Lead Engineer & Solution Architect

Responsibilities 

Solution architecture & technical direction  

• Define conceptual, logical, application, integration and deployment architectures aligned to business capabilities, functional requirements and non-functional requirements.  

• Own the end-to-end solution design across frontend, backend, integration, data, cloud and AI components, while engaging specialist architects where deeper expertise is required.  

• Evaluate architectural options and trade-offs, recommend a clear direction, and document material decisions through architecture views, decision records and implementation guidance.  

• Decompose solutions into coherent components and services, defining boundaries, interfaces, integration patterns and deployment approaches that teams can implement.  

• Ensure architecture decisions address security, privacy, scalability, resilience, performance, observability, maintainability, operability and cost efficiency.  

• Maintain architecture integrity throughout delivery, adapting the design when requirements, constraints or implementation evidence change.  

Engineering leadership & delivery management  

• Lead multidisciplinary engineering teams through mobilisation, design, build, test, release and transition to operations.  

• Turn the architecture into an actionable engineering plan, including work breakdown, sequencing, dependencies, estimates, technical milestones and delivery risks.  

• Balance hands-on technical involvement with delegation, enabling technical leads and senior engineers to own components and make decisions within agreed guardrails.  

• Monitor engineering progress, quality and technical risk; remove blockers and intervene early where delivery, architecture or capability gaps threaten outcomes.  

• Partner with delivery and product leadership on scope, priorities, capacity and trade-offs, ensuring commitments remain technically credible and achievable.  

• Support team formation, onboarding and capability planning, contributing to recruitment and the effective deployment of engineering talent.  

Engineering excellence & team development  

• Establish and reinforce practical engineering standards for coding, testing, security, accessibility, documentation, source control, CI/CD and operational readiness.  

• Create an environment in which engineers receive clear direction, constructive feedback, coaching and opportunities to grow their technical leadership.  

• Mentor engineers and technical leads, strengthening design thinking, problem solving, ownership and communication across the team.  

• Promote effective peer review, design review and architecture governance proportionate to delivery risk and complexity.  

• Drive continuous improvement using delivery evidence, production insight and team feedback, with a focus on quality, flow, predictability and sustainable ways of working.  

• Encourage reuse through reference implementations, patterns, shared components and engineering accelerators where these provide demonstrable value.  

Technology strategy, cloud & AI-enabled engineering 

• Evaluate and recommend technology stacks, frameworks, platforms and cloud services based on business fit, engineering capability, lifecycle, risk and total cost of ownership.  

• Apply appropriate modern architecture patterns, including API-first, event-driven, domain-oriented, serverless and microservices approaches, without treating any pattern as the default.  

• Guide cloud-native and hybrid solution design in line with reliability, security, FinOps and operational excellence principles.  

• Identify opportunities to use generative AI within solutions and engineering workflows where it creates measurable value.  

• Establish practical guardrails for AI-assisted architecture, development, testing, documentation and operations, maintaining traceability, governance and human oversight.  

• Contribute to technology modernisation, platform engineering and engineering productivity initiatives.  

Stakeholder, governance & commercial contribution  

• Work closely with clients, product owners, delivery managers, security, operations and engineering stakeholders to align solution decisions with outcomes and constraints.  

• Communicate architecture and engineering decisions clearly to technical and non-technical audiences, including implications, risks and recommended actions.  

• Lead technical design workshops, architecture reviews and engineering deep dives, ensuring decisions are understood and followed through.  

• Contribute to pursuits, proposals, discovery, solution shaping, estimation, delivery planning and technical due diligence.  

• Provide transparent reporting on technical progress, architecture decisions, engineering health, dependencies and risks.  

To qualify for the role, you must have 

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including significant responsibility for enterprise-scale solution delivery.  

• Demonstrated experience leading and developing multidisciplinary engineering teams, either as an Engineering Manager, Technical Lead or equivalent.  

• Proven experience defining solution architectures from concept through implementation and operational transition.  

• Strong engineering depth across frontend, backend, integration and cloud platforms, with the judgement to engage specialists when required.  

• Experience planning and governing complex technical delivery, including estimation, dependencies, quality, risk and stakeholder management.  

• Experience designing and delivering secure, resilient cloud-native applications and selecting technology stacks for varied solution contexts.  

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience. 

 Ideally, you’ll also have 

• Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience. 

• A recognised architecture certification, such as TOGAF or equivalent.  

• A cloud solution or platform architecture certification.  

• Relevant training or certification in AI-enabled or AI-native solution architecture. 

Skills and attributes for success 

The successful candidate will demonstrate ability to: 

• Make sound technology and architecture decisions aligned to business outcomes. 

• Establish clear engineering direction for delivery teams. 

• Deliver secure, resilient, cloud-native, and AI-native architectures. 

• Accelerate engineering productivity through standards, patterns, and reusable assets. 

• Communicate effectively and with impact.  

• Expertise and competencies in: 

• Systems Thinking 

• Architecture & Design 

• Technical Leadership 

• Strategic Thinking 

• Solution Evaluation & Trade-off Analysis 

• Decision Making Under Ambiguity 

• Cloud-Native Architecture 

• Modern Engineering Practices 

• AI-Enabled Engineering & SDLC 

• Stakeholder Management 

• Coaching & Mentoring