Location
London - Stockley Park with hybrid working options where applicable.

Hours
Permanent Position, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm. Occasional unsociable hours including weekends or on-call rotations may be required to support live operations and critical systems. Occasional travel may be required depending on project and client needs.

Salary
Negotiable

About the Role
IMG is seeking a commercially aware and technically strong Solutions Architect to support the wider business in shaping, defining, and progressing technology solutions across current client contracts, new business opportunities, strategic transformation initiatives, and formal procurement activity. This role focuses on pre-sales engagement, proof of concept activity, and technical validation. You will work across commercial, technical, operational, engineering, procurement, and transformation teams to translate business opportunities into clear solution options, technical direction, and delivery-ready architecture.

A core part of the role is partnering with commercial teams during early-stage opportunity development, helping qualify requirements, shaping solution narratives, supporting customer and vendor conversations, and leading or coordinating proof of concepts that demonstrate feasibility, value, and operational fit. You will work closely with DevOps and Site Reliability Engineering teams to ensure proposed solutions are automatable, observable, supportable, resilient, and aligned to modern operational practices.

The role also supports responses to Requests for Information and Requests for Proposal, assessing market capability, engaging with vendors and partners, and ensuring IMG pursues solutions that are strategically aligned, operationally fit, commercially sound, and scalable for the future.

Key Responsibilities and Accountabilities
- Work closely with commercial teams to support current contracts, renewals, growth opportunities, and new business pursuits by shaping technically credible and commercially relevant solution options.
- Engage with stakeholders across engineering, operations, projects, procurement, and transformation to gather requirements and convert business needs into clear architectural direction and solution proposals.
- Support and lead technical input into RFI and RFP processes including market engagement, requirements definition, response structure, vendor evaluation, solution comparison, and clarification management.
- Define solutions for internal operational workflows and client-facing services, ensuring alignment with IMG’s wider business model and service proposition.
- Produce high-quality architectural artefacts, technical narratives, option papers, blueprints, scope definitions, and supporting documentation for business cases, partner conversations, and formal procurement activity.
- Evaluate current and emerging technologies, suppliers, and delivery models for fitness, integration potential, risk, supportability, and total cost of ownership.
- Work with technical and operational teams to ensure solutions are deliverable, supportable, secure, and aligned to IMG’s standards and strategic direction.
- Support vendor and partner engagement including discovery sessions, technical workshops, demonstrations, proof of concepts, and architectural challenge.
- Act as a bridge between non-technical and technical stakeholders to ensure clear communication of solution intent, assumptions, trade-offs, costs, risks, and dependencies.
- Collaborate with project and engineering teams to support transition from concept to implementation including design authority, documentation, testing, migration planning, and operational readiness.
- Ensure opportunities are assessed with a joined-up view across commercial, technical, procurement, and transformation priorities to avoid fragmented technology decisions.
- Contribute to the evolution of IMG Studios’ future technology stack across on-premise, cloud, and hybrid environments, focusing on software-native and API-first architectures.

Experience
- Proven experience as a Solutions Architect or in a similar architecture, consulting, or technical presales role within media, broadcast, technology, or complex enterprise environments.
- Strong experience translating business requirements into scalable, supportable technical solutions across multiple stakeholder groups.
- Experience working closely with commercial and technical teams on customer opportunities, solution shaping, and procurement-related activity.
- Experience responding to or supporting RFPs, RFIs, bids, tenders, solution proposals, or structured vendor selection exercises.
- Strong understanding of architecture across cloud, on-premise, and hybrid environments.
- Strong understanding of integration patterns, APIs, workflow orchestration, identity, security, and operational support considerations in complex platforms.
- Ability to assess technology choices in terms of business value, architectural fit, operational readiness, and commercial implications.
- Excellent written communication skills, including producing clear technical documentation and executive-ready content.
- Excellent verbal communication and stakeholder management skills, with ability to influence senior leadership, vendors, engineering, and commercial stakeholders.
- Strong organisational skills with ability to manage multiple opportunities, workstreams, and deadlines simultaneously.

Desirable Experience
- Experience in live production, post production, media asset management, playout, transmission, or broadcast infrastructure environments.
- Experience with software-native, cloud-native, and API-first media platforms.
- Familiarity with procurement processes, commercial modelling, licensing approaches, and vendor management.
- Experience supporting proof of concepts, market scans, technology evaluations, and transformation programmes.
- Knowledge of operational environments with high availability, security, and compliance requirements.

About you
- Commercially aware, pragmatic, and outcome-focused.
- Strong collaborator comfortable working across business, operational, engineering, and leadership teams.
- Curious and strategic, confident to challenge constructively where better approaches exist.
- Comfortable operating with ambiguity while bringing structure, clarity, and momentum.
- Able to balance innovation with realism, and future-state ambition with current operational needs.

Core Competencies
- Business Acumen: Understanding financial drivers, interpreting business data, aligning decisions to strategic outcomes.
- Operational Excellence: Driving efficiency, governance, and continuous improvement in delivery and operations.
- Innovation Mindset: Cultivating curiosity, experimentation, and forward-looking capability development.
- Leadership & Collaboration: Inspiring others, building trust, and enabling collaboration across teams.