Enterprise Solutions Architect

Responsibilities:

• Architecture Leadership & Governance
• Provide technical authority and architecture governance across all programme workstreams, ensuring consistency, scalability, and resilience of the overall solution
• Define and maintain solution architecture patterns, design standards, and best practices for Oracle, Azure IaaS, and hybrid environments
• Own the technical design documentation and architecture decision records (ADRs), keeping them current as the solution evolves
• Continuously refine the architecture as new issues, dependencies, and risks are identified across the programme lifecycle
• Ensure all solution designs meet security standards, compliance requirements, and risk mitigation frameworks
• Facilitation of workshops and requirements discovery bringing teams together to align on value driven business outcomes
• Oracle Upgrade Strategy & Execution
• Lead the definition and execution planning for the Oracle database upgrade strategy, including version assessment, upgrade path selection, and go/no-go criteria
• Perform in-depth analysis of the Oracle database estate alongside Oracle SMEs, identifying performance issues, risks, inefficiencies, and version-specific constraints
• Develop technical recommendations and mitigation strategies for issues uncovered during analysis, including schema changes, deprecated feature remediation, and compatibility fixes
• Design workarounds and optimisation approaches for complex Oracle challenges, adapting the solution iteratively as new problems emerge during execution
• Validate Oracle upgrade outcomes through structured performance benchmarking, regression testing governance, and post-upgrade health checks
• VMware Removal & Workload Re-platforming
• Lead the technical strategy for VMware decommissioning, covering workload inventory, dependency mapping, and VM re-platforming prioritisation
• Assess each workload s characteristics (performance, latency, licensing, OS, connectivity) to determine optimal re-platforming approach: lift-and-shift, re-platform, or re-architect
• Define and govern the migration sequencing plan, managing technical interdependencies and minimising service disruption during the removal of the VMware layer
• Identify and resolve technical blockers arising from VMware-specific configurations, custom networking, and storage dependencies
• AVS to Azure IaaS Migration
• Working collaboratively with the Microsoft CAF team you will:
• Architect the migration from Azure VMware Solution (AVS) to native Azure IaaS, leveraging Azure Migrate, ASR, and related tooling
• Redesign workload architectures for Azure-native patterns where appropriate including compute sizing, managed disk selection, virtual networking, and availability zone placement
• Define and enforce networking migration patterns, including VNET design, NSG rulesets, private endpoint configurations, and ExpressRoute / VPN continuity
• Manage Azure landing zone readiness, ensuring governance controls, RBAC, tagging policies, and security baselines are in place before workload migration

Requirements:

• 12 18+ years in solution architecture or technical leadership roles, with a consistent track record of delivery in large-scale enterprise transformation programmes
• Deep, hands-on Oracle expertise: performance tuning, version upgrades (e.g. 11g to 19c), migration planning, schema analysis, and post-upgrade remediation
• Proven Azure cloud architecture experience: IaaS design (VM, storage, networking, identity), Azure Migrate, ASR, landing zones, and hybrid connectivity
• Direct experience delivering VMware workload migrations including AVS, vSphere, and vCenter environments to cloud-native or IaaS targets
• Strong understanding of enterprise security principles: identity & access management, network security, encryption at rest/in transit, and compliance frameworks
• Background in consulting or professional services, with experience producing client-facing architecture artefacts and presenting to senior technical audiences
• Exposure to regulated industries BFSI, Capital Markets, or Enterprise Transformation environments strongly preferred
• Serve as the senior technical point of contact for client architecture and engineering stakeholders, communicating complex decisions with clarity and confidence
• Translate technical findings and recommendations into structured, client-ready artefacts: architecture documents, risk assessments, decision papers, and executive summaries
• Provide technical oversight of third-party vendors and Oracle SMEs, reviewing their recommendations and ensuring alignment with the programme architecture
• Support the Senior Delivery Lead with technical input to programme governance, steering committee updates, and risk escalations
• Contribute to pre-sales and bid activity where required, providing technical solution design, estimating, and architecture narrative for proposals