Principal Solutions Architect - Finance, Data and Platform

The Role We’re looking for a seasoned Principal Solutions Architect to provide architectural leadership across a major finance platform modernisation programme. This role sits at the core of transforming our finance technology landscape, covering domains such as core financials, billing, payments, revenue management, and financial data services. In this role, you will guide the end‑to‑end architecture of a cloud‑native, AWS‑hosted finance ecosystem, ensuring strong alignment to financial processes, regulatory requirements, and enterprise technology standards. You will establish clear technical governance and drive a coherent target state across multiple autonomous teams delivering finance capabilities. You’ll combine enterprise‑level architectural leadership with hands‑on support, helping teams navigate complex financial workflows, data integrity challenges, and integration patterns across finance systems. A key focus will be enabling the transition from legacy finance platforms to a modern, scalable, and auditable architecture, while supporting ongoing financial operations and reporting needs. The role requires both breadth and depth across application, data, integration, security and cloud architecture, alongside a strong understanding of finance platforms, controls, and compliance considerations. You’ll also bring strong stakeholder management skills, working closely with finance, technology, and product leaders to shape and deliver a robust financial systems architecture. Please be advised that this role will require regular travel into London Knowledge Skills & Abilities What you'll do Lead architecture across all domains — application, integration, data, cloud and security Define and evolve the target-state architecture for a modernised holiday-packaging platform Govern solution decisions and run architecture decision review forums Establish architectural standards, patterns, guardrails and governance models Translate business capabilities, value streams and operational processes into technical architectures Review high‑level and low‑level design artefacts for alignment and quality Oversee API strategy, integration patterns, and AI-readiness Shape contact-centre architecture and integrations using Amazon Connect Enable teams to deliver safe value with your expertise in information security and data privacy Map and manage cross‑programme dependencies and multi‑company integration challenges Support teams with technical spikes, PoCs, and de‑risking complex design areas Influence senior stakeholders and navigate organisational politics across group-level entities Support executive decision-making through technical appraisal Align architectural decisions with technical strategy, commercial targets, risk constraints and delivery timelines Set and guide operating models for the transition to BAU and day 2 operations What you'll bring Deep experience spanning application, data, integration, security and cloud architecture Proven track record designing and governing public cloud‑based platforms (AWS preferred) Strong working knowledge of modern event-driven/API/microservice patterns Familiarity with customer support and finance journeys Experience with governance in large delivery programmes Ability to influence, review and guide architecture across distributed, autonomous product teams Good grasp of enterprise capability modelling, value streams, and end‑to‑end business flows Experience integrating numerous third‑party vendors and systems Skilled at managing architectural risk, decision trade‑offs, and long-term maintainability Exceptional stakeholder engagement and communication skills A team enablement and host-leadership mindset, promoting best practices and engineering culture Comfort balancing strategic leadership with hands-on architectural contribution Great to have Travel or retail industry experience is desirable, but strong experience in any large-scale consumer or regulated digital platform is equally relevant Experience designing multi-tenant, internationalised systems Knowledge or experience of architecting for compliance with ISO 27001, SOC 2, and PCI-DSS frameworks Practical experience of applying Team Topologies and Conway's Law as part of architecture practice Background in modernising large monolithic platforms under commercial constraints Knowledge of fraud‑management, revenue‑management, and financial architecture domains Familiarity with secure‑by‑design frameworks and regulated-cloud standards Experience contributing to or establishing enterprise architecture functions Exposure to multi-cloud or hybrid integration environments Experience with modern data product architectures, data meshes, and reverse ETL Prior consulting experience delivering complex transformation programmes Behaviours An open and genuine communicator Able to take responsibility for your actions Always learning and wanting to improve Takes responsibility for own development Love what you do Value and support your team Embrace who you are Open minded and willing to explore new ideas What We Offer We value our team and to attract exceptional people, we offer an excellent package! In 2023, 2024 and 2025 we were recognised as one of the Best Workplaces in Tech by Great Place To Work UK, the global authority on workplace culture. As a Leighton employee you can look forward to: A competitive salary this will be dependent on experience. A contributory pension scheme Private healthcare 25 days annual leave, plus bank holidays and the opportunity to buy or sell holiday A flexible approach to working hours Continuous personal development, career path and training And more....