Senior Solutions Architect

Position title

Reports to

Head of Digital Strategy & Architecture - Michael Hallet

Department

Digital Enablement

Revision date

September 2026

Date

21-Sep-26

The Solution Architect is a critical enabling role within our technology team, responsible for shaping and maintaining the architecture of solutions from discovery through delivery.

Working across business, delivery and technology teams, the role develops pragmatic end-to-end solutions aligned with Tuatahi's architecture direction, principles, standards and approved patterns. The Solution Architect works within established architectural boundaries, drawing on the wider architecture team and specialist functions where appropriate.

The role supports both internally and externally delivered solutions, providing architectural guidance, challenge and assurance and remaining engaged through implementation to maintain architectural intent.

• Provide timely solution architecture and support aligned with business and technology direction.
• Develop pragmatic, robust and supportable end-to-end solutions.
• Provide architectural guidance, challenge and assurance across internally and externally delivered solutions.
• Identify and appropriately govern significant architectural decisions, risks and exceptions.
• Communicate architecture clearly through fit-for-purpose documentation and visualisations.

Solution Design

• Engage during discovery to understand business problems, requirements, outcomes, constraints and dependencies.
• Work with business, Product Owners, Business Analysts, Enterprise Architecture and delivery teams to establish solution direction.
• Architect pragmatic end-to-end solutions across application, integration, data, security, infrastructure and operational considerations.
• Challenge assumptions, evaluate options and make trade-offs, risks and consequences clear.
• Apply reference architectures, principles, standards and approved patterns where appropriate.
• Shape relevant non-functional requirements, including resilience, performance, scalability, recoverability, interoperability, supportability and observability.
• Apply sound integration and data architecture thinking, including APIs, event-driven patterns, data flows, authoritative sources and system boundaries.
• Engage specialist teams where required.
• Solutions demonstrably address agreed business requirements and outcomes and align with approved architecture direction.
• Material gaps, assumptions, dependencies, risks and trade-offs are identified and communicated before progressing into delivery.
• Solution direction is established within agreed delivery timeframes.
• Relevant integration, data, security and non-functional requirements are addressed or referred to the appropriate specialist.

Architecture Governance & Decisions

• Apply architecture governance proportionately to the significance, complexity and risk of the initiative.
• Identify significant architectural decisions, exceptions and cross-domain impacts requiring governance.
• Develop ADRs that clearly set out the decision, options, trade-offs, consequences and recommendation.
• Present significant decisions and exceptions to the Architecture Review Board (ARB) where required.
• Represent the solution architecture through the Technical Design Authority (TDA), ensuring detailed design remains within approved architectural boundaries.
• Draw on the wider architecture practice and specialists where appropriate.
• Architectural decisions are made or escalated through the appropriate authority without avoidable delay.
• Significant decisions and exceptions are recorded and traceable.
• Unnecessary divergence from approved architecture is avoided.
• Architectural risks and exceptions have clear ownership and visibility.
• Governance is proportionate, with routine decisions progressed within established architectural boundaries.

Delivery Architecture & Assurance

• Remain engaged through technical design and implementation to maintain architectural intent.
• Work with Technical Leads and delivery teams while respecting their ownership of detailed design and implementation.
• Provide timely guidance as architectural questions and issues arise.
• Identify material divergence from agreed architecture and resolve or escalate it appropriately.
• Participate in solution reviews, assurance and build validation where appropriate.
• Ensure architecture considers operability, including monitoring, error handling, supportability and transition into BAU.
• Feed relevant delivery lessons back into the architecture practice.
• Solution architecture is sufficiently clear for technical design and delivery to proceed without avoidable architecture-related rework.
• Architecture questions are responded to within timeframes appropriate to delivery needs.
• Material divergence is identified, documented and resolved or escalated appropriately.
• Agreed architecture assurance is completed and material findings followed through to resolution.
• Relevant operational and support considerations are addressed before implementation or handover.

Collaboration & Communication

• Work across enterprise architecture, solution architecture, business and delivery teams to maintain alignment and identify wider impacts and dependencies.
• Review and challenge Solution Architecture produced by Systems Integrators and other partners.
• Understand relevant Statements of Work, architecture deliverables and scope boundaries sufficiently to identify and raise architectural gaps.
• Communicate architecture, options, decisions and trade-offs clearly to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Stay informed of relevant technology developments, including AI, and consider their architectural implications.
• Stakeholders and delivery teams have a shared understanding of solution direction, significant decisions and constraints.
• Architecture activities and decisions support agreed delivery milestones.
• Material issues in externally produced designs are identified, communicated and followed through to resolution.
• Material architectural gaps in supplier deliverables are identified early enough to support resolution.
• Stakeholder and delivery feedback demonstrates that architecture advice is clear, constructive and useful.

