with Java, JavaScript, Maven, and SQL (8-10 years).
• Proven experience designing web applications and service oriented platforms.
• Expertise with API and RESTful service design and integration.
• Minimum 5 years of experience working with distributed teams.
• Minimum 5 years working within agile Scrum environments.
• Strong leadership, communication, and problem solving skills with a track record of ownership and delivery.
• Experience with design patterns, scalable architecture, and performance optimisation.
• Experience in data modelling and metadata schema definition (5 years).
• Familiarity with architectural governance and security reviews.
• Experience with agile tools such as JIRA, Rally, TFS, or VersionOne.
• Mastery of Git, Subversion, and Artifactory repositories.
• Production support experience.
• Bachelor's degree required; Master's in a relevant field (Business, Library, or Computer Science) is beneficial.
• Willingness to travel up to 10%.

Desirable Skills & Technologies

• Experience with Tomcat, Apache Solr, VMware, Oracle or similar technologies.
• Prior involvement with enterprise scale platforms or large multi team delivery programs

LA International is a HMG approved ICT Recruitment and Project Solutions Consultancy, operating globally from the largest single site in the UK as an IT Consultancy or as an Employment Business & Agency depending upon the precise nature of the work, for security cleared jobs or non-clearance vacancies, LA International welcome applications from all sections of the community and from people with diverse experience and backgrounds. Award Winning LA International, winner of the Recruiter Awards for Excellence, Best IT Recruitment Company, Best Public Sector Recruitment Company and overall Gold Award winner, has now secured the most prestigious business award that any business can receive, The Queens Award for Enterprise: International Trade, for the second consecutive period.