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Job Title: Solution Architect
Job Type: Contract
Job Location: Sheffield
Mandatory Skills: IAM, GCP

Overview
A leading global financial services organisation is undertaking a major multi-year Identity & Access Management (IAM) transformation programme to modernise and enhance identity services across a complex international technology landscape.
The programme will redefine how identities are managed across the enterprise, spanning workforce, privileged, machine, agent, and workload identities. As part of this transformation, a number of next-generation identity capabilities and platforms will be designed and implemented using modern cloud-native technologies and security principles.
We are seeking an experienced Solution Architect / Design Engineer to provide technical leadership across the programme, define target-state architectures, and ensure the successful delivery of secure, scalable, resilient, and supportable identity solutions.
The successful candidate will work closely with architects, engineering teams, security stakeholders, and technology partners to translate business, security, and regulatory requirements into enterprise-grade IAM solutions.

Key Responsibilities

Produce High-Level Designs (HLDs) and Low-Level Designs (LLDs) for identity capabilities.Define end-to-end solution architectures across business, application, data, security, and infrastructure domains.Translate business, security, operational, and regulatory requirements into technical solutions.Develop architecture patterns, standards, and reference designs.Define integration patterns between identity platforms, applications, infrastructure, and cloud services.Design cloud-native identity solutions within containerised and cloud environments.Define authentication, authorisation, federation, and access control architectures.Design and support Human Identity, Agent Identity, and Workload Identity capabilities.Develop Zero Trust security architectures and trust boundary models.Design API security, service-to-service authentication, and workload authentication frameworks.Develop event-driven integration patterns using messaging and asynchronous processing technologies.Design Policy Decision Point (PDP) and Policy Enforcement Point (PEP) architectures using Policy-as-Code principles.Define PKI, certificate lifecycle management, secrets management, and cryptographic integration patterns.Design highly available, resilient, and disaster recovery capable solutions.Ensure solutions meet security, performance, scalability, resilience, and operational requirements.Produce architecture decision records (ADRs) and technical design documentation.Participate in Architecture Reviews, Design Authorities, and governance processes.Conduct technical assurance and solution reviews across internal and third-party deliveries.Identify risks, assumptions, issues, constraints, and dependencies across programme workstreams.Collaborate with Enterprise Architecture teams to ensure alignment to strategic target-state architecture.Support engineering teams throughout implementation, testing, and production readiness activities.Mentor engineers and promote architecture and engineering best practices.Evaluate emerging technologies and identity solutions against programme requirements.Support roadmap planning and future-state architecture development.

Essential Experience & Skills

Identity & Access ManagementEnterprise Identity & Access Management (IAM)Authentication and AuthorisationIdentity FederationIdentity Governance & Administration (IGA)Privileged Access Management (PAM)Non-Human Identity ManagementWorkload and Service IdentityIdentity Standards & ProtocolsOAuth 2.0OpenID Connect (OIDC)SAMLSCIMSecurity ArchitectureZero Trust ArchitectureSecurity Architecture and Security ControlsAPI SecurityService-to-Service AuthenticationSecrets ManagementPKI and Certificate ManagementCloud & Platform TechnologiesGoogle Cloud Platform (GCP)KubernetesCloud-Native ArchitectureMicroservicesContainer PlatformsService Mesh ConceptsModern ArchitectureEvent-Driven ArchitectureMessaging and Asynchronous ProcessingPolicy-as-CodeOPA (Open Policy Agent) and/or CedarPDP / PEP Design PatternsDelivery & GovernanceEnterprise Solution ArchitectureArchitecture GovernanceRisk ManagementTechnical LeadershipStakeholder ManagementArchitecture Review BoardsTechnical Design Assurance

Desirable Experience

Financial Services or other highly regulated environments.Large-scale transformation programmes.Identity modernisation initiatives.Cloud security and platform engineering.DevSecOps and CI/CD practices.Machine Identity and Agent Identity frameworks.Experience working across global, distributed delivery teams.

Candidate Profile

The ideal candidate will be an experienced Solution Architect with strong Identity & Access Management expertise and a proven track record delivering complex security and identity solutions within enterprise-scale environments. They will be comfortable operating across strategy, architecture, governance, and technical delivery while influencing senior stakeholders and driving architectural decisions across multiple workstreams.

GCS is acting as an Employment Business in relation to this vacancy.

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