Solution Architect

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About this role

As a Solution Architect, you will play a pivotal role in bridging customer requirements with technical delivery. Working in partnership with Sales, Product, Professional Services, and Delivery teams, you will provide technical governance, assurance, and architectural leadership to ensure bids, products, and solution designs are robust, scalable, and deployment-ready. You will be accountable for producing high-quality solution designs that meet customer and business objectives, while providing end-to-end technical oversight throughout project delivery. You will ensure solutions are implemented in accordance with architectural standards and best practices, enabling their successful transition into live operational service. Job activity & responsibilities: Provide technical oversight and pre-sales support throughout bid activities. Collaborate with Product Management to influence and shape product roadmaps. Review and assess new solution proposals, ensuring alignment with architectural standards, best practices and organisational objectives. Develop proof-of-concept solutions to validate product capabilities and architectural approaches. Provide technical governance and oversight over the project deliveries across your assigned solution portfolio, working proactively with all stakeholders. Maintain and continuously improve technical documentation, including work instructions, standards and operational procedures where required. When assigned to a critical project delivery: Support Project Managers with planning activities, including task definition, effort estimation and resource requirements. Assist Project Managers in validating project equipment schedule and infrastructure requirements. Conduct site surveys and technical assessments, documenting findings and recommendations within formal reports. Produce high-quality solution designs. Present solution designs, technical recommendations and architectural decisions to both internal and external stakeholders. Manage design updates and ensure all solution changes are appropriately controlled through the project change process. Prepare for and facilitate gated process reviews, ensuring technical readiness and compliance. Review implementation workplans, ensuring technical suitability and compliance with the change management processes. Triage project delivery issues raised (Using Azure DevOps work items process). Provide technical support to engineering teams during implementation. Create a migration plan for customer solution cutover into live operations. Build and maintain effective customer relationships, demonstrating professionalism and adaptability when communicating with both technical and non-technical audiences. Operate with a high degree of autonomy, demonstrating excellent organisational, prioritisation and time-management skills. Adhere to NEC Software Solutions policies, processes and governance frameworks at all times. Deliver activities within agreed timescales, proactively communicating risks, issues and dependencies that may impact delivery. Maintain a professional approach and represent NEC Software Solutions positively in all customer and stakeholder interactions. Promote a safe, clean and compliant working environment, adhering to all applicable Health & Safety policies, procedures and regulations. Essential experience, skills and knowledge: Proven experience in a Solution Architect, Technical Architect, or senior technical consultancy role within enterprise or mission-critical environments. Demonstrable experience capturing customer requirements and producing high-quality solution designs that balance technical, operational, security, and commercial considerations. Strong understanding of infrastructure, networking, virtualisation, cloud technologies, authentication, authorisation, and system integration principles. Experience identifying and documenting non-functional requirements, technical constraints, assumptions, risks, dependencies, and technical debt considerations. Ability to provide technical governance across multidisciplinary teams, ensuring solutions remain aligned to architectural standards and delivery capabilities. Strong stakeholder management skills, with the ability to communicate complex technical concepts clearly to customers, project managers, engineers, product teams, and senior leadership. Experience in supporting bids, product roadmap development, proof-of-concepts, solution evaluations, and technical assurance activities. Excellent analytical, problem-solving, and decision-making skills, with a focus on delivering practical and supportable solutions. Ability to work independently while effectively collaborating across product, delivery, professional services, sales, and support functions. Ability to assess, learn and evaluate new technologies, considering their suitability, supportability and impact within customer solution environments. Experience using Microsoft 365 applications, including Word, Excel, Visio and re