Principal Solutions Architect

Company Description

Third Bridge is a market-leading investment research firm. We provide integrated solutions for the world’s top investors and business leaders to help them make smarter and faster decisions. No other company in the world provides the same holistic investment offering: our superpower is the combination of human insights and unique investor-led content with a global expert network. We serve over 1,000 investment firms, offering clients 24/7 coverage through our team of 1500 employees located across twelve offices.

Product and Technology Overview

The Technology function is led by our Chief Information Officer (CIO), and our Product function is led by our Chief Product Officer (CPO) and founder. We are investing heavily in product, data and technology capabilities, enabling us to deliver innovative products and solutions, and deep insight market intelligence to our clients.

The P&T group is a talented team of product managers, designers, engineers, technologists, business analysts, and change specialists with entrepreneurial and innovative mindsets.

We hire curious, creative and diverse people from different industries to challenge our thinking, with many people outside the financial sector.

P&T is a growing team of people who are on a mission to provide industry-leading products and services to our clients in a highly competitive and hyper-growth market and to give the entire business the right solutions for the business to operate smoothly and from anywhere.

If you want to be at the forefront of delivering the best products and technology services in the investor research market, working in a fast-paced environment, with freedom and empowerment to learn and grow, with great perks and flexible working, then Third Bridge could be a fulfilling career for you!

Job Description

What will you do?

Principal Solution Architects are senior members of the Technology team, and are critical to the successful delivery of technology solutions to support the various Third Bridge customer-facing business units. They will work collaboratively with product owners, business analysts, engineers and other team members and will be ultimately accountable for defining and designing high-quality technology solutions - built and bought - to support the commercial objectives of those businesses. 

Working directly to the Chief Architect, they are jointly responsible for the definition and evolution of the Third Bridge End State Architecture and, On a day to day basis and in conjunction with other technical stakeholders they will make decisions on solution architecture and technology approach at platform, system and component level, ensuring that the delivery teams they work with take into account the full lifecycle from selection to support, and work within the framework of the End State Architecture. As seasoned experts in system design and delivery, they have deep experience in successfully designing and delivering systems in complex business domains and are by nature problem solvers and think deeply about getting things done in the right way. 

They will provide day to day mentoring and support to the more junior solution architects that they work with, challenging and guiding their work as necessary, and will likewise provide feedback and support to other team members such as engineers and product owners as necessary. They should act as a role model for other architects and engineers that aspire to the Solution Architect role, both in terms of knowledge and behaviours.

They are pragmatic, understand risk and are able to make balanced choices grounded in an understanding of the Third Bridge business. They communicate effectively, can build relationships well, and are able to deliver difficult messages sensitively when necessary.

Your responsibilities will include but not be limited to:

• Working with the Chief Architect, product owners, business analysts and others to ensure that the Third Bridge Solution Architecture is continually developed and refined to the level necessary to provide a pragmatic framework to support the design and delivery of technology solutions to support Third Bridge

• Working with stakeholders such as Product Owners, Business Analysts and Technical Product Managers to understand business requirements

• Transforming those requirements into technical solutions, working within the frameworks of the Third Bridge End State Architecture and architecture principles and guidelines

• Documenting and communicating these solutions to stakeholders both verbally and in written form as necessary to obtain buy-in

• Supporting the selection and implementation of third-party packages or components as part of the solutions that you have designed

• Working with the engineering team to deliver the solutions as defined

• Investigating new technologies, tools and processes that might bring advantages to Third Bridge, leading proof of concept exercises where necessary

• Providing mentoring to team members as requested and required, advising on best practices, application of standards, appropriate architecture choices, communications and approach/style questions

• Working with peer Principal Solution Architects and the Chief Architect in order to coordinate cross-team dependencies and ensure the appropriate re-use of solutions across Third Bridge

Qualifications

What will you bring?

• Demonstrate familiarity with developing, rolling out, enhancing and communicating solution architectures, and then leading by example to design and implement components and systems necessary to bring those architectures into practical reality

• Proven experience of requirements analysis and solution design in complex environments

• Demonstrate experience in technical architecture and solution delivery leadership, ideally across several business sectors and in organisations of comparable size and complexity to Third Bridge

• Demonstrable ability to write documentation and other artefacts necessary to deliver solutions to time, quality and budget constraints

• Provide evidence of ability to understand complex business environments and processes and to work effectively with business stakeholders to design technical architectures and solutions to deliver appropriate outcomes

• Demonstrable ability to manage, mentor, build and get the best from small and varying teams of individuals with diverse backgrounds, skills and levels of experience

• Demonstrable ability to build trust and relationships at all levels within and outside an organisation like Third Bridge, providing evidence of ability to manage conflict and achieve positive outcomes - e.g. team or client/supplier conflict as necessary, including experience of resolving technical conflicts within and between teams

• Proven experience of working in a transformational, rapidly changing setting

• Experience in a mixed language, AWS-based environment

• Proven experience of data strategy and architecture

• Demonstrate evidence of ability to manage a team and multiple workloads, working calmly under pressure

• Very good written and verbal communication skills in English

Additional Information

How will you be rewarded? 

We truly care about our people so in return for your work, you’ll get:

• Vacation: 25 days (which increases to 28 days after 2 years of service) plus UK Bank Holidays
• Learning: personal development allowance of £750 per year
• Health and wellbeing: private medical insurance and healthcare cash plan, a variety of health and wellbeing events to focus on mental health, Ride to Work scheme (savings on bikes and accessories)
• Future and family: pension contributions of 4% (increases with tenure) and life insurance of 4x of your base salary
• Flexibility: work from anywhere for one month per year, 2 annual volunteer days, 2 personal days when life throws you a curveball and 'Summer Fridays'
• Rewards: get points through our colleague-to-colleague recognition programme to spend on hotels, gift cards, donations to charity and more
• Social: optional social gatherings, daily breakfast and snacks, social events
• ESG: CSR, Environment and Diversity & Inclusion (including Women at Third Bridge, Pride and Blkbridge)
• Frontline Innovation: your chance to share your ideas for improvement through Hackathons and other events

The successful candidate must, by the start of the employment, have permission to work in the country they are applying. 

We know that to be truly innovative, we need to have a diverse team around us. That is why Third Bridge is committed to creating an inclusive environment and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. If you are not 100% sure if you are right for the role, please apply anyway and we will be happy to consider your application.