Solution Architect

Osborne Clarke are seeking an experienced Solution Architect to join our growing IT department in either our Bristol or London office.

This newly created position will play a crucial role in establishing and building out our architecture capability across the firm, ensuring alignment with business initiatives and contributing to the transformation of our target operating model.

This is a permanent position offering hybrid working.

The role

The Solution Architect will be a key member of the IT Strategy & Architecture team, promoting collaboration, team working, and innovation. This role will involve mapping logical, physical, and component architecture for specific projects, and working closely with Security, Data, and Application Architects to ensure that contextual and conceptual architectures are realised.

Other key responsibilities include:

Architecture Design: Mapping current and target state architectures within LAN/WAN, data centre, and cloud environments. Contributing towards enterprise-class principles, policies, standards, and reference architectures.

Business Alignment: Acting as a trusted advisor on related activities, policies, standards, baselines, guidelines, and procedures. Ensuring that IT Strategy & Architecture is recognised as a valuable asset to OC.

Innovation and Emerging Technologies: Staying abreast of developments in appropriate technologies/services and participating in the investigation/assessment of their suitability to OC's environment and business needs.

IT Governance: Ensuring that agreed standards and working practices are followed. Highlighting any non-conformance with agreed standards and working practices with the Head of IT Strategy & Architecture.

Vendor Management: Acting as a relationship manager between agreed technology partners and OC, and as a point of escalation between ITS and the technology partner.

Team Leadership: Developing team soft skills, such as communication and leadership, as well as technical skills. Ensuring team members feel valued, confident, and motivated.

Stakeholder Engagement: Engaging with key stakeholders, including senior executives, department heads, and external partners, to understand their requirements, gain buy-in, and ensure effective communication and collaboration.

We are looking for

• Experience in engaging stakeholders and finding alignment/consensus in the design of solutions.
• Excellent interpersonal skills with people at all levels, internally and externally, with proven ability to influence senior leaders' strategic thinking in line with organisation priorities.
• Ability to communicate complex concepts in an engaging manner to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Ability to demonstrate the impact of technologies and return on investment.
• Industry certified to TOGAF level 2 or equivalent.
• Understanding of ISO 27001 and ITIL.
• Professional services experience in a global firm.
• Understanding of EA tools.
• A broad understanding of the latest developments in technologies, industry-specific issues, competitor and vendor activity, and initiatives.
• Identifying risks affecting solutions, including mitigating recommendations and support in managing those risks.
• Acting as the Technical Design Authority within a project
• A good understanding of Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365
• Good understanding of modern Identity and Access Management, ideally Entra ID
• A good understanding of Office 365 client-side requirements and how these interact with Back End M365 services.
• Experience with integrating AI technologies into existing systems in a workplace setting
• Experience in developing cloud security and governance frameworks.

Salary and benefits

We offer competitive salaries and generous benefits. We value the health and wellbeing of our people and our wide range of initiatives and benefits support this.

Our recruitment process

We welcome direct applications for our opportunities - if you would like any further information about this role or the firm, we would be delighted to hear from you. Please contact, in complete confidence, Dan Jones (Recruitment Manager) on 0117 917 4097 or email dan.jones@osborneclarke.com.

Please note that although we include closing dates for our roles as a guide, we review and progress applications on a rolling basis. At Osborne Clarke we do not make any recruitment decisions using automated decision-making.

We are committed to providing an environment where you can perform to the best of your abilities at every stage of your recruitment experience and beyond. If you require any adjustments to be made during the application stage, interview process, or when working with us, please let us know in confidence.

About Us

Osborne Clarke is an international legal practice with over 330 Partners and more than 1,260 talented lawyers in 26 locations*. Our sector-based approach enables us to help our clients tackle the issues they are facing today, and prepare for the ones that they will face tomorrow. Advising them both comprehensively and commercially. We love working closely with our clients on new deals, products and solutions which will transform their businesses, markets and even sectors. And our unique approachable culture is not an added extra, it's fundamental to our success.

At Osborne Clarke we value difference and encourage applicants from all backgrounds. We want everyone to feel that OC is a place where you can be yourself and belong, and our range of interest groups and diversity networks - not to mention our great teams - are a part of making that a reality.

*Services in India are provided by a relationship firm]]>