Principal Software Solutions Architect

About the role

[Employer hidden] is transforming. We are a trusted leader in UK Payroll and HR solutions, but we aren't resting on our history. We are embarking on a major digital transformation to redefine how businesses manage their most important asset: their people.

As the Principal Software Solutions Architect, you’ll be the technical authority responsible for defining, governing, and evolving the end-to-end architecture of our “AI First” platform, ensuring architectural consistency, secure-by-design principles, and long-term scalability across all engineering squads. Working closely with the Engineering Manager, Cloud & Platform Engineering Lead, and Product leadership, this role shapes our architectural strategy, drives technical excellence, and provides deep guidance to multiple autonomous squads as we scale towards high-performing, cloud-native teams. The Architect balances hands-on solution design, strategic planning, technical oversight, and stakeholder collaboration to keep the platform robust, secure, and ready for future growth.

Why this role matters: This role defines the architectural backbone that enables the entire engineering organisation to scale effectively. As we transition to multiple autonomous squads, you will ensure our systems remain leading edge, secure, resilient, and consistent enabling rapid product delivery while maintaining high standards of engineering excellence.

Key Responsibilities

• Team Leadership & Scaling: Define and maintain the technical architecture vision and roadmap across all squads; ensure alignment of architecture with business goals; evaluate emerging technologies; mentor senior engineers.
• Secure-by-Design & Compliance: Embed secure-by-design principles into architectural decisions; ensure threat modelling; champion secure coding standards; collaborate with security stakeholders.
• Solution Design & Governance: Own end-to-end architectural design for major platform components; lead architecture reviews; produce solution blueprints and technical documentation.
• Cloud, Infrastructure, and Platform Architecture: Define scalable service-based architectures using cloud-native patterns; work with Lead SRE for observability, reliability, CI/CD, and infrastructure as code.
• Engineering Collaboration & Technical Enablement: Partner with Engineering Manager; support teams in breaking down complex problems; facilitate cross-team architectural decision-making.
• Continuous Improvement & Technology Standards: Define and maintain engineering standards; champion continuous improvement across code quality, security, performance.

Skills & Experience

Essential:

• Proven experience as a Principal Architect, Solutions Architect, or Senior Engineer leading architectural decisions in complex systems.
• Strong understanding of AI technologies such as agents and models.
• Strong background in cloud-native architectures (microservices, event-driven, distributed systems).
• Deep understanding of secure-by-design principles, threat modelling, cryptography basics, and modern security practices.
• Experience with API design, integration patterns, and domain-driven design (DDD) and Event Driven Design.
• Ability to influence without authority and collaborate effectively across teams.
• Exceptional communication skills.
• Extensive experience with modern programming platforms and frameworks (e.g., Node.js, C# .NET, React).
• Strong grounding in cloud platforms (AWS/Azure), including networking, identity, observability, and cost optimisation.

Desirable:

• Experience designing solutions in regulated or compliance-driven industries.
• Background in DevOps, platform engineering, or SRE practices.
• Experience scaling architectures to support high-growth environments.
• Certification in cloud or architecture frameworks (AWS SA Pro, Azure Architect Expert, TOGAF, etc.).

Benefits & Culture

Part of the Zellis Group, [Employer hidden] is a team of over 500 friendly professionals across four offices in Swinton (Manchester), Sheffield, Birmingham and Kochi (India). We’re passionate about making [Employer hidden] a fantastic place to work for every single one of our colleagues. The average length of service at [Employer hidden] is 12 years, which speaks for itself!

To help make [Employer hidden] such a great place to work, we focus on three things in our company culture: mental health support, maintaining a healthy work/life balance, and equal opportunities and inclusion for all.

• A career packed with opportunity, in a stable and growing company.
• A comprehensive programme of learning and development.
• Competitive base salary and annual bonus.
• 25 days annual leave, with the opportunity to buy more. You’ll even get your birthday off as well!
• Private medical insurance.
• Life assurance 4x salary.
• Enhanced pension with up to 8.5% employer contributions.
• A huge range of additional flexible benefits across financial & personal wellbeing, lifestyle & leisure.