Solutions Architect (Network)

Solutions Architect (Network experience) Contract - Initial 6-months Rate Outside IR35 Edinburgh   

Storm ID is an award-winning Edinburgh-based digital transformation consultancy that helps organisations accelerate their use of digital, data and AI. We believe in tailored solutions, assembling expert teams to address each client's unique needs. Our services span strategy, design, technology and data & AI, ensuring seamless end-to-end delivery of platforms, products and services with real-world impact.

 

Role overview We’re looking for an experienced Solutions Architect to join our team working on a large-scale public sector digital transformation programme. This is a significant initiative focused on replacing legacy, paper-based processes with a modern digital service, offering a genuine opportunity to contribute to work that has real-world impact at national scale.

The platform is a headless, API-first solution built in .NET on AWS as a set of event-driven services, integrating with third-party clinical and management systems.

Working alongside another Solutions Architect as an embedded member of a multidisciplinary team, you will act as a senior architecture voice on the programme, shaping service design, supporting delivery and representing architecture decisions to stakeholders. You will also bring specialist AWS network architecture expertise, leading on how internet-facing cloud services connect securely with systems on the Scottish Wide Area Network (SWAN).

 

Key responsibilities Network and connectivity architecture

• Define the end-to-end network architecture across the national platform, SWAN-based systems and supplier endpoints.
• Identify and appraise connectivity patterns for internet-facing and SWAN-facing integrations, assessing security, complexity, supportability, scalability, supplier impact and delivery risk.
• Assess endpoint connectivity, including mutual TLS (mTLS), certificate lifecycle management, encryption, endpoint exposure and operational ownership.
• Recommend a preferred approach, setting out assumptions, dependencies, risks and decisions required.
• Work with platform, SWAN, security and delivery teams, and contribute to any wider working group developing reusable national connectivity patterns.

Solution architecture and design

• Challenge and refine service decomposition and boundaries.
• Shape how consistency, state and coordination are handled across service boundaries, so services stay independently deployable and owned.
• Review messaging and integration design, including reliability, ordering and failure handling.
• Uphold data ownership boundaries, with sharing limited to what is genuinely immutable.
• Maintain architecture decision records and keep design documentation current.

Delivery support

• Support requirements analysis, technical task breakdown and estimation, and attend backlog refinement.
• Help developers assess the complexity, security and performance implications of user stories.
• Contribute to the automated testing strategy, particularly integration and contract testing.
• Review penetration and vulnerability testing outputs and help direct remediation.
• Identify technical debt and feed it into continuous improvement work.

Stakeholder engagement

• Represent architecture decisions to technical and non-technical stakeholders, including customer sponsors, clinical safety colleagues and external suppliers.
• Translate constraints and trade-offs into clear recommendations for product owners, programme leadership and governance boards.

 

Essential skills and experience

• AWS network architecture for secure, internet-facing services at national or enterprise scale.
• Hybrid connectivity patterns across public cloud, private networks, VPNs, dedicated connectivity, firewalls, routing, segmentation and secure service exposure.
• Working knowledge of distributed and event-driven systems, enough to hold a credible design conversation with senior .NET engineers.
• Service decomposition and bounded context design on systems of comparable complexity.
• Producing design documentation and decision records that satisfy formal security assurance processes.
• Explaining technical trade-offs clearly to programme and governance audiences.
• Working as an embedded member of a multidisciplinary team rather than as a detached reviewer.

 

Desirable skills and experience

• Health, public sector or similarly regulated delivery, ideally involving identifiable patient data.
• Experience of SWAN or comparable public sector networks.
• Familiarity with .NET, messaging frameworks such as Wolverine or MassTransit, and AWS managed services.
• PKI, digital signing and non-repudiation requirements.
• Prior experience as a solution or enterprise architect, not only as a specialist.