Solutions Architect
Position Title:
Solution Architect (Hybrid 2 x per week in office)
Division or Group Function:
Global Technology
Reports to:
Head of Academic Product Technology Services
Job Purpose
The Solution Architect is the senior solution architectural lead for the Academic Product Technology domain, responsible for defining, owning, and evolving end-to-end solution architecture across a broad and complex portfolio of customer-facing and internal platforms.
This domain spans Author Services, publishing platforms and websites, Higher Education learning resources and interoperability services, and language data applications, enabling academic publishing products to be created, delivered, operated, and evolved.
The role provides solution leadership across multiple platforms, systems, integration layers, data flows, and delivery teams, ensuring solutions are cohesive, scalable, secure, resilient, and aligned to enterprise architecture strategy and product priorities.
Working across legacy systems, third-party platforms, and modern cloud services, the Solution Architect applies pragmatic judgment to evolve, integrate, rebuild, or design new solutions based on business and technical needs.
The role translates complex requirements into clear architecture approaches, guides delivery from design through implementation, and ensures long-term platform sustainability and operational excellence.
It also acts as a trusted advisor to senior stakeholders, influencing product decisions, prioritisation, and architectural risk management.
Key Accountabilities
- Own end-to-end solution architecture across authoring, publishing, learning, and data platforms, ensuring cohesive design across systems and integrations.
- Provide architectural leadership across legacy and modern systems, balancing evolution, integration, rebuild, and new build decisions.
- Define and maintain architectural direction aligned to enterprise standards and governance frameworks.
- Act as a trusted advisor to senior stakeholders, translating technical complexity into business impact and influencing decisions.
- Collaborate with Application Architects to improve design quality and maintain consistency.
- Partner with Engineering and Delivery teams (internal and third party) to ensure implementation aligns with architecture.
- Operate effectively in ambiguity, making timely, pragmatic architectural decisions under competing priorities.
Attributes / Skills / Experience
Essential Skills
- Strong solution architecture experience across multi-system, distributed environments
- Deep knowledge of non-functional requirements (security, scalability, resilience, performance)
- Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure)
- Integration and data architecture experience
- Ability to communicate architecture decisions to technical and non-technical stakeholders
- Experience working in Agile environments (Scrum, Kanban, SAFe)
- Familiarity with DevOps, CI/CD, and modern engineering practices
Experience
- Prior experience as Solution Architect / Lead Architect in complex enterprise environments
- Designing and evolving multi-platform, multi-integration systems
- Working across legacy and modern architectures
- Providing architectural governance across internal and external delivery teams
- Partnering with senior Product and Technology stakeholders
Education
- Degree in relevant technical discipline or equivalent experience
- Architecture certification or formal training preferred
Key Interfaces
Internal:
- Enterprise / Solution Architects
- Application Architects & Engineering teams
- Security, Data Privacy, Infrastructure teams
- Product and Senior Leadership teams
- QA, UX, DevOps, Vendor Management
External:
- Third-party delivery partners
- External consulting firms
