Solutions Architect - Azure

Onsite Flexibility: Hybrid — 4 days a week in office

• Position Type: Contract
• Contract Duration: 12 months (with potential for extension; conversion to permanent possible)
• Pay Rate: C$80.00–C$100.00 / Hour (CAD)
• Shift / Schedule: Monday–Friday, core business hours; overtime as needed
• Travel Requirements: Not required

Solutions Architect - Azure

Location: Toronto, ON

Onsite Flexibility: Hybrid — 4 days a week in office

Contract Details

• Position Type: Contract
• Contract Duration: 12 months (with potential for extension; conversion to permanent possible)
• Pay Rate: C$80.00–C$100.00 / Hour (CAD)
• Shift / Schedule: Monday–Friday, core business hours; overtime as needed
• Travel Requirements: Not required

Job Summary

This Solutions Architect – Azure role supports a team of five within a leading financial institution, contributing to business-as-usual (BAU) projects as well as strategic architecture initiatives related to Canadian digital channels. The role is not tied to a single project; the architect will support multiple initiatives and provide backup across the team when needed. It is a forward-deployment position to pod(s) responsible for providing technology shared services to the enterprise. Approximately 50% of the day is spent in meetings, with interaction across both internal and external stakeholders. The contractor will not have access to any customer data. This is not a hands‑on development role. The role focuses on message processing, workflow orchestration, and deterministic data pipelines rather than AI pipelines.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain respective architecture framework / solution that supports the most efficient, reliable, scalable, and secure solutions to meet the business needs and technology strategy; this includes planning, evaluating, recommending and designing architectural solutions in compliance with enterprise standards.
• Contribute to, design and/or develop an architecture framework including technology domain architecture strategy, policies, guiding principles and standards to govern how technology solutions will be developed and implemented.
• Work with CoE partners and other Architects to understand the security standards, risks and ratify solution security design.
• Research/analyze business requirements to evaluate and recommend optimal solutions within technology architecture.
• Review project detailed solution architecture and design ensuring it meets requirements / complies with the architectural and security standards, patterns and frameworks and provide sign-off on the detailed design.
• Contribute to the development of project plans by providing input and manage projects / initiatives by directing assigned resources, communicating project status and providing timely escalation of issues.
• Provide expert consultation and participate as a subject matter expert on projects of moderate to high risk and complexity.
• Work with Technology Systems Analysts to develop a Requirements Traceability Matrix to ensure end-to-end traceability of the solution to the requirements.
• Build consensus and facilitate collaboration and decision-making within/across business units to ensure consistent application of IT strategy and compliance with architecture framework.
• Ensure projects are compliant with technology domain architecture and design/operate processes to provide ongoing review of in-progress activity against technology architecture and development standards.
• Comply with well-defined enterprise technology delivery practices and standards and project management disciplines — including creation of project documentation of system requirements, estimates of scope and cost.
• Support the development, documentation, communication and execution of a comprehensive strategy, policies and solutions.
• Conduct pre and post implementation reviews, ensuring all technical solutions have met business requirements.
• Contribute to and/or develop the process by which decisions will be made regarding technology standards.
• Protect/enhance the security, availability of technology, brand integrity and shareholder value by establishing parameters for continued investment in technology solutions, and providing technical risk analysis / assessment.
• Identify enhancements and gaps in architectural frameworks, standards and patterns to raise issues for inclusion in future versions.
• Continuously enhance knowledge/expertise in own area and keep current with emerging industry trends, new technologies and best practices in the external market that can contribute to delivering effective client solutions.
• May develop and/or contribute to negotiations of third party contracts/agreements.
• Participate in knowledge transfer with senior management, the team, other technical areas and business units.
• Work effectively as a team, supporting other members of the team in achieving business objectives and providing client services.
• Design end-to-end solution architectures for modern digital platforms.
• Support multiple agile pods as a Solution Architect, owning solution design and delivery.
• Prepare architecture presentations and technical visuals for both business executives and technical stakeholders.
• Navigate the client's architecture governance and approval processes.
• Assist with diagnosing architecture and performance issues during solution delivery.
• Forward deployment to pod(s) responsible for providing tech shared services to enterprise.
• Project level architecture/design work, including documenting architectural solutions, assessment of options, target state views/roadmaps and executive level summaries/views.
• Architectural governance.