Documentation / Visualisations

• Create and maintain fit-for-purpose Solution Designs, ADRs, diagrams and other architecture artefacts.
• Produce documentation when needed and at the level of detail appropriate to its purpose and audience.
• Contribute reusable architecture artefacts and patterns to the wider architecture practice.
• Use and contribute to architecture repositories and tooling as the practice develops.
• Required architecture artefacts are completed and maintained for assigned initiatives.
• Artefacts accurately reflect agreed architecture, significant decisions and rationale.
• Architecture documentation is available when required to support decisions and delivery.
• Artefacts provide sufficient detail without unnecessary documentation.

Your responsibilities under the Health and Safety Act 2015 (as a worker)

• Take reasonable care of your own health and safety.
• Take reasonable care that what you do or do not do does not adversely affect the health and safety of other people.
• Comply with any reasonable instructions given by Tuatahi.
• Co-operate with and implement all reasonable Tuatahi health & safety policies and procedures.
• Be a safety leader.
• Tuatahi's health and safety policies and procedures are always adhered to.

• Relevant tertiary qualification in technology, engineering, computer science or a related discipline, or equivalent professional experience.

• Experience as a Solution Architect or comparable technical architect, designing end-to-end solutions from discovery through delivery.
• Strong practical experience across integration, APIs, event-driven architecture, data architecture and data flows.
• Experience shaping non-functional requirements and evaluating solution options, trade-offs, risks and dependencies.
• Experience working across business and technology stakeholders, including Product Owners, Business Analysts, Technical Leads and delivery teams.
• Ability to communicate architecture effectively through fit-for-purpose documentation and visualisations.

• Relevant architecture, cloud, integration or technology certification.

• Telecommunications, fibre or network industry experience.
• Knowledge of TM Forum ODA and OPSR (Offer, Product, Service, Resource) structures.
• Experience reviewing architecture produced by Systems Integrators, vendors or technology partners.
• Experience with ServiceNow, Dynamics 365, ESRI ArcGIS, 3-GIS and/or AWS or comparable cloud platforms.
• Experience with ADRs and architecture governance.

NB: Telecommunications experience is highly valuable but not crucial. Architectural judgement, curiosity and the ability to learn unfamiliar domains are more important than industry tenure.

• Principled & Accountable: Acts with integrity, takes ownership of decisions and commitments, and knows when to draw on the wider architecture practice.
• Architectural Judgement: Identifies what matters, evaluates options and risks, and knows when sufficient analysis has been done to proceed.
• Curious & Systems-Minded: Learns quickly, challenges assumptions and considers relationships and consequences beyond the immediate solution.
• Pragmatic: Balances architectural quality, business value, delivery constraints and longer-term consequences without unnecessary complexity.
• Constructively Challenging: Confidently challenges assumptions and designs while remaining collaborative and outcome-focused.
• Clear Communicator: Makes complex issues understandable and communicates decisions, trade-offs and recommendations concisely.
• Collaborative: Works effectively across business, architecture, delivery and specialist teams, values their contribution and draws on their expertise.
• Composed & Purposeful: Works effectively through ambiguity and change, responds to delivery needs in a timely way and focuses effort on the decisions and outcomes that matter.

Respect for all

Through our connections we serve and care. We put care into all that we do.

About the image - The heart in hands represents connections, service and care. The outstretched hands symbolise generosity and giving. The heart represents caring and aroha.

Stronger together

Through our differences, we are stronger together. We empower diverse connections to shape the way we create experiences.

About the image - The leaves of the Nikau palm symbolise the connection of many. A native tree in our network area and across New Zealand, you can find Nikau in groups, standing proud. The Nikau was used in early weaving and thatching by both Māori and Europeans.

We are whanau

We are whānau, every connection matters. We build meaningful connections for our people, our customers and our communities.

About the image - Whales gather in family pods. A mother and baby are shown. They are social creatures, so the importance of communication helps the bond between others. The whale is a symbol of safety, strength and confidence.

Think different

By being bold, we innovate to change the status quo. We cultivate curiosity and take risks to maximise the future of our network.

About the image - Blue-sky thinking is a form of creative brainstorming. If there were absolutely no limits, where could your imagination take you? The sky is the limit!