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About the Role
This is an excellent opportunity for a Solutions Architects to join our Digital Services team. You will work with the business, analysts, and the technical team to architect solutions that enable our staff to deliver fantastic services to our students, owning the solution architecture from inception through to delivery.
Your design role will be varied, including solutions utilising cloud technologies and integrating them using APIs. You may be overseeing the architecture for brand new products, delivered via Strategic Programmes or architecting changes to existing Open University systems. You will ensure that Architecture is aligned to our strategic direction and adheres to our principles and processes.
As part of the wider architecture community, you will work to shape our architecture, developing patterns and standards, and supporting your colleagues to achieve their goals.
Key Responsibilities
- Defining and documenting IT solutions that:
- Align to the business functional and non-functional requirements.
- Align to the cost and timeframes expected by the business and IT.
- Align to University and IT strategy.
- Align to principles, policies, standards, and patterns, raising design exceptions as required.
- Defining repeatable patterns and standards that aid future projects to be aligned to IT strategy .
- Communicating the defined solution to all stakeholders and obtaining relevant approval.
- Acting as an advisor to technical and business community on architectural issues.
- Ensuring that the solutions delivered align to the documented and approved solution.
- Helping to shape new requests and demand as part of the IT pipeline process.
- The Solution Architect will also be involved with:
- Defining long-term roadmaps
- Investigative work to identify new opportunities
- Providing support during triage of incidents
- Chairing design authorities
- Evangelising architecture principals and approaches in the wider IT and business communities.
About You
Essential:
- A degree level qualification with a significant computing element or relevant industry experience.
- Demonstrable understanding of IT architectural frameworks such as TOGAF.
- Proven ability to design and document solutions based on business requirements.
- Evidence of excellent written and verbal communications with the ability to deliver messages in a language relevant to the audiences.
- Experience of successfully working with agile development teams including both internal staff, external suppliers, and consultancies.
- Excellent skills of negotiation, influencing and conflict resolution.
- An ability to gain influence and trust with business and technical stakeholders, including third-parties at all levels of an organisation.
Desirable:
- Evidence of successfully working in a Solution Architect role.
- Knowledge and experience of designing cloud-based architectures and solutions.
- An ability to work with business users to understand and refine their requirements.
Support with your application
If you have any questions, or need support or adjustments relating to your application, the recruitment process, or the role, please contact us on 01908 541111 or email careers@open.ac.uk quoting the advert reference number.
What's in it for you?
At The Open University, we offer a range of benefits to recognise and reward great work, alongside policies and flexible working that contribute towards a great work life balance. Get all the details of what benefits we offer by visiting our Staff Benefits page (clicking this link will open a new window).
Flexible working
We are open to discussions about flexible working. Whether it’s a job share, part time, compressed hours or another working arrangement. Please reach out to us to discuss what works best for you.
It is anticipated that a hybrid working pattern can be adopted for this role, where the successful candidate can work from home and the office. However, as this role is contractually aligned to our Milton Keynes office it is expected that some attendance in the office will be required when necessary and in response to business needs. We’d expect this to be on average 1-2 times per week.
Next steps in the Recruitment process
Following the initial review of applications submitted for this role, we will be in contact with some candidates to conduct an online screening call. The next stage in the process, should you be shortlisted, will be a face-to-face interview that will take place on-site at our Milton Keynes campus. We anticipate that these interviews will take place during the week commencing 19 January 2026.
Early closing date notification
We may close this job advert earlier than the published closing date where a satisfactory number of applications are received. We would therefore encourage early applications.
How to apply
To apply for this role please submit the following documents:
- CV
- A personal statement of up to 1000 words. You should set out in your statement why you are interested in the role and provide examples of where your skills and experience meet the required competencies for this role as detailed in the essential critera of the job description.
You can view your progress and application communications when you are logged into our recruitment system. Please check your spam/junk folders if you do not receive associated email updates.