Project Focus (First 3–6 Months)

• Deliver solution architecture for new feature development on modern cloud platforms.
• Support platform modernization rather than legacy cloud migrations.
• Minimal involvement with legacy applications.

Kafka Expectations

• Primarily responsible for architecture and solution design.
• Expected to help troubleshoot performance bottlenecks and collaborate with enterprise streaming teams when required.
• Not expected to perform day‑day operational administration of Kafka.

Required Skills

• Azure Cloud (must-have) — the client is primarily an Azure environment.
• Experience designing/tuning high throughput eventing/messaging systems.
• Kafka / Confluent Cloud experience.
• Strong understanding of event-driven architecture, high-throughput messaging pipelines, and streaming platforms.
• Experience designing systems handling 100–1,000 transactions per second (TPS).
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills; ability to communicate with both technical teams and senior business leaders.
• Ability to work independently.
• Digital Integration Hub experience — candidates should have experience building or supporting:

- Event ingestion using Kafka. - Batch and real-time data integration. - Event enrichment and transformation. - High-performance data platforms supporting customer-facing applications. - Query-optimized data models and APIs.

• Expert knowledge of architecture for own technology, tools, processes and procedures and broader organization issues and technology.
• Advanced knowledge of programming languages, industry best practices, business/organization, bank standards, infrastructure, and architecture.
• Ability to work autonomously on complex, highly visible architecture projects / initiatives.
• Ability to manage / direct activities related to analysis and design of architecture on larger, high risk / complex projects.
• Acts as a lead expert resource in the exchange of architectural information for project teams, the business and/or outside vendors.
• REST APIs.
• GraphQL.

Preferred Skills

• Amazon Connect.
• AWS / GCP cloud platforms — candidates with AWS or Google Cloud experience will still be considered if they have strong Kafka architecture experience.
• Azure Cosmos DB.
• MongoDB Atlas or other NoSQL databases.
• Java (most valuable for code reviews and understanding implementations).
• Python — a plus, particularly for future AI initiatives.
• Strong Azure + Kafka experience.
• Experience with high volume eventing and/or notification/messaging systems within the financial institution (FI) industry.
• Retail banking or financial services experience.

Education Requirements

• Bachelor's degree or Technical Certificate required.
• Graduate degree preferred.

Required Experience

• 10 years of relevant experience.
• 8–10 years as a Solution Architect (senior level).

Work Environment / Physical Requirements

• Hybrid work arrangement — 4 days a week in office.
• Approximately 50% of the day spent in meetings.
• Interaction with both internal and external stakeholders.
• Overtime as needed.
• Training period: 2 weeks.
• Possibility of upcoming furlough.

Important Notes

• Interview process: 2 rounds, virtual with camera on.
• Medical, Vision, and Dental Insurance Plans
• 401k Retirement Fund

About the Client

This client is a leading financial services and banking institution operating across Canada, with a technology organization that supports enterprise-scale digital channels and cloud-first platform modernization initiatives. The institution employs thousands of professionals across technology, architecture, engineering, data platform specialists, systems analysts, and agile delivery leads collaborating across enterprise pods to deliver high-performance customer-facing platforms.

About GTT

GTT is a minority-owned staffing firm and a subsidiary of Chenega Corporation, a Native American-owned company in Alaska. We highly value diverse and inclusive workplaces and support Fortune 500 organizations across banking, financial services, technology, life sciences, biotech, utilities, and retail sectors throughout the U.S. and Canada.

Job Number: 26-10375 Industry: Software Engineering

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