CYS - EDGEWING - Solution Architect (Technical Services)

Description

The company is a global industrial group in aerospace, defence and security, working across helicopters, aircraft, aerostructures, electronics, cyber security and space. It employs over 60,000 people, has major sites in Italy, the UK, Poland and the US, and works in 150 countries through subsidiaries, joint ventures and investments. It is a technology and industry partner to governments, defence bodies, institutions and companies on large international programmes.

This Solution Architect (Technical Services) role sits in the GCAP Technical Leadership unit of the GCAP Joint Venture and is based at the GCAP headquarters in Reading, UK.

You will shape and run the technical services the team depends on, such as container orchestration, application management, MBSE infrastructure, PLM infrastructure and Software Factory tooling. You will report to the Product Owner (Technical Services) and work closely with delivery, architecture and security colleagues to make sure the architectures meet both business goals and technical needs.

Selection: applications are reviewed and the CVs that best match the required qualifications are shortlisted. Shortlisted candidates have an introductory interview with HR to assess motivation and soft skills, followed by a technical interview with the hiring team. All candidates receive feedback at the end, whatever the outcome.

Responsibilities

• Design, build and improve technical service architectures and the related infrastructure and applications so they are scalable, secure and cost-effective.
• Design services for high availability, reliability and performance.
• Build strong security into the design, including identity and access management (IAM), encryption and threat detection.
• Give hands-on architecture guidance to engineering and operations teams through design, build and deployment.
• Liaise between Product Owners, Technical Leads, cyber security and Enterprise Architects so that solutions meet both functional and non-functional requirements.
• Track emerging technologies and recommend and implement new ways to modernise IT systems.
• Reduce service costs by choosing cost-effective technologies and managing resource use.
• Build in disaster recovery, failover and redundancy to protect business continuity.
• Write and maintain solution designs, technical standards and best practices for the team and stakeholders.
• Manage automatically containerised applications for better efficiency, reliability and scalability.
• Deploy, operate, monitor and tune software applications to meet performance and business needs.
• Manage products through their full lifecycle, from concept and design through manufacturing, deployment and maintenance to end of life.

Requirements

• Senior level, with 5-10 years of experience.
• 5+ years in solution architecture, focused on technical services.
• Experience designing and deploying technical services, including cloud infrastructure, networks and IT systems.
• Strong knowledge of cloud-native services, networking, identity and access management (IAM) and cost optimisation.
• Experience putting security measures in place, such as IAM, firewalls and threat detection systems.
• Experience leading digital transformation work, such as cloud migrations or DevOps adoption.
• Experience managing IT service costs, including infrastructure, licensing and cloud usage.
• Strong understanding of servers, networking, storage and virtualisation.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills.
• High ethical standards when handling confidential information.
• English at C1 level.
• Italian citizenship.
• Desirable: VMware Certified Professional (VCP), Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) or a similar infrastructure certification.
• Desirable: AWS Certified DevOps Engineer, Docker Certified Associate or similar.
• Desirable: Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) or similar.
• Desirable: TOGAF and related architecture certifications.
• Desirable: familiarity with monitoring tools such as Splunk, ELK Stack or Nagios to track performance and troubleshoot issues.
• Desirable: experience in highly regulated industries such as Aerospace and Defence or Financial Services.
• Desirable: familiarity with modernising legacy systems and integrating them with modern platforms.

Conditions

Permanent contract, with Italy as the base location.

Executive-level employee under the Italian National Collective Labour Agreement (CCNL) for the Private Metalworking Industry and Plant Installation Sector.

Hybrid working.

Primary location: IT - Roma - Via Laurentina. Additional locations: IT - Catania, IT - Chieti Scalo and IT - Genova - Fiumara.

Secondment of at least two years to Reading, the headquarters of the Joint Venture.

Total base pay range: 60-75k.

The company sets the employment grade and pay package from objective criteria applied during selection, based on seniority, experience and role needs, in line with fairness, transparency and equal opportunity laws.

Benefits

• 13th-month salary.
• Performance bonus linked to business results.
• Annual welfare benefits worth €250.
• Ongoing training in technical and soft skills.
• Well-being support covering financial, physical, social and psychological health, tailored to individual needs.