Director - Solution Architect

GSK remains committed to achieving bold commercial ambitions for the future. By 2031, we aim to deliver £40 billion in annual sales, leveraging our existing strong performance momentum to significantly increase our positive impact on the health of billions of patients globally. Our Ahead Together strategy is centred on early intervention to prevent and alter the course of disease, thereby protecting people and supporting healthcare systems. Our diverse portfolio consists of vaccines, specialty medicines, and general medicines. Through continuous innovation and a dedicated focus on scientific and technical excellence, we strive to develop and launch new, groundbreaking treatments that address critical health challenges. Job Purpose  The Solution Architect provides solution architecture and design assurance for major GSK initiatives, ensuring solutions meet architecture standards, fit the target architecture and deliver the intended business outcomes. The role produces solution designs, builds reliability, resilience and observability in from the start, designs AI-enabled solutions where they accelerate delivery or operations, and works across domains so that end-to-end solutions are coherent rather than locally optimal. Platform-level reference architectures and standards sit with the Platform Architects and Platform Architecture Directors in each business domain, engineering delivery sits with the platform engineering teams, and enterprise architecture strategy and the architecture team sit with the Head of Solution Architecture and the Enterprise Architects. Where a design touches platforms, the business-facing domain architect leads and this role assures. Key Responsibilities • Produce solution designs for major DPTF and broader Digital &Tech initiatives, aligned to reference architectures, enterprise standards and strategy. • Build reliability, resilience and observability into designs from the outset, aware of the SLOs the consuming services commit to. • Design AI-enabled solutions where AI genuinely accelerates delivery or operations and state the case rather than including it by default. • Provide design assurance and architecture review for initiatives led by others, declining designs that do not meet the standard and saying what would. • Balance business outcome, cost, risk and technical fit in every design • Work across platform domains so that end-to-end solutions are coherent, surfacing conflicts between domain architectures early. • Assure the architecture of supplier and managed-service solutions to the same standard as internal designs. • Uphold architecture standards and governance, routing genuine exceptions through Enterprise Architecture rather than allowing local workarounds. • Ensure designs meet security and compliance requirements, including GxP where the initiative supports regulated activity. • Reduce rework by engaging early in initiative shaping rather than reviewing completed designs and evidence the reduction. • Advise on architectural risk and the consequence of the technical debt they are accepting. • Hold the boundaries with the Platform Architects on platform-level reference architecture, the Enterprise Architects on enterprise strategy and standards, and the engineering teams on build. Education & Professional Qualifications • Degree in a technology or engineering discipline, or equivalent practical experience (e.g., Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems). • Architecture certifications desirable (recognised cloud, network or workplace architecture certification). Job Experience: • 18+ years in technology architecture or senior engineering, including at least three years producing solution designs for major initiatives. • Breadth across more than one techno