Principal Solutions Architect

Job Description

Leighton: 33 years and counting. Experienced and agile. Trusted by some of the world’s biggest brands. We develop and deliver custom software. We use technology to make money, save money, create efficiencies, integrate systems, solve problems. To help our customers thrive. We have a pool of talent. To manage projects. Test to high standards. Create user experiences for every type of user. We include, include, include. Our service is personal. We know your name. We can do amazing things with tech. We’ve got the talent. We decide what’s best for our customer together.

The Role

We’re looking for a seasoned Principal Solutions Architect to provide architectural leadership across a major platform modernisation programme. This is our highest‑priority strategic initiative and sits at the heart of a wider organisational transformation spanning finance, operations, commercial, contact centre, technology, product, revenue management and fraud domains.

In this role, you will guide the end‑to‑end architecture of a cloud‑native, AWS‑hosted ecosystem, ensuring strategic alignment, technical governance, and a coherent target state across multiple autonomous product teams. You’ll combine enterprise‑level architectural leadership with hands‑on support, helping teams navigate complex design decisions, cross‑domain dependencies, and the replacement of a large legacy monolith under fixed commercial timelines.

The role requires both breadth and depth across application, data, integration, security and cloud architecture, along with strong stakeholder leadership in a politically complex environment.

What you’ll do

• Lead architecture across all domains — application, integration, data, cloud and security
• Define and evolve the target-state architecture for a modernised holiday-packaging platform
• Govern solution decisions and run architecture decision review forums
• Establish architectural standards, patterns, guardrails and governance models
• Translate business capabilities, value streams and operational processes into technical architectures
• Review high‑level and low‑level design artefacts for alignment and quality
• Oversee API strategy, integration patterns, and AI-readiness
• Shape contact-centre architecture and integrations using Amazon Connect
• Enable teams to deliver safe value with your expertise in information security and data privacy
• Map and manage cross‑programme dependencies and multi‑company integration challenges
• Support teams with technical spikes, PoCs, and de‑risking complex design areas
• Influence senior stakeholders and navigate organisational politics across group-level entities Support executive decision-making through technical appraisal
• Align architectural decisions with technical strategy, commercial targets, risk constraints and delivery timelines
• Set and guide operating models for the transition to BAU and day 2 operations

What you’ll bring

• Deep experience spanning application, data, integration, security and cloud architecture
• Proven track record designing and governing public cloud‑based platforms (AWS preferred)
• Strong working knowledge of modern event-driven/API/microservice patterns
• Familiarity with customer support and contact‑centre journeys
• Experience with governance in large delivery programmes
• Ability to influence, review and guide architecture across distributed, autonomous product teams
• Good grasp of enterprise capability modelling, value streams, and end‑to‑end business flows
• Experience integrating numerous third‑party vendors and systems
• Skilled at managing architectural risk, decision trade‑offs, and long-term maintainability
• Exceptional stakeholder engagement and communication skills
• A team enablement and host-leadership mindset, promoting best practices and engineering culture
• Comfort balancing strategic leadership with hands-on architectural contribution

Great to have

• Travel or retail industry experience is desirable, but strong experience in any large-scale consumer or regulated digital platform is equally relevant
• Experience designing multi-tenant, internationalised systems
• Knowledge or experience of architecting for compliance with ISO 27001, SOC 2, and PCI-DSS frameworks
• Practical experience of applying Team Topologies and Conway's Law as part of architecture practice
• Background in modernising large monolithic platforms under commercial constraints
• Knowledge of fraud‑management, revenue‑management, and financial architecture domains
• Familiarity with secure‑by‑design frameworks and regulated-cloud standards
• Experience contributing to or establishing enterprise architecture functions
• Exposure to multi-cloud or hybrid integration environments
• Experience with modern data product architectures, data meshes, and reverse ETL
• Prior consulting experience delivering complex transformation programmes