The Department

Our Technology team continues to go from strength to strength, playing a vital role in firm-wide innovation and strategy. Far from being a support function, Technology is integral to the firm's growth agenda, backed by strong leadership engagement and sustained investment.

The Role

As a Solution Architect, you will shape and drive end-to-end application and technology solutions that deliver business outcomes while aligning with enterprise architecture standards and principles. Reporting directly to the Head of Architecture, you will work across business and technology teams to understand strategic objectives, capabilities, processes, information needs and operational constraints.

You will translate these needs into coherent solution architectures spanning enterprise applications, SaaS, data, security, cloud services, user experience, interoperability and service operations. This is a broad, business-facing role that focuses on the application estate. Integration and API design are important components to this. You will help define target states and transition roadmaps, evaluate application and supplier options, guide delivery and ensure solutions remain supportable, secure and commercially sustainable.

Strategic Programmes Currently Underway

The successful candidate will contribute to several significant transformation initiatives which include major upgrades, re-platforming, migrations to cloud, de-coupling and decommissioning.

• Matter Lifecycle Management: Modernising the end-to-end lifecycle supporting client work (from client onboarding and matter inception through delivery, billing, closure, retention and archive.
• Client Intake, Risk and Compliance: Enhancing the client onboarding process, conflicts management, risk assessment, regulatory compliance and information governance.
• Practice and Financial Management: Improving pricing, time recording, billing, financial operations, profitability management and reporting.
• Document, Information and Knowledge Management: Improving how information is created, managed, governed, searched and reused across the firm.
• CRM, Marketing and Relationship Intelligence: Developing a joined-up view of clients, matters and relationships to support growth and client service.
• Data, Integration and AI Enablement: Establishing trusted data, interoperability, analytics, AI capabilities and secure access to enterprise information.
• Application Portfolio and Service Modernisation: Defining application roadmaps, reducing technical debt, and driving consolidation, modernisation, re-platforming and retirement initiatives.
• Architecture Maturity and Governance: Strengthening architecture standards, governance, roadmaps, target-state architectures and decision-making across the firm.

Duties And Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain application roadmaps, identifying opportunities for application rationalisation, consolidation, modernisation, re-platforming and retirement in alignment with business strategy and target-state architecture.
• Facilitate discovery and solution-shaping workshops with business stakeholders, product teams, architects and subject matter experts.
• Translate business strategy, capabilities, processes and desired outcomes into end-to-end application and solution architectures.
• Design solutions across enterprise applications, SaaS, data, security, cloud services, user experience, interoperability and operational support.
• Assess current-state applications, business capabilities, process inefficiencies, dependencies and technical debt, identifying opportunities for simplification, rationalisation, modernisation and service improvement.
• Define target-state solutions, transition states and practical application roadmaps aligned with enterprise strategy.
• Produce clear artefacts, including capability and context views, option papers, high-level designs, application and data flows, security considerations, non-functional requirements and implementation guidance.
• Evaluate applications, technology and suppliers, making evidence-based build, buy, reuse, consolidate, replace or retire recommendations.
• Work with delivery and engineering teams to guide implementation, resolve design issues and maintain alignment with approved architecture.
• Design solutions across legal and business capabilities such as client intake, risk, matter management, financial management, document and knowledge management, CRM, data and AI enablement.
• Define appropriate data-sharing, interoperability, API and messaging approaches where required as part of the wider application solution.
• Ensure solutions comply with client confidentiality, information barriers, data classification, privacy, security, retention and regulatory requirements.
• Capture and validate non-functional requirements, including performance, resilience, availability, accessibility, operability and disaster recovery.
• Collaborate with Data, Platform, Security, Product, Service and Business Architecture colleagues to align solutions with target-state architecture and domain roadmaps.
• Maintain architecture documentation and relationships in the architecture repository and record key decisions through architectural decision records.
• Present recommendations at governance forums, explaining business outcomes, options, trade-offs, risks, costs and dependencies.
• Contribute to architecture maturity through reusable patterns, standards, templates, governance and ways of working.