Principal Solution Architect

🌟 Principal Solution Architect – Cox Automotive Europe

Lead the architecture that powers the future of automotive technology.

At Cox Automotive, we’re transforming the way our products, platforms, and experiences work across the UK and Europe. Our Architecture team sits at the heart of this mission — shaping the unified, cloud‑native, modern technology estate that will underpin every business within our ecosystem.

If you're a hands‑on technical leader who thrives on solving complex architectural challenges, influencing at all levels, and delivering real outcomes into production — this is your opportunity to make a significant impact.

🚀 Why This Role Matters

We’re shifting from fragmented, business‑unit‑specific systems to a shared, reusable, cloud‑delivered platform that can scale across all of Europe. As a Principal Solution Architect, you will play a pivotal role in designing the next generation of customer‑facing SaaS applications and modernising our entire technology landscape.

You'll partner closely with engineering, product, transformation and business leaders to deliver solutions that power digital marketplaces, vehicle servicing, inventory management, merchandising, fleet ownership and more.

You won’t just draw architecture diagrams — you’ll shape bold ideas, guide engineering delivery, and “lead by doing” through hands‑on exploration and prototyping.

💼 What You’ll Lead & Deliver

As a senior architecture leader, you’ll:

• Define and drive cloud-native architectures across AWS and Azure
• Lead application modernisation and portfolio rationalisation initiatives
• Design enterprise-scale, distributed systems that meet our performance, scalability and security expectations
• Facilitate technical design discussions and reviews across multi-disciplinary teams
• Communicate architectural direction clearly to engineers through to executive stakeholders
• Build and maintain our Enterprise Architecture Blueprint, mapping current and future state
• Identify and mitigate architectural risk and technical debt
• Champion the adoption of modern engineering practices (CI/CD, DevSecOps, containerisation, microservices)
• Guide teams through Well-Architected Framework reviews
• Mentor architects and technical leaders, helping grow the capability across Europe
• Build prototypes and hands‑on proofs of concept to validate technical direction

This role may include leadership of other Solution or Technical Architects.

🧠 What You Bring

Technical Expertise

• Strong software engineering background — ideally with .NET, AWS, SQL/NoSQL and event‑driven architectures
• Ability to “code enough to prove the concept” and support early‑stage engineering spikes
• Experience building distributed systems, REST APIs and microservices
• Hands‑on experience with containerisation (Docker, Kubernetes)
• Familiarity with cloud-native patterns and enterprise integration
• Understanding of modern data flows and scalable system design

Leadership & Influence

• Confident communicator who can articulate architecture to both technical and non‑technical audiences
• Trusted advisor capable of influencing product, engineering and business leaders
• A pragmatic decision‑maker who designs with value, risk and delivery in mind
• Comfortable steering large delivery programmes and complex dependencies
• Skilled at managing competing priorities across large portfolios

Experience

• 5+ years in software engineering within mid‑sized or large organisations
• 3+ years architecting cloud-native solutions
• Proven experience leading large-scale software delivery or architecture teams
• Experience in Agile environments and modern DevOps/CI‑CD practices

(Automotive experience is a bonus — curiosity and willingness to learn is just as valuable.)

🔥 Why Join Us?

• Shape the future of a major technology modernisation programme
• Work across diverse domains, products, and platforms
• Influence architecture at enterprise level with wide‑ranging impact
• A culture that supports innovation, experimentation and continuous improvement
• The freedom to “lead by doing” — getting hands-on when it matters

Ready to Build the Future With Us?

If you’re energised by designing at scale, guiding technical strategy, and building cloud‑native platforms that will power the next era of automotive solutions — we want to meet you.

👉 Apply now and be part of the transformation.

STRICTLY NO AGENCIES PLEASE

We kindly ask that agencies do not contact us regarding this vacancy. We work with a carefully selected and trusted group of recruitment partners. 

We do not accept unsolicited CVs sent to the recruitment team or directly to a hiring manager. We will not be responsible for any fees related to unsolicited submissions.