Harvey Nash
AI Solutions Architect
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About the Company
This position will serve as a senior architecture lead within IT Operations, shaping business requirements into robust, secure and scalable technology designs. The environment covers AI-led initiatives, AWS and Azure cloud services, enterprise data platforms and SaaS solutions. The role will provide architectural clarity across delivery activity, helping ensure designs are consistent, commercially sensible, resilient and aligned with applicable financial services expectations, including DORA, the EU AI Act and relevant UK operational resilience and model risk standards.
About the Role
Working closely with the Head of IT Operations, the post requires strong technical authority, sound judgement and the ability to translate complex architecture matters for engineering, executive and board audiences. The Solution Architect will not be expected to own every design decision personally; instead, they will equip teams with clear standards, patterns, coaching and governance so that good architectural decisions are made consistently. The role calls for disciplined documentation, structured decision-making and the ability to manage competing demands across technology change, cloud engineering, AI delivery and vendor evaluation.
Responsibilities
AI, Data & Analytics
- Shape the architecture for AI-related delivery, spanning data intake, solution design, implementation, monitoring and ongoing operational oversight.
- Align AI engineering approaches with relevant financial services requirements and EU AI Act expectations, including controls for explainability, bias, human oversight, auditability, logging and risk assessment.
- Monitor advances in AI and identify practical opportunities to improve capability, reduce cost and increase operational efficiency.
Architecture & Technical Leadership
- Define and communicate architecture direction across cloud, AI, data, integration and SaaS platforms, giving delivery teams a shared technical framework.
- Develop and maintain architecture principles, reusable patterns, standards and guardrails for consistent use across the technology estate.
- Support engineering teams with complex AWS and Azure designs, ensuring appropriate consideration of security, resilience, performance and cost.
- Establish integration approaches across the environment, including API-led, event-based and platform-to-platform patterns.
- Encourage cloud-native and, where beneficial, cloud-agnostic designs to limit unnecessary supplier dependency.
- Run architecture spikes and proof-of-concept work to test assumptions and reduce delivery risk ahead of major investment decisions.
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Documentation Standards & Governance
- Strong documentation should be embedded across the engineering function rather than sitting with one individual. This role will set the standards, templates, review approach and coaching needed to help teams create and maintain clear, useful architecture records.
- Coach teams to produce and maintain high-quality architecture artefacts, including high-level designs, low-level designs, ADRs, reference architectures and pattern libraries, using approaches such as C4 where suitable.
- Provide governance over key design choices, including focused architecture review sessions that improve consistency without creating unnecessary delay.
- Keep the architecture repository easy to access, logically organised and up to date, while ensuring teams remain accountable for their own areas.
- Set non-functional requirements for security, performance, scalability, resilience and disaster recovery so they are considered from the start of delivery.
- Strengthen engineering ownership of documentation quality through clear expectations, practical guidance and regular review points.
IT Roadmap, Strategy & Cost Optimisation
- Own and evolve the IT technology roadmap in partnership with the Head of IT Operations and senior stakeholders, typically over a one- to three-year timeframe.
- Review emerging technologies, including AI/ML tooling, SaaS solutions and platform enhancements, assessing strategic fit, value, operational impact and cost.
- Translate business priorities into sequenced technology initiatives with defined outcomes, dependencies, milestones and delivery considerations.
- Balance immediate delivery requirements with longer-term architecture sustainability, simplification and cost discipline.
- Apply FinOps practices to help manage and optimise AWS and Azure spend while preserving the required capability and resilience.
- Lead technical assessment for technology investments, partnerships and supplier selections, ensuring proposed solutions are appropriate, scalable and commercially sound.
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Stakeholder Engagement & Communication
- The role needs an individual who can operate effectively across technical and business forums, tailoring communication to the audience and decision at hand.
- Act as a trusted architecture adviser to the Head of IT Operations, CTO and wider senior leadership group.
- Explain architecture recommendations, options and trade-offs clearly to executive and board-level stakeholders.
- Build strong working relationships across business and technology teams, turning business needs into practical technology outcomes.
- Influence stakeholders without relying on formal authority, creating alignment across engineers, delivery leads, vendors and third parties.
- Represent IT Operations in governance forums, architecture reviews and steering groups.
- Communicate risks, assumptions and design decisions transparently in language suited to both technical and non-technical audiences.
Workload Prioritisation & Delivery Enablement
- Manage priorities across technology change, cloud engineering, AI delivery and vendor assessment activity.
- Work with project managers and delivery leads to ensure architectural input is planned at the right stages and does not become a delivery blocker.
- Participate in agile ceremonies where architectural decisions are needed, helping teams resolve design questions quickly and pragmatically.
- Support engineering leads in turning architecture direction into delivery-ready specifications, increasing ownership within teams.
- Define and oversee onboarding standards for new SaaS products and third-party platforms.
Vendor Selection & Buy vs Build
- Lead architectural input into vendor and tooling decisions, assessing buy options against total cost, technical suitability, operating model fit and strategic value.
- Create consistent evaluation approaches for SaaS and third-party platforms, covering commercial, operational, risk, data and architecture considerations.
- Partner with procurement, technology leadership and risk stakeholders to ensure supplier decisions support governance needs and the future roadmap.
- Keep sight of the SaaS and technology tooling market to identify opportunities for rationalisation, replacement or improvement.
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