Senior Solutions Architect

Senior Solution Architect

Location: Canberra

12-month contract- with 2 extensions

NV1 clearance required

The Senior Solution Architect will be responsible for leading solution planning and design activities while working collaboratively with both technical and business stakeholders. The role involves influencing architecture decisions, ensuring solution quality, managing architectural risks, and providing trusted advice to senior stakeholders, delivery teams, and governance forums.

Key Duties and Responsibilities

• Design & Architecture Leadership
• Lead the detailed design and implementation of end-to-end solution architectures for complex programs and projects.
• Analyse business objectives and functional/non-functional requirements, translating them into secure, scalable, and cost-effective solution designs aligned to business outcomes.
• Define and evaluate solution options, architectural trade-offs, and transition states.
• Provide technical leadership for system integration activities, ensuring alignment between technical delivery plans and project schedules.
• Develop architecture roadmaps, implementation strategies, and transition plans.
• Participate in governance and assurance processes to support rigorous review, validation, and traceability of technical solution designs through implementation and testing.
• Collaborate with delivery partners and technical teams to ensure architectural guidance and designs are accurate, complete, and aligned from high-level architecture through to detailed implementation.
• Ensure consistency and integrity across architecture, detailed design, and implementation activities.

Continuous Improvement & Remediation

• Identify the root causes of systemic quality issues using evidence-based analysis and recommend sustainable, effective solutions.

Monitoring & Optimisation

• Monitor and assess the effectiveness of implemented solutions, proactively addressing issues and identifying improvement opportunities.

Collaboration & Communication

• Work closely with engineering teams and technical subject matter experts to support detailed solution design and ensure alignment with agreed enterprise and system architectures.

Key Relationships & Stakeholder Engagement

• Lead, coordinate, and provide guidance to junior architects, reporting on architectural progress, risks, issues, and alignment with enterprise direction.
• Collaborate with enterprise architects, solution architects, project managers, and business leaders to ensure architectural consistency and alignment across programs and projects.
• Work closely with engineering and technical delivery teams to ensure detailed design and implementation activities align with approved architectures.
• Provide architectural oversight across programs, supporting delivery teams throughout design and implementation phases.
• Engage with business stakeholders to understand requirements and ensure solutions align with business objectives and strategic outcomes.
• Support business and delivery teams by providing technical and architectural guidance to ensure solutions are accurate, complete, and well documented.

Additional Responsibilities

• Continuously refine and improve architecture designs by incorporating feedback from systems analysts, technical leads, and other stakeholders.
• Lead prototyping and Proof of Concept (PoC) activities to validate architectural decisions and reduce delivery risks early in the lifecycle.
• Plan and manage dependencies to ensure successful and high-quality system integration.
• Conduct reviews of architecturally significant components to maintain architectural integrity and alignment with standards.
• Ensure testing activities adequately cover critical architectural and integration scenarios.
• Maintain clear and sufficient documentation of design and implementation knowledge for technical and business stakeholders.
• Identify, assess, and communicate architectural and technical risks, while developing contingency plans with business and technical teams to support project stability.
• Identify potential technical debt and collaborate with stakeholders to remediate issues or provide options for ongoing management.
• Clearly communicate architectural decisions, trade-offs, and their implications to stakeholders to support informed decision-making.