Solutions Architect

WPP • Chicago, IL

8d • Hybrid

About The Position

WPP is the trusted growth partner for the world’s leading brands. We unite cutting-edge media intelligence and data solutions, world-class creativity, next-generation production, transformative enterprise solutions and expert strategic counsel in a single company – powered by exceptional talent and our agentic marketing platform, WPP Open, to help our clients navigate change, capture opportunity and deliver transformational growth. We have been building the world's most valuable brands for 50 years and have global reach across 100+ markets, with deep local expertise. Our people are the key to our success. We're committed to fostering a culture of creativity, belonging and continuous learning, attracting and developing the brightest talent, and providing exciting career opportunities that help our people grow. For more information, visit WPP.com. Why we're hiring: A Solutions Architect designs end-to-end technical solutions that align business goals with scalable, secure, and maintainable architectures. This role partners with product, engineering, and stakeholders to translate requirements into technical designs, guide implementation, and ensure high-quality delivery across complex enterprise environments.

Requirements

• Strong proficiency in Java and the JVM ecosystem (e.g., Spring/Spring Boot), including performance tuning and troubleshooting.
• Demonstrated experience developing and supporting large enterprise applications with high availability and complex integrations.
• Experience producing architecture artifacts (solution diagrams, interface contracts, sequence diagrams, and design documentation).
• Solid understanding of distributed systems concepts (e.g., concurrency, caching, eventual consistency, resiliency patterns).
• Experience with relational databases and SQL; ability to model data and optimize queries.
• Knowledge of document-based (NoSQL) databases (e.g., MongoDB, Couchbase) including data modeling and query patterns.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to explain technical trade-offs to both technical and non-technical audiences.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with cloud platforms (Azure/AWS/GCP) and cloud-native architectures.
• Experience with containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Familiarity with messaging and event-driven design.
• Experience with identity and access management, application security, and threat modeling.
• Experience with observability tooling and practices (APM, centralized logging, distributed tracing).
• Experience with the Office 365 ecosystem.
• Experience with Okta and/or other single sign-on (SSO) identity providers.

Responsibilities

• Demonstrate strong Java proficiency to design, prototype, and review core services and integrations.
• Architect and guide the development of large-scale enterprise applications, ensuring reliability, performance, and maintainability.
• Partner with product and engineering teams to translate business requirements into solution architectures, technical specifications, and implementation plans.
• Define and evangelize architecture standards, patterns, and best practices (e.g., layered architectures, microservices where appropriate, API-first design).
• Design integration approaches across systems, including RESTful APIs, messaging/event-driven patterns, and data synchronization.
• Evaluate and recommend technology choices, frameworks, and third-party components; perform trade-off analyses and document decisions.
• Ensure non-functional requirements are met, including security, scalability, observability (logging/metrics/tracing), resilience, and disaster recovery.
• Collaborate with DevOps/SRE to support CI/CD pipelines, deployment architecture, and operational readiness.
• Lead architecture and design reviews, mentor engineers, and provide technical guidance through delivery and post-release support.
• Identify technical risks and dependencies early; propose mitigation plans and drive resolution with stakeholders.
• Write clean, well-documented, and tested code.
• Take features from start to finish, including testing, with empathy for the end-user experience.
• Participate in a constructive and inclusive culture of peer code reviews.

Benefits

• Competitive benefits package

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed