Associate Director, Solution Architecture

Some careers shine brighter than others. If you’re looking for a career that will help you stand out, join HSBC and fulfil your potential. Whether you want a career that could take you to the top, or simply take you in an exciting new direction, HSBC offers opportunities, support and rewards that will take you further. HSBC is one of the largest banking and financial services organisations in the world, with operations in 64 countries and territories. We aim to be where the growth is, enabling businesses to thrive and economies to prosper, and, ultimately, helping people to fulfil their hopes and realise their ambitions. We are currently seeking an experienced professional to join our team in the role of Associate Director, Solution Architecture In this role, you will: Principal responsibilities Solution architecture from discovery through delivery, ensuring alignment to business goals, constraints, and non-functional requirements (NFRs). Produce solution options and recommend pragmatic trade-offs across cost, risk, time-to-market, and strategic alignment. Define end-to-end architecture covering channel/application components, integration/API design, data flows, infrastructure/cloud, identity and access management, and observability. Create and maintain architecture artefacts (e.g., context/container diagrams, sequence flows, deployment views, NFRs, ADRs) appropriate to the delivery model. Embed security-by-design, privacy, and data protection controls; support threat modelling and security reviews with relevant stakeholders. Ensure solutions meet regulatory and internal control requirements (e.g., auditability, data residency/retention where applicable). Provide architecture guidance to engineering teams; review key designs, changes, and implementation plans to reduce rework and delivery risk. Drive reuse of approved platforms, patterns, and reference architectures; contribute to reduction of technical debt and duplication. Define operability requirements (monitoring/alerting, logging, capacity, DR/BCP, runbooks) in partnership with service management/SRE. Identify and manage cross-team dependencies and technical RAID; escalate decisions and risks through appropriate governance forums. Contribute to architecture communities of practice, continuous improvement, and knowledge sharing across Technology. Key stakeholders Business sponsors, Product Owners, and delivery leadership Engineering leads, DevSecOps teams, SRE/Operations, Service Management Cybersecurity, IAM, Data/Privacy, Risk and Controls Enterprise Architecture and architecture assurance/review forums Third-party vendors/partners (where applicable) In this role, you will: Skills, knowledge and experience Essential Demonstrable experience delivering solution architecture for complex, multi-system change. Strong understanding of modern architecture patterns (API-led integration, microservices, event-driven, cloud-native) and legacy integration/modernisation. Ability to define, quantify, and validate NFRs (availability, performance, resilience, scalability, security, maintainability). Security-by-design knowledge (IAM, encryption, secrets management, least privilege, secure SDLC). Strong communication skills; able to explain technical trade-offs to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.