Solution Architect – Finance Systems

Waterloo - Hybrid Working
Full Time
Fixed Term Contract (12 Months)
Grade 4

We are a leading omni channel retailer operating across the UK, Ireland and Scandinavia, with a workforce of more than 30,000 colleagues. As part of our strategic technology transformation, we are introducing a number of key solutions to support our long term business vision. To enable this, we are seeking an experienced Solution Architect, dedicated to our Finance systems landscape, to shape, deliver, and evolve technology solutions across a portfolio of business critical initiatives.

The Solution Architect will take ownership of solution architecture design and associated technology roadmaps across the Finance estate. The role requires evaluating business needs, collaborating with delivery partners, and ensuring technology solutions are well aligned, cost effective, and architecturally sound. You will work closely with business, engineering, and partner teams to translate financial and accounting requirements into effective, scalable, and secure technical solutions.

You will lead the design of major programmes and initiatives, ensuring that solutions meet business requirements and align to architectural standards. The successful candidate will demonstrate strong stakeholder engagement, be confident in supporting and guiding other architects, and work effectively in a fast paced, change oriented environment. Collaboration will span teams including Finance, Commercial, Omnichannel, IT, and Analytics.

The Role:

• Lead creation, analysis, and review of solution architectures across a diverse portfolio of projects and programmes.
• Own the end to end design of solutions, ensuring alignment between business requirements and technical needs, using best practices, reference architectures, and reusable assets.
• Define system components, services, technologies, and designs spanning Business, Information, Application, and Technology architecture domains.
• Own the solution design for core finance capabilities, including the general ledger and sub ledgers, accounts payable and receivable, fixed assets, tax, treasury and cash management, financial consolidation and reporting, and planning and forecasting.
• Design the integration between Finance and the wider retail estate, spanning point of sale, e commerce, order management, merchandising, stock and supply chain, payments and settlement, and HR and payroll, ensuring data flows are complete, reconcilable, and auditable.
• Design solutions that support the end to end finance process flows of record to report, order to cash, and procure to pay, with appropriate controls, segregation of duties, and audit traceability built in.
• Ensure solutions meet financial control, reporting, and compliance obligations, including internal financial controls, statutory and external audit requirements, IFRS reporting, tax and VAT obligations, and PCI DSS for payment related flows.
• Design for period end close, high volume transaction posting, and sales and cash reconciliation at retail scale, balancing performance, cost, and data accuracy.
• Contribute to multiple complex or large scale programmes in a matrixed environment.
• Oversee and guide the development of solutions across hardware, software, operability, scalability, and associated business processes.
• Provide architectural leadership and oversight to delivery teams and engineering partners.
• Review software designs, architectural documentation, and technical capabilities to ensure alignment with strategy and standards.