Solution Architect (Contract Role)

Solution Architect - (6 Month contract Role) (Inside IR35, £800 - £950 per day) Willis Re is building its global technology estate from the ground up, unencumbered by legacy and designed around data, analytics and modern cloud platforms. We are looking for a Solution Architect to shape and deliver the solutions that power our reinsurance broking, analytics and client-facing platforms. Working closely with the Head of Architecture & Engineering, business stakeholders and strategic delivery partners, you will own end-to-end solution design across a portfolio of greenfield initiatives. Key Responsibilities • Cloud Architecture: Design secure, scalable, cloud-native solutions on Microsoft Azure, spanning infrastructure, PaaS services, networking, identity, security and observability. • Data Engineering: Design solutions around our data lake platform, architecting performant pipelines, sound data models and strong governance for large volumes of reinsurance placement, exposure, claims and market data. • Hands-on Prototyping: Take a hands-on role in building proofs of concept and prototypes to validate designs and support key technical decisions. • Integration: Define and govern third-party integrations with market platforms, carrier and client systems, and vendor SaaS products, using API-first, event-driven and secure data-exchange patterns, with canonical data models and anti-corruption layers to insulate the core platform. • Security & Compliance: Embed security and compliance into designs from the outset, covering zero-trust principles, authentication and authorisation (Entra ID, OAuth 2.0), data protection, data residency and auditability, working with security and risk teams. • Engineering Leadership: Work closely with in-house and partner engineers, setting the engineering standards for a greenfield estate and guiding them through implementation, acting as lead engineer where needed to ensure solutions are built to the agreed designs. • Governance: Produce high-quality solution designs, integration contracts and architecture artefacts, and play an active role in the Architecture Review Board (ARB), presenting your own designs and vetting solution designs from vendors and delivery partners. • AI Adoption: Promote the adoption of AI-assisted engineering tools and practices across the delivery lifecycle. About You You are a highly technical, hands-on architect who is comfortable operating in a fast-moving, greenfield environment with a lean core team and strategic delivery partners. Ideally you will bring: • Experience: Extensive experience, grounded in hands-on software engineering and progressing into solution architecture over the last 4+ years. You have designed data-intensive systems you also helped build, ideally in insurance, reinsurance or wider financial services. • Technical Stack: Current, practical programming skills, ideally in C#/.NET or Python, with strong SQL, working knowledge of modern UI frameworks such as React or Angular with TypeScript, and hands-on experience with infrastructure-as-code (Terraform) and AzureDevops. You are comfortable writing production-quality code for proofs of concept and pairing with engineers. • Azure Expertise: Deep expertise in Azure infrastructure and platform services, including networking, security, identity, compute and integration services, along with hands-on experience of CI/CD tooling such as Azure DevOps or GitHub Actions. • Architectural Patterns: Depth across architectural patterns such as microservices, event-driven, API-led, lakehouse/medallion and domain-driven design, with good judgement on when to apply each. • Data Platforms: A strong track record architecting data-intensive solutions handling large data volumes, with experience across cloud data platforms, data pipelines and SQL-based technologies. • Integration: Strong integration experience across external systems, including REST APIs, messaging and event-driven architectures, and secure file and data exchange, with experience using canonical data models and anti-corruption layers. • Security: Strong grounding in security architecture, including authentication and authorisation patterns (OAuth 2.0, OIDC, Microsoft Entra ID, RBAC), zero-trust principles, and designing for compliance in regulated financial services (data privacy, cross-border data residency and audit requirements). • AI Foundations: Experience designing agentic or AI-enabled solutions, including patterns such as retrieval-augmented generation, tool and API integration, evaluation and human-in-the-loop design, would be a significant advantage, though it is not essential. Familiarity with AI-assisted engineering tools such as Claude Code or Claude Cowork is a plus. • Communication: Excellent communication skills, with the ability to translate complex business requirements into pragmatic technical designs and to influence stakeholders at all levels. About Willis Re We combine specialist broking with analytics, modeling and research to help insurers optimize risk transfer, strengthen balance sheets and achieve sustainable growth. Our approach is relationship-driven, transparent and outcome-focused. At the heart of Willis Re is a focus on delivering the most cutting-edge analytical solutions to enable more informed, better decision-making for risk selection, portfolio optimization, and capital management. The launch of Willis Re brings a strategic advantage of being unhindered by legacy, an ability to leverage data, statistical models and advanced technologies with the best knowledge and expertise to deliver more efficient and effective reinsurance outcomes. This places Willis Re in a unique position to build a truly analytically driven business, focused on creating solutions for the reinsurance industry that are future led and forward thinking. Willis Re will also leverage recognized technical expertise from WTW’s Insurance Consulting & Technology business including their advanced modeling and analytical capabilities. Alongside this will be WTW’s Research Network, an award-winning business supporting and influencing science to improve the understanding and quantification of risk. Willis Re is committed to embracing a diverse, inclusive, and flexible work environment. We provide equal opportunity to all qualified individuals regardless of race, colour, religion, age, gender, gender expression, national origin, veteran status, disability, orientation, or any other legally protected categories. If you have a need that requires accommodation, please email us at talentacquisition@willisre.com