Senior Solution Architect

Role Purpose

Drive the design and delivery of Commercial Off the Shelf product Solution Architecture that shapes the electricity network of the future, supporting the journey to Net Zero and beyond.

In this role, you will:

Identify and design solutions for Corporate Services' needs.

Champion the execution of the Enterprise Architecture Strategy and Value Stream work within Corporate Services

Ensure compliance with National Grid Standards and Governance

Engage with stakeholders across Corporate Services within National Grid

Collaborate across teams to integrate systems and data, enabling advanced modelling, simulation, correlation and visualization.

Key Responsibilities

Solution Architecture & Design

Develop high-level and detailed solution architectures, including High Availability (HA) and Disaster Recovery (DR) strategies for Commercial Off the Shelf solutions.

Maintain comprehensive architectural documentation and diagrams.

Document key design decisions and present conceptual solutions to stakeholders and governance forums

Communication & Stakeholder Engagement

Explain complex technical concepts in clear, business-friendly language for non-technical stakeholders.

Translate business needs into technical specifications and architectural artifacts (eg, HLD, SoP, test plans).

Evaluation & Governance

Assess and recommend technologies, frameworks, and tools to fit project needs.

Conduct cost-benefit analyses and feasibility studies for SaaS or cloud solutions.

Drive solution governance and uphold architecture standards.

Technical Leadership

Gather, analyse, and validate functional and non-functional requirements (performance, scalability, security).

Identify risks and propose optimized solutions within the configurability of a CoTS product

Cloud & Data Integration

Develop cloud adoption strategies, roadmaps, and design patterns.

Understand and be able to architect integration of Snowflake, Data Fabric, Data Lake, Databricks, and ETL/ELT pipelines.

Ways of Working

Work in Agile/Kanban environments as part of Product methodology

Adopt DevOps, CI/CD, and GitHub workflows where required

Value Streams and Process Driven Architectures

Additional Skills & Experience

An appreciation of back off functionality. Corporate Services is made up of Legal, Risk, Safety, Company Secretariat, stakeholder management, user experience and strategy and regulation business units.

Good understanding of network architectures and components.

Knowledge of data controls and industry benchmarks.