Solutions Architect - Azure / Snowflake - Contract

Location: Fully Remote (occasional travel to Central London desirable, not essential)

Duration: 6 Months (strong likelihood of extension)

IR35: Inside IR35

Day Rate: DOE

Start Date: ASAP

The Opportunity

We are working with a financial trading business seeking experienced, hands-on Solutions Architects to support a busy portfolio of infrastructure, cloud and data platform projects.

We are looking for candidates with expertise in either one of two specialisms:

• Azure / Kubernetes Solutions Architect: Strong architectural design experience across Microsoft Azure infrastructure and Kubernetes environments.

• Snowflake Solutions Architect: Strong architectural design experience across the Snowflake data platform, including platform engineering, security and optimisation.

Candidates only need expertise in ONE of these areas, not both.

The ideal candidate will be a technically strong architect who designs practical solutions based on business objectives and real-world constraints, rather than simply following standard architectural patterns.

This is an opportunity for someone who enjoys taking ownership of technical designs, collaborating with engineering teams and remaining actively involved throughout delivery.

Key Responsibilities

• Translate business and programme objectives into detailed, practical technical architectures that engineering teams can implement.

• Design scalable, secure and resilient solutions based on business requirements, technical constraints and established architectural principles.

• Own architectural decisions, clearly explaining design choices, technical trade-offs and associated risks.

• Apply Infrastructure as Code and DevOps principles, particularly Terraform, GitHub and CI/CD automation.

• Take a security-first, zero-trust approach across infrastructure, platforms, identity and access management.

• Work closely with principal engineers, security teams and enterprise architects throughout technical design and review processes.

• Challenge assumptions constructively, resolve architectural concerns and balance security, performance, scalability and delivery requirements.

• Remain involved throughout implementation, supporting technical sequencing, engineering delivery and operational handover.

• Produce clear architectural documentation, design specifications and technical guidance.

• Mentor engineers, encourage knowledge sharing and build internal technical capability.

Specialism 1 - Azure & Kubernetes Solutions Architect

For candidates specialising in Azure, we are looking for strong architectural design experience across cloud infrastructure and Kubernetes environments.

Key areas include:

• Designing enterprise-scale Microsoft Azure infrastructure and cloud-native solutions.

• Strong experience architecting Kubernetes environments, ideally Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).

• Designing cloud networking, identity, security, connectivity and access controls.

• Infrastructure provisioning and automation using Terraform and GitHub-based CI/CD workflows.

• Designing highly available, scalable and resilient cloud platforms.

• Understanding containerisation, orchestration, platform monitoring and operational reliability.

• Applying zero-trust security principles across cloud infrastructure and workloads.

• Producing detailed technical designs and supporting engineering teams through implementation.

Specialism 2 - Snowflake Solutions Architect

For candidates specialising in Snowflake, we are looking for strong architectural design experience across enterprise data platforms and cloud-based data solutions.

Key areas include:

• Designing scalable, secure and high-performance Snowflake data platform architectures.

• Strong understanding of Snowflake architecture, virtual warehouses, data storage and workload management.

• Designing data integration, ingestion and transformation architectures.

• Infrastructure as Code and platform automation using Terraform and GitHub-based CI/CD workflows.

• Designing data security, governance, RBAC, access controls and zero-trust principles.

• Optimising platform performance, scalability, resource utilisation and cost efficiency.

• Understanding high availability, disaster recovery and the operational requirements of enterprise data platforms.

• Producing detailed technical designs and supporting engineering teams through implementation.

Essential Skills & Experience

• Proven commercial experience as a Solutions Architect, Technical Architect or hands-on Platform Architect.

• Strong architectural expertise in either Azure/Kubernetes or Snowflake.

• Excellent understanding of Infrastructure as Code, particularly Terraform.

• Experience with GitHub, CI/CD pipelines and modern DevOps practices.

• Strong knowledge of security-first architecture and zero-trust design principles.

• Ability to translate complex business requirements into practical, buildable technical solutions.

• Experience working with engineering teams throughout implementation rather than solely producing high-level designs.

• Excellent communication skills, including the ability to explain and defend architectural decisions to technical stakeholders.

• Strong documentation skills and experience navigating enterprise architecture and security review processes.

• Comfortable working independently across multiple concurrent projects.

Desirable Experience

• Previous experience within financial trading, investment banking, fintech or financial services.

• Experience working in highly regulated, security-conscious environments.

• Exposure to large-scale transformation or platform modernisation programmes.

• Experience mentoring engineers and improving engineering standards and delivery processes.