Principal Architect

Overview

The opportunity: We are looking for a T-Shaped Solution Architect who combines broad, hands-on technology experience with deep expertise in modern Microsoft engineering patterns. In this role, you will take ownership of end-to-end solution architecture – translating business outcomes into robust technical delivery. You will shape and guide the design of secure, scalable, and supportable technology solutions, working closely with delivery teams to ensure successful implementation. You will partner with stakeholders across the organisation to ensure solutions meet business needs, align with governance and architectural standards, and contribute to the responsible evolution of our technology landscape. This is an opportunity to influence strategy, drive architectural excellence, and shape the future of our technology estate while working collaboratively across teams and business units. This is a hybrid role, 3 days a week from our Leeds office.

Benefits

• Salary - up to £85,000
• Bonus scheme - on target bonus - 15%
• Pension scheme - contribute up to 5% of your salary and Openwork will match you and put in an extra 5%
• Critical illness cover
• Income protection - 1x salary
• Death in service - 4x salary
• 27 days holiday + bank holidays, with the opportunity to buy up to an additional 10 days
• A range of other flexible benefits to include private medical insurance, dental insurance and much more.

Key Accountabilities

1. Translate business strategy into solutions architecture: Understand business drivers, outcomes, capabilities and value-streams (current and future state) and determine corresponding solution designs and change requirements.
2. Translate business and technical requirements into an architectural blueprint to achieve business objectives; document assumptions, constraints, risks and dependencies.
3. Identify organisational and financial impacts (skills, processes, structure, cost) and recommend pragmatic options and trade-offs.

Lead solutions design and analysis

1. Lead evaluation, design and analysis across products, projects and services, covering applications, integrations, data flows and operational processes.
2. Create reference architectures and solution patterns (identity, integration, real-time, data, platform) to enable consistent delivery and reuse.
3. Analyse the business/IT environment to detect critical deficiencies and technical debt; recommend solutions for improvement and prioritise remediation.

Own technical architecture for the 2plan stack

1. Ensure application stack has maintainable component design, performance and a coherent user experience.
2. Define authentication and authorisation patterns across our services.
3. Lead real-time interaction patterns, including scaling, reliability and observability considerations.
4. Shape SQL data architecture and access patterns, including performance, integrity, and lifecycle/retention considerations. Work with Openwork on potential adoption of our Strategic data solutions
5. Design and evolve our Azure infrastructure and platform services to be secure-by-design and fit for reliable operations.

Orchestrate delivery and governance

1. Play a pivotal role in design authority: shape standards, guide major technology decisions, and ensure architecture assurance and compliance.
2. Define principles, guidelines and guardrails to ensure solution decisions align to the target-state architecture vision.
3. Work with project managers (in the future product owners) and delivery leads to maintain an architectural runway that supports future requirements and reduces rework.
4. Support agile teams with advice on opportunities, impacts and risks, taking account of technical and architectural debt.

Technology leadership, vendors and continuous improvement

1. Mentor and inspire engineering teams, fostering technical excellence and continuous improvement (documentation, patterns, testing, observability).
2. Evaluate new technologies, tools and frameworks; contribute to RFI/RFPs and make recommendations on adoption.
3. Engage third parties/vendors to ensure solutions integrate effectively, meet security and operational requirements, and support 2plan goals.
4. Desirable: leverage Microsoft Power Platform (Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI) for pragmatic automation and reporting where it complements the engineering stack.

What you will need to succeed

• Proven experience as a technical, solution or application architect delivering modern systems in Microsoft/.NET environments.
• Strong Microsoft expertise: Azure, .NET, identity concepts (IdentityServer/Entra), integration patterns and API management.
• Experience with modern web architectures; Blazor WebAssembly experience strongly preferred.
• Experience designing authentication/authorisation flows (OAuth/OIDC, tokens, claims) and applying secure-by-design practices.
• Experience with real-time architectures (SignalR or equivalent) including scaling and resilience.
• Strong SQL and relational data architecture experience (modelling, performance, integrity, lifecycle).
• Experience integrating third-party systems and evaluating vendor solutions (RFI/RFP, due diligence, recommendations).
• Experience in a regulated environment (financial services wealth management desirable) with audit-minded delivery and compliance awareness.
• Desirable: Power Platform experience (Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI) with governance and guardrails.
• Desirable: Azure architecture certifications; TOGAF welcome but practical delivery experience is more important.

Knowledge

• Architecture best practices and tooling; ability to produce clear diagrams, models, strategies and roadmaps.
• Non-functional design: security, performance, availability, resilience/DR, observability and supportability.
• System development life cycle methodologies (agile/DevOps) and how to support teams with an architectural runway.
• Compatibility and integration of products/services across interdependent technologies and services.
• Regulatory and compliance considerations relevant to technology delivery (data protection, security, auditability).

Skills and Competencies

• Strong leadership and stakeholder management; able to translate complex technical and security concepts into business language.
• Skilled at influencing, guiding and facilitating stakeholders and peers with decision making.
• Able to work creatively and analytically to solve business problems and propose solution options with clear trade-offs.
• Hands-on technical credibility with engineers; able to mentor and uplift engineering practice and documentation discipline.
• Comfortable working across applications, data, cloud and security and collaborating with diverse teams and partners.

Why us?

2Plan Wealth Management was launched in July 2007 and we have continuously built on our strengths to become one of the leading wealth management firms in the UK. Our head office administration, technology and regulatory teams provide exceptional support to all our financial advisers around the country, enabling them to deliver the best possible service to clients. The client experience is paramount and all our advisers pride themselves on providing up-to-date advice and building long lasting, professional client relationships. We want all our clients to view 2plan wealth management as their trusted go-to adviser for their financial matters.

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